(2019) Prana Crafter & TarotPlane - Symbiose


Review:
Two long, deep dives into guitar-generated psychedelia unspool on this radiant split. Both explore endless, edgeless expanses of tone, with Portland’s Prana Crafter favoring a feedback blistered, electric attack that is nonetheless somewhat pastoral, like Neil Young through a thick filter of codeine, while Baltimore’s Tarotplane heads off for interstellar space. The two sides slide effortlessly into one another, however, in a meeting of minds, tones, overtones and vibes that spans a continent in distance and just over half an hour in time. Prana Crafter’s “Jagged Mountain Mountain Melts at Dawn” runs just a hair closer to rock conventions than its counterpart, with its bracing arcs of feedback, its steady maintenance of time signature, the way its pinging, questing electric melody sits on a foundation of scratchy strumming. It is also slightly longer than the Tarotplane entry, at 19:21, though you will not likely notice the passage of time. Instead of progressing, the cut seems to rise like an aura and hang. Though there are variations in sound and mood and even something approaching melody, the track is all “be” and no “do.” It sits in a stillness and spreads right to the edges. Tarotplane’s “We Move Slowly Through the Past” is similarly serene, laying slow-blooming tone-washes atop summer cricket hiss vibrations, setting off friction-y twitches that skitter over liquid clear guitar lines. An array of instruments are evoked, somehow, through manipulation of guitar, electronics and pedals. Flutes, stringed instruments and harpsichords rise up like semi-transparent spectors out of the mesh of sounds, slipping in and out of focus as you hear them. You might hear a deep space emptiness in these lingering textures, even the fond, failed nostalgia that drifting machinery might feel for lost home planets. Or maybe not. Maybe you’d just hear a guitar that loops and twists through whooshing stillness, the notes pinging through cavernous spaces, chords wavering and then fading against twittering, chittering hums. Even if you normally check your watch during extended drones, wondering if you’re still having fun and when it will all end, this split sustains and engrosses. It feels outside of time and space, and it takes you there, too.





Tracklist:



Media Report:
Genre: post-rock, psychedelic rock
Source: CD
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits