Travel across seas, through forests and into the stars, all while never leaving your home, with Sky Burrow Tales’ transportive debut full-length, Seafarin’ & Backporchin.’
Coming out on Feathered Coyote Records on February 5th, this album features swampy kosmiche soundscapes with melty Steve HIllage-like guitar solos, sitar-kissed acid folk meditations and laidback interstellar jams. Each track feels like a little journey, often with hypnotically driving rhythms and extended improv sections that invoke the sensation of traveling through nature. You can just picture woodlands and vast bodies of water whipping past you on all sides while Ulrich Musa-Rois and Swantje, the group’s main core of musicians, tirelessly lock into a groove and ride off into the cosmos.
The sense that you’re passing through natural environments is heightened by bird songs and the sounds of flowing water that bookend all of the tracks. These field recording samples set the tone for each song, grounding each one in the real world and a contemplative spirit and mellow tempo. Even the somewhat abrasive Floydian-space rock of “Down The Rabbit Hole” stays relatively calm, as bird recordings hover peacefully throughout the mix. Although, this juxtaposition of howling feedback and white noise being backed by songbirds does give the tune a sort of Twin Peaks vibe, which is very much welcomed.
Recorded entirely from their home studios in Vienna and Waidhofen/Ybbs, this LP is one densely packed slab of psychedelic sound. Layers of rumbling drones hum ceaselessly in the background of most of the tracks, while tendrils of fuzzed-up and acoustic guitars stream through them, often guided by minimalist beats. This is perhaps most evident on the closing piece, “The Road to Sky Burrow,” which is an eleven-minute incandescent dreamscape that weaves itself around a repetitive electronic drum pattern, like a Neu! and MV & EE mash-up.
From the shimmering acid sunshine of “Muscovite” to the grumbling dirge of “Deep Sea Blues” and beyond, Seafarin’ & Backporchin‘ is a record that cannot be missed by anyone who owns records by Prana Crafter, Herbcraft and The Myrrors.
Preorder your copy from Feathered Coyote before its February 5th drop date.
-KH
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