Wooden Wand
Wooden Wand & The World War IV (LP)
You might have lost track of Wooden Wand some years back. No one would blame you. Under a decade into a recording career, his tangled discography had sprawled to Sun Ra-like breadth and complexity. He had parted ways with his longtime collaborators in the Vanishing Voice sometime around 2006, seemingly replacing them afresh with new (and newly named) backing groups on every subsequent release. He even threatened to jettison his own moniker—a threat he made good on for the pair of album he releas…
Clipper Ship (LP)
Chickens were puzzling to early chemists and remain so. Despite a diet low in calcium, eggs laid by chickens contain a huge amount of calcium. Chickens, in that sense, are the only alchemists with proof that they are able to transmute an element; Wooden Wand’s 'Clipper Ship' album reminds me of that fowl alchemy, where the sum of songs’ parts add up to some impossible, elegant germination that cannot be reduced. Drones and lush arpeggiated codas spin out in concentric fractal patterns; the finge…
Death Set
"JAMES JACKSON TOTH, aka WOODEN WAND, is your fearless friend, the stumbling guy who gets himself into incredibly fucked up situations but comes out shining and lives to tell about it, entertaining you safely and immensely. You should be grateful. In my view, he's a great American songwriter in full bloom. Most likely you'll think that's a preposterous claim, and I won't blame you, but you'll be totally, completely, and unforgivably wrong not to agree. To me, it's obvious Toth is animated with t…
Hard Knox
To quickly address the elephant in the room -- certainly, collections of demos, outtakes and home recordings are mostly bogus, but obviously you're reading this, so obviously I've somehow been coerced into releasing this batch of tunes, and you've bought it or stolen it or borrowed it or gotten a promo or whatever, so let's cut to the chase. In my defense, all of the cuts contained herein are 'songs' in the traditional western sense -- my experiments in 'surf harmonica' and 'doom zydeco' will no…
Harem of the Sundrum & the Witness Figg
First solo album from leader of the mysterious & bongtastic loft-psych champions THE VANISHING VOICE (Troubleman, 5RC, DeStijl, 3 Lobed). Uber trippy/heady folk influenced in equal parts by legendary hedonists Fleetwood Mac & West Coast sad sack Judee Sill with tips of the cap to other early 70's West Coast signposts of despair & excess David Crosby, Grace Slick & Gene Clark. The intention to create something timeless & ageless informs each note of the music.