reviews / 2009

BARN OWL - The Conjurer

Name: BARN OWL – The Conjurer
Item: The Conjurer
Rating: 6
Author: Francesco Nunziata

2009 (Root strata)

doom, drone, psychedelia

by Francesco Nunziata

Barn Owl are a Californian duo made up of Evan Caminiti and Jon Porras, responsible for a slow-motion psychedelia with faint bluesy undertones.

Theirs is a sound that finds its raison d'être, its original inspirational core, in an imagined America. Split between synthesizers, acoustic guitars, percussion, piano, harmonica and harmonium, Caminiti and Porras offer, on "The Conjurer", two long excursions that, in their ecstatic unfolding, naturally run into visions of a transfigured Orient.

Thus the slow parade of desert music on "Into the Red Horizon/ Across The Deserts Of Ash" - like Earth's "Hex, Or Printing In The Infernal Method" mellowed by further psychotropic substances - sinks into a chasm of crepuscular ambient, of mental clouds brushing against peaks of pure spiritual introjection.

More inclined to renew ties with roots-music, "Procession of Golden Bones/Ancient of Day" instead works around the idea of an american primitive guitar that flows into a solemn shamanic trance, before the piano puts the ideas back in order and restores a certain rationality amid such a proliferation of dark visions of parallel worlds.

For those who love these kinds of sounds, "The Conjurer" is certainly a fascinating record, even capable of good vibrations, despite its essence being deeply marked by an anguished vision of existence.

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03/11/2009

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Francesco Nunziata, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition