Barn Owl – Lost In The Glare

The hoary wisdom-bypassing that lynches rockers: does it have slayer-inducing oomph; is it ready to be pumped loud; can you cherish power divisively, stays mute point with the duo of Jon Porras and Evan Caminiti; their crater and sun LP cover lays flesh bare. It’s wider-ranging topography, ready for the ineffectual bird to perch, leaving its
penetrating stares on trees, passing humans, and the shrubbery as gliding riffs oppose all deficits – what a delight when you can revel in an album, and when it’s a quality as endangered as Barn Owl’s “Lost In The Glare”, a rarity as far as discerning eyes can see…

A trio of barn owl typecasts are essential imagery: the ghost owl, night owl, cave owl. Porras’ “Undercurrent”, released on Root Strata in April, priorly reviewed by Fluid,casts a petrol-thick spectre to the campfire. His contributions to “Lost In…” torchlights where night meets day. Reverb: then striking underground, post-Slowdive shoegaze timber, blowing up closer “Devotion II” unimpeachably. Caminiti’s influence of “Souvlaki” and associated 90s guitar tapestry, always matches with distinct calibre in pretence-heavy melt. You’re swung in perpetual motion through a rocky ride that lends itself to no time, no place.

Where tracks driven by stopwatches play on relationship between patience and instrumental circumference, there are few flagrant properties with the sustained drone. As the guitar in wrong grip is prone to poorly detuned playing, whether afresh or bought anew, the drone is already a step ahead by desirable dissonance being an option, not an intrinsic issue. Much like a river of suffering: relieving itself in longer spells through a breached utopia, fade in, droop finish, lesser anguish awaits you on first track “Pale Star”, where blending the two worlds bears fruit when segued into the percussive diablo-schism “Turiya”.

The LP’s characteristic: an uneven see-saw rode by simmering electric current one side: “Devotion I”; forbearing guitar ripples the next – “The Darkest Night Since 1683″, splay inside cast iron compound, our latter laying off distortion-scapes for respite, making Godflesh sound less a horror movie injunction. Conjuring storm clouds of chaotic atmosphere all that while, earning the tag ‘instru-drone-metal’ stars and stripes in the freshness department, from its earlier counterparts, more aggressive layering, fewer moments to exhale. Things never get claustrophobic, even on my cans at high volume.

“Temple Of The Winds” edges to propulsively strong Folk guitar shimmy, organ panning left to right; a cat chasing its own tail. Round and round it goes, then another tangent hits in “Midnight Tide”, by far the most emotional track present. Three and a half minutes in, a remarkably shiver-worthy buoying of chords hit you like a circuitboard of tesselating sparks, manipulated cassette recordings adding to the special moods formed. I have heard few works of this kind as moving, almost as if the noise forces response from your neural autonomy. Instruments such as tanpura elsewhere, and gong here speckle the landscape, but it’s very much the guitar and drums that are the LP’s focus, uniting strength and quibble.

Since “Light Echoes” re-introduces the frazzled interplay of parts, but as the weakest work doesn’t quite meet previous expectations. A cherrypicked record across a year’s breadth, it sounds like it belongs on 2008′s “From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light”, which is no bad thing counterintuitively to critique. Plus, as a cadence for aforementioned “Devotion II”, you get to feel the immensity of well-programmed sequence re-introducing drums to rinse the plate. The results are in: Barn Owl are up with the best of instrumental guitar records of 2011 on “Lost In The Glare”, and unless someone outsmarts their namesake, I can’t see that position changing for years yet. Where there’s a wing there’s a woon.

- Mick Buckingham for Fluid Radio

www.thrilljockey.com
www.electrictotem.com