The Seattle-based experimental old time string band, Friends of the Road, show off their improvisational and soundscape-building skills on their new live album on Bud Tapes.

Across this 80+ minute release, Sadie Siskin, Elliott Hansen, Julian Elkins James and Cameron Molyneux lean into the droning, creaky and heavily textural qualities of American folk music. With traditional instruments like fiddles, banjo and and harmonium intermixing with more unexpected sounds, like śruti box, singing bowls and melodica, the quartet brews together grand fantasias that feel like hazy, atmospheric recollections of some rural yesteryear.

Between rustic originals and sprawling reinterpretations of classic folk tunes like “The Cuckoo,” Friends of the Road utilizes jazz-like repetition, dissonance and dizzying countermelodies to a greatly hypnotic effect. With most of the jams surpassing the ten-minute mark, the band lets their sound ramble and build like the twisting, overwhelming vines of wild kudzu, letting the most elemental qualities of their instruments and playing styles take the lead. If you could imagine a band like Pelt performing in a more feral and old-world kind of way, then you might come close to what you hear on this record.

With intricate finger style guitar, clanking percussion and an ever-present drone that makes you feel the size and shape of each performance space, this is a shining and unique entry in the New Weird Americana canon that cannot be overlooked.

Get your copy on cassette or double CD from Bud Tapes today.

-KH