Barn Owl – Shadowland

Down through the centuries the Barn Owl has been recorded in folklore more frequently than any other type of owl.  Ancient writings usually frame the Barn Owl with an ominous status undoubtedly because it is a bird of darkness, and darkness often implies the presence of shadows, evil, or perhaps even of death itself.  Indeed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, no doubt aided and abetted by poetic usage of the Barn Owl as a favourite “bird of doom,” many people deemed that the shriek or call of an Owl flying past the window of an invalid would signal impending doom.

These mangled myths and troubled tales are now encouraged and exaggerated by the release of “Shadowland”, a new three track EP by Barn Owl.  Fluid Radio regulars will no doubt have lapped up the recent esoteric enlightenment on offer from the exhilarating solo albums by the founding fathers of Barn Owl; Jon Porras and Evan Caminiti. Plus the celestial annihilation that radiated from the last release by Higuma, Caminiti’s other side project. And surely no-one could have allowed last year’s storming metallic-drone monster of a soundtrack by Barn Owl, Ancestral Star, to pass under their radar.

Opener Void and Devotion sets a mood of menace and cataclysmic spirit with its simple cyclical chord repetition that is reminiscent of a child’s music box or a gent’s pocket watch, mimicking how its appeal might be manifested in the soundtrack of a horror film or a spaghetti western.  Fatalistic low pitched frequencies and contorted vocal chants resonate as a quasi-religious synth modulation goes about its evil work.  Finally ever increasing rays of warbling guitar vibrancy, which distend and compress the distortion envelope, add a baleful depth and emotion to this catastrophic canticle.

Shadowland is an immutable intonation built upon slowly and carefully placed guitar and piano poignancies that impersonate Eastern classical modalities. A fugue of affected feedback encircles its own natural echoes to give a detached and vague advancement into elegiac electromagnetic eternity. Tones, depths and intensities continue to expand as accented guitar and other small insets of sequential strings charge the listener’s chakras with a hypnotic power of mesmerising malignancy.

Infinite Reach instantaneously haunts as it does hover, with sumptuous strata of synthesised satellites that wax and wane in orbit around solarised guitar flares to project a crackled lament. After an initial clamour and conflict that has supernatural tendencies, quietude and composure eventually prevail as continuous transitions and variations in length and vibrancy create guitar pitch paradise.

As “Shadowlands” plays out its obscure oscillations, it’s obvious why Tube amplification is currently so in vogue, as it reacts differently from transistor amplifiers when signal levels approach and reach the point of wave form distortion, or clipping as it’s known in professional circles.

In a tube amplifier, the transition from linear amplification to limiting is less abrupt than in a solid state unit, which subsequently delivers a less raucous form of distortion at the onset of clipping. This is probably why, many guitarists favour the sound of an all-tube amplifier; the artistic merits of tube versus solid state amps, though, continue to be a fiercely contested topic of debate amongst serious guitarists and music fans alike.

- Review by Dean Rocker for Fluid Radio

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