phil maggi

phil maggi - ghost love (idiosyncratics 2011)

"A well appropriated musical and textural contrast can be an incredibly satisfying thing to hear. That way of combining ambient prettiness with noise and fuzz chosen by the likes of Fennesz,  Ous Mal and Belong for instance, or Barn Owl’s dusty twilight stasis atop a bed of doomed grunt. The feeling of having your brain pulled in several directions at once...

What we have with Phil Maggi’s ‘Ghost Love’ is a set of tracks that visits various outposts of experimental music and wraps them up into something that shimmers with droning organic ambience on one hand; on the other it guides the listener through a quasi-ritualistic experience set out through primitive percussive or mechanical rhythms, captured ethnic vocal loops and even some Leyland Kirby-esque ‘hauntology’ to push the unsettling atmosphere and support the record’s title..." Daniel W J Mackenzie, Fuid Radio

"Inspiré par Werner Herzorg, Leadbelly, Ennio Morricone, les musiques traditionnelles klezmer et Tibesti, Ghost Love est un disque atmosphérique. Mystique et méditatif. Sombre et halluciné. Une promenade apaisante et stressante, rassurante et flippante sur des sables mouvants et inconnus. Trippant." focus vif

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higuma

higuma ~ pacific fog dreams

"Over the past few years Higuma's Evan Caminiti (of Barn Owl) & Lisa McGee have slowly evolved their sound from shamanistic acoustic dirges into shimmering metallic blast-off hymns, hair raising eulogies to the cosmos. 'Pacific Fog Dreams' is a set of seven such songs, all beautifully distant and drenched in layers of earth toned echo, balanced in dream time between melodies and all out electric whitewash. Delayed strums hang in a beyond background, a ghost world of songs from some other place and time, channeled onto the hiss of a cassette tape to remind you. Caminiti's guitar is often on the verge of taking the whole thing down, sporadically billowing into colorful feedback, huge blocks of impenetrable sound. McGee's vocals are sometimes discovered, but just as distant smears, or riding the peaks, coaxing out phrases of hidden origin.. maybe singing of intimacy, memory, nature or magic." root strata

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higuma

higuma ~ den of the spirits (digitalis 2010)

"January is always time for new beginnings and sewing the seeds for the year to come and I can think of no better way to start things off than with this massive, dusty blast from San Francisco duo, Higuma. Comprised of Barn Owl's Evan Caminiti and Lisa McGee. Like a phoenix from the shambles, "Den of Spirits" comes from a place buried deep and forgotten. These are sonic explorations steeped in the sound of the earth's core. Caminiti and McGee have concocted an epic brew of dirt-stained drones.

Basic, tribal percussion underpins the scorchers as they soar. Caminiti's exquisite guitar explorations are puncuated by the absolutely inspiring vocals from McGee. Terrestrial choirs never sounded so good...It's a carefully constructed, delicately held-together mini-masterpiece. Don't worry, though, because when you come down, you'll come down gently into a bed of crystal clean air. Stunning all the way." digitalis

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barn owl

barn owl • the conjurer [root strata 2009]

"The Conjurer is the latest offering by Bay Area duo Barn Owl. This new long player finds Evan Caminiti & Jon Porras finally (by way of an actual recording studio) documenting something that is a bit closer to their very heavy live sets, with expanded peaks of white light distortion and enormous valleys of bottom end. Each side opens with a brief funeral dirge to set the mood, a procession of bare-bones drum beats and bell-like guitar statements that bridge the gap to the wider open spaces of the almost side long 'Across The Desert Of Ash' and 'Ancient Of Days'. Apocalyptic westerns, mother nature fever dreams, it all seems to come to mind amid the evening guitar passages, incantations, flute tones, and finally, the solo piano that emerges lost among the electric mayhem to close the album. Considering the amount of terrain, The Conjurer is far from being scattered or rushed sounding. The record as a whole moves at a crafted even rhythm, slowly merging from one scene of violence to the next of almost silent recovery, then back up the mountain again. Edition of 500 LPs, half colored deep red, half black. Cover etching by Evan Caminiti." root strata

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fotola: daelimae

higuma

higuma - haze valley (root strata 2008)

"Higuma is Evan Caminiti (of Barn Owl) & Lisa McGee. Cast in a dark space in SF, Haze Valley holds rather true to its name, filling the edges with smoked out vocals, guitar delays and any number of drone layered acoustics. Very much a distant sound, with distortions burnished down to smooth horizontal planes that lift the music to higher summits. Not at all dissimilar from some of Barn Owl's recent excursions, but with the addition of Lisa's vocals, this goes somewhere else completely. Offset printed sleeve with silver on white." root strata

"Haze Valley" is a totally perfect autumn bummer. Crystal drones and bones to soak up all that smoke you've been exhaling. " brad rose

foto: people folk

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