MATT VALENTINE / SUN HOODS - SPLIT
crash symbols 2016, edition of 100
"For their transatlantic split, Vermont's Matt "MV" Valentine and UK-based duo Sun Hoods (aka Sun Skeletons and Blackhoods) offer up shades of psych -- an hour of shimmering meditations and bubbling ragas. With Valentine's side, we get a person working through a foggy, half-forgotten, psych-indebted past where music continually collapsed and was rebuilt from its base elements. Sun Hoods take a more expressive approach, with ghostly textures and wide-eyed samples playing tag through a landscape of wobbly synths and futuristic backdrops." - CRASH SYMBOLS
MV absolutely rips on this one like FRIPP meets J MASCIS meets NEIL YOUNG, his trademark lunar blues style somehow taken to another level as he transforms NIKKI SUDDEN's "death is hanging over me" into a glorious barrage of white hot fuzz licks like thick thc smoke signals from maximum arousal farm billowing across the night sky, some heady cosmic wayfaring with a potency the likes of which is scarce even in MV's back catalog - he wraps up his side with a zoned rendition of MISSISSIPPI JOHN HURT's "louis collins" that drifts on for a couple of verses before riding the outgoing tide on "lew orbits"
SUN HOODS have the daunting task of following that on the flipside - they impressively hold serve with a more reserved acoustic folk style, at least at first - things aren't quite what they seem - there's a moody mysticism that gains momentum as the tape rolls on, bubbling and churning at the fringes, spilling into the foreground by the time closing weirdness "realization" sets in, juxtaposing tranquil appalachian strum with eerie artifacts rattling in stereo - it's a hypnotic and alluring side like a minimalist intersection of SIX ORGANS and SUN ARAW with a DELIVERANCE-on-acid mentality - consider DATE PALMS and PLANKTON WAT for more points of reference but i think SUN HOODS are out there on their own, or at least more so than most
LIMITED EDITION CASSETTES
