Birdcatcher - The Sky Tied Down

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Customer reviews
Press release

4...according to our Ant on Wed 14 Jan, 2009.

I've just hit play on a splendid looking CD by Birdcatcher on Pseudo Arcana. 'The Sky Tied Down' is a double CDr in gatefold screen printed card package with lush monochrome booklet that has evil looking images of birds and their eyes. The audio is as sinister as the artwork with a huge emphasis on heavy drones and strange textures. The atmosphere is dark to say the least. Like the thoughts running through a ravens mind. The weapons of choice here are lapsteel guitar and banjo although you'd never know it, as everything is so heavily disguised in effects. Fans of dark ambient/ doom drone gear like Nadja, The Skull Defekts, Yellow Swans etc may well find pleasure here. Look out for those raven's they'll peck out your eyes.

'The Sky Tied Down' finds the duo of Bill Wood and Antony Milton settled
down for a long session of epic dark and heavy drone-manship. Utilising
heavily processed lapsteel guitars and banjo Birdcatcher embark on a
glacially paced expedition to the slow beating heart of the dark eyed
uber-drone.
The textural complexity of these drones retain the evidence of their
instrumental sources but are transformed into something that is perhaps
closer to dark electronic ambient music than might be expected from these
instruments; the timbre of the banjo and guitar more reminiscent of doom
metal than any sort of free folk.
Recorded in a single session direct to magnetic tape the overall sound is
grainy, dense and loud. 90 minutes spent in the company of Birdcatcher is
virtually guaranteed to invoke monochrome visions and weird ecstacies.

Packaged in a 16pg art-book of images that seek to dispel any
anthropomorphic tendency in ornithology. (Are birds not by definition
in-humane; alien?)

2xCDR packaged in 16pg book.