Browse by Artist: BARN OWL

Artist:	BARN OWL
Title:	The Conjurer
Label:	ROOT STRATA
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	RS 045CD

"The Conjurer is the latest offering by Bay Area duo Barn Owl. This new long player finds Evan Caminiti and Jon Porras finally (by way of an actual recording studio) documenting something that is a bit closer to their very heavy live sets, with expanded peaks of white light distortion and enormous valleys of bottom end. Each side opens with a brief funeral dirge to set the mood, a procession of bare-bones drum beats and bell-like guitar statements that bridge the gap to the wider open spaces of the almost side long 'Across The Desert Of Ash' and 'Ancient Of Days.' It may seem obvious, or even a little overwrought, but it has to be said that these guys really do evoke all kinds of cinematic drama with their music. Apocalyptic westerns, bleak melodramas, mother nature fever dreams, it all seems to come to mind amid the evening guitar passages, incantations, flute tones, and finally, the solo piano that emerges lost among the electric mayhem to close the album. Considering the amount of terrain, The Conjurer is far from being scattered or rushed sounding. The record as a whole moves at a crafted even rhythm, slowly merging from one scene of violence to the next of almost silent recovery, then back up the mountain again. Cover by Evan Caminiti." CD version of the 2009 LP.

Artist:	BARN OWL
Title:	Ancestral Star
Label:	THRILL JOCKEY
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	THR 253CD

"Evan Caminiti (guitars, vocals) and Jon Porras (guitars, vocals, drums, harmonium) met in San Francisco in 2006 and immediately started playing music together. Over the next four years, the two gradually sculpted a vast collection of hazy desert sky meditations -- ominous, barren expanses of music for desert walks at dusk, and dark, pastoral passages embellished with psychedelic and atmospheric wash. A mixture between devotional ragas and dusty stomp with atmosphere and production that references shoegaze and black metal influences. Ancestral Star, their third LP, marks the evolution of the Barn Owl sound into a territory where it has become wholly its own, transcending the sum of its influences and taking on a life of its own. At the same time, it is a more realized extension of that sound. Caminiti and Porras paid close attention to the composition of each track and its flow within the album as a whole. Engaging throughout, every moment contributes to an overall feeling of mysterious desert expanse and a sonic narrative that unfurls like a cinematic metaphysical western."

Artist:	BARN OWL
Title:	Shadowland
Label:	THRILL JOCKEY
Format:	12"
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	THR 277EP

"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 fluttering tremolo hypnotism. Shadowland was recorded by Phil Manley (Trans Am) in San Francisco. For the overall sound of the EP, the band focused on using monolithic stacks of tube amps and sent guitars and synthesizers alike through them and utilized intense amounts of stereo delay."

Artist:	BARN OWL
Title:	Lost In The Glare
Label:	THRILL JOCKEY
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	THR 280CD

"Lost in the Glare is Barn Owl's second album for Thrill Jockey, and follows quickly on the heels of their acclaimed 12" EP Shadowland. Like Shadowland the album was recorded to tape by Phil Manley in San Francisco's Lucky Cat Studios. Lost in the Glare is made up of material composed over the course of a year and recorded in sessions throughout the winter of 2011. At the heart of the album's sound is the dual guitar interaction between Caminiti and Porras, a spiraling web of interlocking gestures that give way to bone rattling, monolithic progressions and dusty drifts. The mostly finger picked guitars weave in and out of each other in precise movements that recall the hypnotic influence of American minimalists. The harmonium that was prevalent on previous recordings has been replaced on Lost in the Glare with the undulations of a Farfisa organ. The songs here are deep, cosmic excursions. Rich in dynamics, the record possesses a transcendental tone through both a densely layered combination of electric and acoustic instruments and walls of melting amplifiers and feedback alchemy. The lines between strict structure and ordered chaos blur as third-eye opening e-bowed drones explode like beams of light and corrode into crumbling distortion, baking tones that sizzle like brittle bones left in the desert sun."

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