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CD
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KRANK 195CD
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"For the last seven years fans of Honey Owens' Valet have been patiently wondering if they would ever hear another record of her trademark ephemeral, fractured blues. Owens herself had been unsure she'd revive the Valet name after six busy years exploring psychedelic house music in the Miracles Club with her partner Rafael Fauria. But the arrival of Owens and Fauria's first child would soon inaugurate a time of change and reflection that would lead to the surprising arrival of Valet's third LP, Nature. Recorded at home over the course of a year, Nature evolved as a collaboration between Owens, Fauria, and drummer/bassist/keyboardist Mark Burden. The album finds the trio crafting enveloping layers of guitars, synthesizers, and reverb to create a shimmering, wide open sound. It's a restrained, direct style, but tying it all together is a lulling, dreamy melodic sense that is distinctively Valet. At the center stands Owens' ethereal voice, which has transitioned from evoking trippy fantasies to creating space for honest contemplation. Informed by Owens' early musical life in the 90s Bay Area underground music scene, Nature slyly synthesizes the DIY spirit of punk, the expansive guitar whorl of shoegaze, and the propulsive rhythmic drive of dub. For Valet, Nature's sound is a change in style, but not substance. From the haunted blues of 2006's Blood is Clean to the Fourth World free fusion of 2008's Naked Acid, Owens and company have always demonstrated a mastery of bringing together disparate musical genres into a unified musical whole."
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LP
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KRANK 195LP
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CD
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KRANK 116CD
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"Naked Acid is the second solo release from Portland artist Valet, aka Honey Owens. She states: 'These songs were Inspired by the Pacific Northwest landscape, semi-conscious dream states and the idea of one's DNA code being accessed as eternal memory. I started off with the idea to make a "songs" record but it really didn't turn out that way. Instead, the record became its own story. Track one is a static beach journey duet with Adrian Orange, and tracks 3, 4 and 5 are collaborations with Mark Evan Burden (Silentist) on drums.' From the gentle narcotic haze of the album opener 'We Went There,' which is dissected by Honey's trademark incendiary guitar work, to the lazy alien country blues of 'Fuck It,' and through the hyperventilating rhythmic distortion of the closer 'Streets,' Naked Acid is a fever dream of ghostly incantation and smudged psychedelia."
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CD
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KRANK 105CD
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"Blood Is Clean is the debut release by Honey Owens under the name Valet. The songs were formed out of a natural and spontaneous process as separate incidents of recording over a 5 month period from January to May of 2006. They were recorded by and large in single, live takes with minor additional tracking added here and there. The results are at once spare and expansive; exploratory, yet deceptively simple. Honey wanted to make music that was not necessarily of her, but rather 'to be a medium channeling sounds from an unknown place, opening up and spilling out onto the computer-tape.' The cryptic, mesmerizing sound pallette was inspired by 'lucid dreams and physical artifacts that appeared to me daily that hinted at a sound-world of Haitian voodoo drumming, various shamanic dreamtime musics, The Velvet Underground, and the 'Fourth-World' concepts of Jon Hassell.' We will just say that these are some of the most inspiring alien-psychedelic-blues-jams that we have heard in ages. And check out the absolutely fried guitar work from the outer edge of the galaxy on the title cut."
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