Language Of Stone

Heavy Hands

Smoke Signals

Language Of Stone

***As the years stretch on and amplifiers cease to invoke the terror and horror that once seemed their calling cards, bands that carry on the quest for overdriven sonics either focus or fall flat. The wall of noise just doesn’t seem enough in itself anymore. Tasteless licks and bland distortion settings are now the most potent of insults, the calling cards of ham-fisted hacks and unschooled novices. How ironic then that a band named HEAVY HANDS has moved into hard rock pole position with an album of proto-metal power and simplicity wed to the deftest of melodic turns. With every hook in its place, and a place for every hook, Heavy Hands manages to reach across the years to create a sound all their own.

Mythical Beast

Scales

Language Of Stone

***Like a would-be soundtrack to some Wagnerian saga, MYTHICAL BEAST’s debut full-length unleashes sonic elements akin to trudging minions in an epic struggle for tonal supremacy. This bloodless battle is for hearts and minds though, and is shot with majesty and pathos. It’s no wonder that a trio commanding this type of simple yet nuanced compositional energy would risk life and limb crossing New Orleans’ “security” perimeter one month post-Katrina to rescue their gear from a semi-ravaged practice facility. The fact certainly provides insight into the spirit behind their dread progressions of guitar, bass and vocals. The band’s music is dank, grim and heavy as hell, but at its heart lies an indestructible momentum and spirit in no small part due to CORRINE’s Valkarie-esque presence.

Babayof, Noa

From A Window To A Wall

Language Of Stone

***Much is made about the lack of originality in music. “Everything has been done, and done to death” people decry. This is a very modern attitude, and perhaps more than a bit flawed. Music has always been a continuum. Styles and traditions are passed from one generation to the next to be cherished, replicated, altered or reinvented. Just as one individual looks to another for identity and support, so one song looks to the last for meaning; a place in the grand structure. NOA BABAYOF does what many before her have done. She is a folk musician in the singer-songwriter tradition. She pays homage here, stretches boundaries there, and most often plays within the structures formed by the greats that preceded her. This in itself is not an easy task. Very few have what it takes to make it on a stage where what separates the weak from the strong is neither record sales nor charisma, but the greatness of the songs.

Silver Summit

S/t

Language Of Stone

***That SILVER SUMMIT is a New York band is undeniable. The darkness and frenetic claustrophobia of NYC ebbs from every sonic pore of the band’s debut long player. New York City is nothing, though, if not trace elements of the globe’s disparate cultures (made uniform through earth and steel and flesh). Multiculturalism informs Silver Summit’s sonic character as much as the blackened brownstone facades, hidden public gardens and slumbering subway commuters must. Where else then to seek unmitigated conflations of metal, dream-pop, oriental, British folk and other harmonious dissonances than in the band’s own musings? The musical layers are infinite, as are the listener’s chances at discovery. (STREET DATE - 6/17/2008)

Festival

Come, Arrow, Come

Language Of Stone

***Sisters. We love them. We dream about them. They hold some mystical fascination for us, and with good reason. When sisterly voices conjoin the vibration that arises goes beyond even metaphysical explanation. It enters our cores and seemingly, if momentarily, triples our double helixes. That’s solid science, friends. Thank goodness then the Spears sisters don’t have any designs on a duo record any time soon. Such core breaches must be avoided at all cost! If any sister duo could contain such a disaster it would be LINDSAY and ALEXIS POWELL, otherwise known as FESTIVAL. Tribal drone, backwoods spiritual, basement psychedelia, hilltop roots romp…whatever element they touch upon filters through the genetics of sisterly song and descends on eager ears like a misty rain. But hey, if you’re at all in doubt, ask them to do their rendition of the song from The Jerk. Believers you shall become. (STREET DATE - 4/22/2008)

Lights

Lights

Language Of Stone

***Light is nature’s guiding force. It fills the coffers of nature’s bounty, providing every living thing with its own particular sustaining essence. Blood. Blood that shadow dwellers take with a savage thirst. Where sustainer and desanguinator co-mingle lays the discrete border to the territory of LIGHTS, a swath of land bathed in transformative moon glow and the illusory. Here, for every virginal vocal harmony a vampiric riff lies in wait, each dulcet tone risks transformation into snarling beast, and ghostlike apparitions infest the rafters, unseen but duly felt. Lights embody the mixture of pop beauty and psychedelic horror that has compelled millions to shiver in fright and ecstasy. Join us. (STREET DATE - 4/22/2008)

Ex Reverie

Door Into Summer

Language Of Stone

***When teenage imaginings transcend childhood's end and lodge with concrete ferocity within the sound world of adult reality, one can find a unique realm where dulcimers and glam-rock frenzies manifest with uniform importance. The trick is knowing not to discern a difference. GILLIAN CHADWICK understands this more than most Visconti acolytes. Her employment of the fantastic within EX REVERIE’s epic confines heralds a return to a reality deeper than most modern folksinger neo-realists can manage to muster. In a post ‘70s realm the struggle is to circumnavigate irony without succumbing to blandness or facile dictations of woe. Ex Reverie's The Door Into Summer maps that route with crystalline authority. 

Monosov, Ilya E.

Seven Lucky Plays, Or How To Fix Songs For A Broken Heart

Language Of Stone

***Seven Lucky Plays, Or How To Fix Songs For A Broken Heart is ILYA E. MONOSOV’s private celebration of the human experience and are based on his poems and stories written from 1996–2007. His early exposure to Russian dissident culture greatly affected his life and art. Influenced from a young age by his parents’s passion for literature, art, and poetry; as well as by the music of Vladimir Vysotsky, Alexander Galich, Leonard Cohen, Coltrane, Miles Davis, and African American folk music traditions (blues and gospel), Monosov’s picked acoustic guitar and voice arrangements were recorded at Hexham Head by GREG WEEKS (ESPERS), and feature strings by MARGARET WEINK (FERN KNIGHT), mandolin and harp by JESSE SPARHAWK, and electric guitar by Weeks.

Dommisse, Orion Rigel

What I Want From You Is Sweet

Language Of Stone

***On the surface ORION RIGEL DOMMISSE’s song world is marked by death, desolation and personal disaster. That the events populate a fairy-tale-like terrain is no small point. The transmutation of terror and dread into a manageable folkloric currency makes complete sense given the fantastic elements sewn within Orion’s singular visions. As with the best fantasy tales, Orion’s songs thread multiple meanings, some obvious, others occluded, through a linear narrative of disarming depth. All the while the tone is charged, with menace and beauty. This is classical music set to LUCIO FULCI’s The Beyond, folk music from some lost Balkan province where moonlight feeds all need for Vitamin D. Orion’s text is a dark, rich blood that oozes through organs, infusing them with all manner of unearthy metastices; mutations which allow them to evolve through pain, survive the corruptions of this world and deliver upon it an inverse of the negativity it so often yields. Orion feels the world like few others can. Our reward for that is What I Want From You Is Sweet. The debut release on this new label founded by GREG WEEKS (ESPERS).

Mountain Home

Mountain Home

Language Of Stone

***Not everyone dreams of a MOUNTAIN HOME, which is good, because if they did there’d be no real hope for those of us who actually need one. Of course, many folks who pine for a solitary life amidst the elements find themselves far removed from the requirements to make such a lifestyle immediately possible. That’s where a band like Mountain Home come in. And not just them, but the host of musicians, promoters, publications, venues and enthusiasts that have cropped up over the past ten years or so to champion a musical array that supports an overall cultural reorientation. Besides such crushingly poetic offerings as “The Sparrow,” Mountain Home promulgate an earthen visage and wooden sound capable of bleeding sap into the veins of city dwellers and suburban refugees the world over. Back To The Land works as much as inspiration as actualization, and Mountain Home sing the gospel soundly. Additional Points: JOSHUA performs solo guitar as J EMERY BLATCHLEY. ANONYMOUS performs solo as something other than Anonymous. ILYA performs solo as himself and in the rock outfit THE SHINING PATH (released on Eclipse, Holy Mountain). The second album on this new label founded by GREG WEEKS (ESPERS).