Sonic Youth Gossip - View Single Post - mirror/dash CD for three lobed recordings

Moshe · 07.26.2006, 04:52 AM

http://pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/37417

Hush Arbors
Landscape of Bone
[Three Lobed Recording; 2006]
Rating: 7.4
http://static.pitchforkmedia.com/ima...gif?1153333992
http://static.pitchforkmedia.com/ima...gif?1153333992

Hush Arbors is the work of the enigmatic, Virginia-born Keith Wood, a man whose restless travels have led to loose associations with such premier underground outfits as Sunburned Hand of the Man, Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice, and Six Organs of Admittance. On recent recordings each of those form-shifting acts can be heard nudging away from more definable acid-folk territories, so it seems only reasonable that artists like Wood should be standing ready to move in and tend the mystic fires in their absence. Following a pair of releases on Digitalis as well as the usual crop of handmade CD-Rs, the five-song Landscape of Bone now appears as part of Three Lobed's intriguing new Modern Containment series, and it again provides instant transport to Hush Arbor's singular lost domain.
The most prominent distinguishing feature of Hush Arbors' music is Wood's gentle, slightly dazed falsetto. His fragile vocal delivery-- which here seems generated somewhere northward from Neil Young or Pearls Before Swine's Tom Rapp-- can lend even his most straightforward material a strange, asymmetric wobble. This vague discombobulation is further heightened by Hush Arbors' gauzy, outstretched fields of phased guitars, hand percussion, and unmoored drones-- all recorded with a lo-fi naturalism that recalls the open-aired environments of Jewelled Antler Collective acts like Skygreen Leopards or Blithe Sons.
True to the album's title, each song on Landscape of Bone works the word "bone" somewhere into its lyrics-- "Broken Bones", "Oar of Bone"-- as Wood dreamily sifts through the tangled knots of memory and regret. Despite this mini-album's brevity, he makes use of his limited space to consider a full spectrum of emotional terrain. His blurred enunciation sometimes makes his words indecipherable, but the opening "Bones of a Thousand Suns" has a distinct elegiac quality, its mournful liturgy framed by deep-earth hums and soft coils of fuzz guitar. Adorned with subtle slide guitar work, "Broken Bones" could almost pass for a particularly fried Townes Van Zandt creation, filled as it is with empty whiskey bottles and lost-love despondence ("I've died and I've died and I've died some more.") Soon, however, the album's mood reverses on the spirited "Bones By the Sea" which matches Wood's ecstatic garble to a melodic, tradition-steeped Appalachian folk cadence.
Wooden Wand himself (aka James Toth) makes a cameo appearance on the dazzling "Nine Bones", a grainy 10-minute recessional that closes this short collection with a heady blast of free-rock drumming and barely-harnessed electricity. Like his friend and sometime collaborator Ben Chasny-- who last year also contributed liner notes to Hush Arbors' self-titled album-- Keith Wood here shows the ability to take the barest ingredients of folk and psych-rock traditions and transmute them into his own unique form of sorcery. Three Lobed have already announced that future installments of their Modern Containment series will feature EPs from the likes of Bardo Pond, MV & EE, Mirror/Dash and Sun City Girls, so hopefully this engaging Landscape of Bone might also serve as a harbinger of further treats to come.
-Matthew Murphy, July 26, 2006

07.26.2006, 04:52 AM	#37
Moshe Super Moderator Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 5,862	http://pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/37417 Hush Arbors Landscape of Bone [Three Lobed Recording; 2006] Rating: 7.4 http://static.pitchforkmedia.com/ima...gif?1153333992 http://static.pitchforkmedia.com/ima...gif?1153333992 Hush Arbors is the work of the enigmatic, Virginia-born Keith Wood, a man whose restless travels have led to loose associations with such premier underground outfits as Sunburned Hand of the Man, Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice, and Six Organs of Admittance. On recent recordings each of those form-shifting acts can be heard nudging away from more definable acid-folk territories, so it seems only reasonable that artists like Wood should be standing ready to move in and tend the mystic fires in their absence. Following a pair of releases on Digitalis as well as the usual crop of handmade CD-Rs, the five-song Landscape of Bone now appears as part of Three Lobed's intriguing new Modern Containment series, and it again provides instant transport to Hush Arbor's singular lost domain. The most prominent distinguishing feature of Hush Arbors' music is Wood's gentle, slightly dazed falsetto. His fragile vocal delivery-- which here seems generated somewhere northward from Neil Young or Pearls Before Swine's Tom Rapp-- can lend even his most straightforward material a strange, asymmetric wobble. This vague discombobulation is further heightened by Hush Arbors' gauzy, outstretched fields of phased guitars, hand percussion, and unmoored drones-- all recorded with a lo-fi naturalism that recalls the open-aired environments of Jewelled Antler Collective acts like Skygreen Leopards or Blithe Sons. True to the album's title, each song on Landscape of Bone works the word "bone" somewhere into its lyrics-- "Broken Bones", "Oar of Bone"-- as Wood dreamily sifts through the tangled knots of memory and regret. Despite this mini-album's brevity, he makes use of his limited space to consider a full spectrum of emotional terrain. His blurred enunciation sometimes makes his words indecipherable, but the opening "Bones of a Thousand Suns" has a distinct elegiac quality, its mournful liturgy framed by deep-earth hums and soft coils of fuzz guitar. Adorned with subtle slide guitar work, "Broken Bones" could almost pass for a particularly fried Townes Van Zandt creation, filled as it is with empty whiskey bottles and lost-love despondence ("I've died and I've died and I've died some more.") Soon, however, the album's mood reverses on the spirited "Bones By the Sea" which matches Wood's ecstatic garble to a melodic, tradition-steeped Appalachian folk cadence. Wooden Wand himself (aka James Toth) makes a cameo appearance on the dazzling "Nine Bones", a grainy 10-minute recessional that closes this short collection with a heady blast of free-rock drumming and barely-harnessed electricity. Like his friend and sometime collaborator Ben Chasny-- who last year also contributed liner notes to Hush Arbors' self-titled album-- Keith Wood here shows the ability to take the barest ingredients of folk and psych-rock traditions and transmute them into his own unique form of sorcery. Three Lobed have already announced that future installments of their Modern Containment series will feature EPs from the likes of Bardo Pond, MV & EE, Mirror/Dash and Sun City Girls, so hopefully this engaging Landscape of Bone might also serve as a harbinger of further treats to come. -Matthew Murphy, July 26, 2006
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