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Format

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  WOODSIST066Long Player  £15.00

Label

Woodsist

Herbcraft

The Astral Body Electric

Three years on from the initial Herbcraft blurt, The Astral Body Electric sees the sonic seeds sown in previous wax transmissions blossom in full.

Once the isolationist bedroom-psych project of Matt Lajoie, Herbcraft has in recent years sprawled out in many different full-band incarnations—duo, trio, quartet, sextet—for tours and heady super-sessions at their HQ in Maine. Their third album finds the most enduring lineup of the band at its peak: songs half-composed, half-improvised, and played with freewheeling first-take intensity.

Recorded direct to tape by Doug Tuttle (Mmoss) in an 18th-century New England barn, The Astral Body Electric captures the Herbcraft soundworld in its most-natural habitat by focusing on analog recording techniques (spring reverb, tape delay, hands-on flange). Lajoie’s unhinged electric guitar swirls around Dawn Aquarius’s wah’ed organ riffs, Nicholas Barker’s kosmische-inspired drums and synth, and Corinna Marshall’s trilled-out flute and circular bass, complete with nebulous group vocals and auxiliary support from Doug and Aaron Neveu (Woods). “Aurally massaged” into the 4th dimension by Matt “MV” Valentine via his signature “Spectrasound” mastering technique, The Astral Body Electric is psychedelic, mantric, free-rock music for the mind and body, and the most expansive, fully-realized, and confident Herbcraft record yet.


“... stunning navigation of druggy Matthew Valentine / Spectrasound-styled 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

“Pure psychedelic indulgence in the greatest of terms and a great extension of Lajoie’s work in Cursillistas.” —Raven Sings the Blues

Tracklist

• 1 Mother's Gate (Shambhala)
  2 A Knock At The Door In Your Mind
  3 Impermanence
  4 No Land
  5 The Body Electric
  6 Full Circle (Eternally)