San Franciscan drone duo Barn Owl return for a show at Berghain Kantine as part of the Kommetenmelodien Series. Having released the excellent Shadowland EP since they passed through Berlin last May (previously), their next album Lost In The Glare is already in the shops and partially sold out, well, the blue vinyl version anyway, for all the nerds like me out there this is important. So that makes it two albums in less than eighteen months for Thrill Jockey records and Evan Caminiti and Jon Porras don’t seem like they will slow down anytime soon, pardon the pun.
Lost In The Glare is compelling stuff; click on their name above to hear the whole album, go straight to The Darkest Night since 1683 and the hair should stand up on the back of your neck…in a good way. Having seen them perform last May at Levee Club I’ll definitely look forward to a much better venue for these sonic voyagers, although I must admit seeing people’s faces as they came in the door at Levee on a Friday night expecting indie-pop only to be confronted with loud droning guitars was well worth it…an excellent show it was indeed. Thrill Jockey, of course, can put it slightly more eloquently than myself:
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.
Here’s the video for Turiya off the new one:
