 :: Buy Now: $16.98 |  :: Buy Now: $16.98 |
All Tomorrow's Parties could be cast as Lollapalooza sans tattoo tents, then aimed at fans of Tony Conrad and Wolf Parade rather than those willing to wade through Perry Farrell's offspring. ATP's savvy promoters also avoid the pitfalls of megalomania, allowing notables like Sonic Youth, Sleater-Kinney, Modest Mouse, and The Mars Volta to curate bills. Thurston Moore compared the event to a mix tape. Now ATP has its own imprint, compiling festival performers and also releasing full-lengths from outer-realm crews like Bardo Pond or preternaturally popular spazz popsters Deerhoof.
To date, ATP's most transcendent parcel is Lepidoptera, courtesy of West Philadelphia's Fursaxa, a/k/a Tara Burke. Loosely comparable to drone-folkies Charlambides or the hooded members of the Jewelled Antler Collective, Burke has produced homegrown, hard-to-find stunners as well as an album on Ecstatic Peace and one released by stalwart Japanese psych troupe, Acid Mothers Temple. But this is her strongest seance to date. Tied dreamily with a continual ambient hum, Lepidoptera's astral projections suggest Barbara Manning as a 12th-century mystic going alchemical in a psychedelic space jam. Sung chorally aside bent-chord organ, farfisa, shakers, and strum or looped guitar, the occasional Diamanda Galas whisper ("Poppy Opera") collides with Nico at the Salem Witch Trials ("Russian Snow Queen"). As Nabokovians will report, "Lepidoptera" is the insect order that includes moths. Burke's use of the term perfectly encapsulates these hymns—flitting nighttime collisions leaving a dusty, indelible mark.
A downcast soloist of a different sort, Alexander Tucker explores folk's more mildewed corners. On Old Fog, the UK comic book artist, ex-Unhome vocalist, Jackie-O Motherfucker touring guitarist, and Sunn O))) collaborator doles out eeriness in a Six Organs Of Admittance realm, though with a gloomier British shade. The cover depicts a cobwebbed cave (no rising for Lazarus?), and the album's overall mood is a funereal penitence. One of the few upbeat tracks is "The Patron Saint of Troubled Men," and the guitar rings of "Sung Into Your Brightening Skull" are comparatively luminous. Over its course, Tucker piles inland shanties atop field recordings, piano, jittery bows, noise squalls, and bone creaks. Throughout, his fingerpicking feels almost possessed.
Subscribe to Feed
