Drag City US Schallplatten & CDs

Review: John Fahey's complex legacy reaches from his groundbreaking work in the fields of acoustic guitar and folk music through to the wild abstraction of his later years. His contraction of a debilitating virus in the 80s threw his music in unexpected directions and as a result his final years of music found him heading into increasingly challenging territory. This collection of recordings from 1995-1996 were captured at a boarding house in Oregon where he lived for a time, and veer from a capella mantras to meandering guitar studies and other extremities in between. Compelling, illuminating sounds from an artist still being comprehended more than 20 years on from his passing.

Review: Ghost are sadly an easily confused band - doubly so, for the fact that there is now a wildly popular masked metal troupe of the same name, *and* because there is, uncannily, a 1984 film named Ghost, also rather well known. This confounding is apparently so prevalent that the obligatory Wikipedia entry on *this* Ghost is titled
'Ghost (1984 band)'. We wouldn't usually mention it, save for the fact that this perhaps not so wilful obscurantism actually works in their favour. With Drag City's reissue of Ghost's first album on griseous vinyl here, it's safe to say that this Japanese experimental psych/acid record's aura as a hidden gem feels rare to come by. It's almost as if Ghost (1984) is 'haunting' the other aforementioned cultural touchstones of the same name. Don't get it twisted, though: Ghost formed in the early 80s, but this debut recording didn't make it to the pressing plant until 1990. What explains the gap in their CV, you ask? Legend has it that the band led a truly nomadic existence - as a "band" should, in all senses of the word - roving, drifting from ruined ancient temples to disused subway stations near Tokyo. With that all checked, the album itself is truly free-spirited and eerie, and not what you'd expect from contemporary notions of space rock, with prepared tinkerings and strange readymade detritus seeming to fill each piece at every twist and turn.

Review: Few conversations or analyses surrounding doom metal can begin without mentioning the integral Sleep and their genre-defining opus Dopesmoker. That same analytical discussion cannot be rounded up without OM coming into the fray, as the duo of bassist Al Cisneros and drummer Chris Haikus originally worked together as Sleep's rhythm section. The hypnotic 'Gebel Barkal' single would serve as the final recording from the pair following the 2007 full-length Pilgrimage, before 2009's God Is Good would welcome the arrival of current drummer Emil Amos and signal the group's continued expansion into an eventual three-piece.

Review: A one-of-a-kind record from a one-in-a-million "state-of-mind jam band", Upstate by Prison hears five guys, four vocals and three guitars melded together in a craft that runs on its own rock & roll synergy. A self-perpetual psychosonic release, the LP consists only of five 15 to 20-minute long jam pieces, all of which seem to endlessly revel in caterwauling, hooting, Wahhing, and droning, ultimately beating the horse of contemplative psychedelia to death until both a heightened state of consciousness and a renewed music-making praxis is achieved. Sure, it goes too far! How the hell else you gonna get Upstate?