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Barn Owl: Lost In The Glare

Thrill Jockey

On its second full-length for Thrill Jockey, San Francisco’s Barn Owl continues to expand the boundaries of American drone to dizzying new heights of beauty and substance. Continuing down the creative path that they blazed on the recent Shadowland EP, chief Owls Jon Porras and Evan Caminiti replace their trusty harmonium with a treated farfisa organ; and Alps multi-instrumentalist Michael Elrod, Portraits clarinetist Steve Dye and renowned improvisational drummer Jacob Felix Heule join them throughout these epic eight tracks produced by Phil Manley of Trans Am. The addition of these new layers to the duo’s sound gives Barn Owl a fuller sense of expression, allowing the influences of country blues, psychedelic raga, early Tangerine Dream and Malian music to filter through its electric/acoustic pastiche of arid doom rock in a way that brings out the intimacy of their wholly unique and intricate style of hypnotic heaviness.