Herbcraft - Ashram To The Stars

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Press release

3...according to our Dave on Fri 10 Jun, 2011.

Through time and space (and massive clouds of pipe weed smoke) come Herbcraft, a group intent on making you feel like you've gone back in time and taken a huge amount of mind-altering substances. It's all wailing guitar and heady atmospherics. It's a bit like being trapped in a lift with a goddamn hippie, who's intent on telling you how great the world music/experimental stage at some dirty festival is. There are loooonnnggg passages of guitar and jangly percussion. If I was to say meandering chuntering I don't think I would be a million miles from what this band sound like. Indecipherable vocals spill in occasionally. Guitars wail. The bass plods along and noises are manipulated. Guitars still wail. Long passages of brooding sonics appear. Guitars are still wailing. There are seven "songs" on this record, and they all sound very similar which is all good but is very A) hard to review and B) hard to care about. I'm probably not stoned enough to take to this album but it probably sounds like fucking Led Zeppelin 3 when I might be high..at the moment it sounds like a cock rock guitarist solo his way to the depths of Hull....I mean hell. It's probably really good is this record but I can't tell...goddamn hippies...

"One of the most gifted abstract sonic pilots from the Vacationland stable, Portland, Maine, artist Matt Lajoie enjoys a larger-than- Sasquatch reputation for his free folk personality and unpredictable takes on Spectrasound techniques. Although he and his merry band are one of the most charismatic tribes of the New England underground- you gotta see them live-they blossom from psychedelic occurrences that lead to bursts of pacifist oblivion which can only be redeemed inside their studio output. The momentum Lajoie deploys in his polar expressions indicates a supply of time-manipulated balance. An accretion of bucket brigades warping wildly at first breath, generally considered a condition of primitivism, this is searchlight abandonment with purely spirited jams more akin to the tapers pit than slam continuance. In fact, the only thing slammed here (other than the muted poetry echoing like buoys in Golowin's harbor) are the 'in the red' meters on fire signs from fire music providing ease with earth, wind and air. Long may we inhale. o Second LP for Woodsist's sister label o Limited edition of 500 copies

PRESS: "This is a heady atmosphere, an atmosphere for heads, and it not only delivers the contempo dreamlike aspect at the apex of its form, but transcends it to those revolving with them. Take this fucker for a spin." -Matt Valentine, Vermont, 2011 "... stunning navigation of druggy Matthew Valentine / Spectrasoundstyled psychedelic folk, with a thick smoke of F/X masking some fantastic rural rock that at points sounds like a '90s underground take on Skip Spence's Oar or a Dead bootleg on Majora. Either way this is a solid winner." -David Keenan, Volcanic Tongue "Meandering in the best possible way, Herbcraft's Road to Agartha sounds like it bloomed fully formed from a thick wall of weed smoke." -Sam Hockley-Smith, Fader "Pure psychedelic indulgence in the greatest of terms and a great extension of Lajoie's work in Cursillistas." -Raven Sings the Blues "... blissed-out, bonged-to-the-eyeballs psych-rock of the highest calibre." -Norman Records "... exactly the kind of thing one might hope to stumble upon while wandering the forest alone." -Altered Zones

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