Raglani

Raglani

Husk

Arbor

***Husk, a career-spanning double-LP retrospective marking RAGLANI’s “early period” (2004-2009), is both the artist’s “best-of” collection, as well as a document of a personal orientation within the canon of electronic music. As a devoted student of E.M. history and synthesis techniques, JOSEPH RAGLANI has spent the past decade in his St. Louis studio consuming and refiguring. While highly-informed, these tracks avoid simple derivation, the traces of influence are not easily decipherable; the common descriptors fall away. The sonic legacies orbiting the INA GRM axis cross paths with pop sensibilities more akin to the sensuous pulse of New Order. Raglani mines the expressiveness of this fertile boundary space. The compositions on Husk are dense featuring a palette of analog and digital electronic instruments as well as guitar, voice, pedal steel, organ, melodica. Disparate elements find a way to resonate to maximum emotive effect. The sonic energies are not bound to their sources, but are rather utilized for their ability to express. One fourth of the material is available here for the first time; the remainder from private-press and small run releases has been remixed by Raglani and re-mastered by GREG DAVIS for presentation in this collection. Husk is Raglani’s second mass-market release following his 2008 CD Of Sirens Bornreleased on Kranky Records. Artwork by ROBERT BEATTY (Three Legged Race / Hair Police / Resonant Hole). In an edition of 500 copies with printed inner-sleeves.

Raglani

Of Sirens Born

Kranky

***Situated in the soundworld of contemporary kosmische electronica, Of Sirens Born goes several steps further than many retro-focused efforts, rendering audibly literal the traditional metaphor of voyage that has underscored so many synth-driven concept albums. Beginning tentatively and uneasily, these five pieces progress through expansive phases of grandeur and menace, shipwrecking before washing ashore on a new world. At the core of the work is the idea of the imaginary vista; high, keening drones issue from the heart of unknown rivers, populated on all sides by fantastically twittering creatures and alien flora, drawing the listener on with the hint of exotic treasure, hidden within forbidding and impossible jungles.