Burrowing through the astral plane
Tunnels is the Portland-based drone-fre(e/ak)-folk project of Nicholas Bindeman, sometime contributor to the fantastic Jackie-O Motherfucker.
His new (limited edition!) CD-R on Abandon Ship Records is tellingly called Astral Collage; it's full of psychedelic guitar mystrionics (I'm making that word up right now!), sometimes menacing/sometime blithe semi-improvised soundsc(r)apes, percussive pulses/percolations, and buzzing drones à la Jewelled Antler and that ilk: Thuja, Blithe Sons, Grouper (also from Portland), and, of course, JOMF.
It's easy to detect older touchstones like Tony Conrad or John Cale in the resin clouding off the bowed and buzzing strings. And some of the darker, more fuzzed-out passages even call to mind Siltbreeze stuff like Dead C. There are even some serious shamanic psych excursions that summon the spirits of Angus MacLise and La Monte Young (the latter is still alive, but I'm sticking with the seance metaphor nonetheless).
Comments