Barn Owl
San Francisco-based drone duo Barn Owl follow in the footsteps of provocative avant-gardists Alice Coltrane and Keiji Haino, while building on the doom metal foundation planted by Black Sabbath. Guitarists Jon Porras and Evan Caminiti started playing music together soon after meeting in an American Indian science class at San Francisco State in 2005 and realizing they had similar backgrounds playing in metal bands and a shared interest in meditative, psychedelic music
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San Francisco-based drone duo Barn Owl follow in the footsteps of provocative avant-gardists Alice Coltrane and Keiji Haino, while building on the doom metal foundation planted by Black Sabbath. Guitarists Jon Porras and Evan Caminiti started playing music together soon after meeting in an American Indian science class at San Francisco State in 2005 and realizing they had similar backgrounds playing in metal bands and a shared interest in meditative, psychedelic music
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Given how prolific Barn Owl have been in the past, it's surprisingly to learn that it's been over 18 months since "Lost in the Glare," their last proper full-length. In the interim Jon Porras and Evan Caminiti have issued a variety of solo albums, but the duo has also used that time to augment the sound palette of Barn Owl with electronics and synthesizers. Thankfully, the same blackened soot and scorched psychedelia are still prevalent, they just reach deeper timbres and more expansive textures…
Ancestral star
Finally reprinted...Returning with a brand new album of arid, dustbowl blues and slow-motion desert-scapes, Evan Caminiti and Jon Porras resume duties as Barn Owl for a third album. Previously this band has tended to court associations with the sound developed by Earth for their Hex album; the overall effect is resolutely bleak and doom-laden, yet not entirely without some grounding in the language of grassroots Americana. Ancestral Star takes the Barn Owl sound to a new level of refinement, spe…
Lost In The Glare
Seems like only yesterday Barn Owl had a new record on Thrill Jockey, and in fact this, Lost In The Glare, is their third for TJ in about a year, coming hot on the heels of their Shadowland 12" which ranks up there as one of our favorites. Lost In The Glare doesn't radically reinvent their sound, just further stretches it out, and refines it, the opening track as fierce as anything we've heard from them, lush tangles of guitar, over swirling droned out shimmer, culminating in a wild squal…
Shadowland
The new material on Shadowland takes inspiration from the devotional sounds of Popol Vuh and Alice Coltrane and also possesses the pitch black weightlessness of Fushitsusha and early Tangerine Dream. With waves of guitar soaring over liquid synthesizers tones, Barn Owl combine lush, melancholic serenity with cacophonous, deconstructed guitar to exhibit a visceral meeting of light and dark. Cyclical themes were explored heavily: mantric guitar processions, swelling bass waves, and flutteri…
The headlans
CD version housed in a Digipak following the immediate sell out of the LP version. Released to coincide with Ellen Fullman's new full length for Important titled "Through Glass anes." Full length collaboration between Ellen Fullman, Theresa Wong, and Barn Owl produced by The Norman Conquest. Barn Owl's extended drones and Theresa and The Norman Conquest's strings are the perfect accompaniment to Fullman's Long Stringed Instrument; a product of her own invention. This is an album of deep mater…
From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light
Given that this band are called Barn Owl, and have that righteous mythical beast scrawled on their album sleeve, I think it's pretty clear what direction this LP is going to take. Tranced-out psych studies are the order of the day, and wielding an arsenal of guitars, harmonium, harmonica, rhodes and synthesizer, this quartet (well, there are four of them this time around - apparently they have a floating, variable roster of chums to call upon) tap into some creepy pagan atmospheres, and ceremoni…
Conjurer
"This is a must-buy for everyone this summer. 10/10 - Foxy Digitalis", finally out the CD version. This finds the duo finally documenting something that is a bit closer to their very heavy live sets, w/ expanding peaks of white light distortion & enormous valleys of bottom end. Opens w/ a brief funeral dirge to set the mood, a precession of bare bones drum beats & bell like guitar statements that bridge the gap to the wider open spaces of "Across The Desert Of Ash" & "Ancient Of Days" …
The Conjurer
This new long player finds the duo finally documenting something that is a bit closer to their very heavy live sets, w/ expanding peaks of white light distortion & enormous valleys of bottom end. Each side opens w/ a brief funeral dirge to set the mood, a precession of bare bones drum beats & bell like guitar statements that bridge the gap to the wider open spaces of the almost side long "Across The Desert Of Ash" & "Ancient Of Days."