My inbox is overflowing - I have no idea how I'm going to get all this 2012 good music to your delectable ears! So I'm doing a whole bunch of multiple artist posts (see Tenzenmen post here as an example of what I mean). I could just list releases, post a song, move on. So much easier too! But that is NOT how I do things here at Sonic Masala. So this week I aim to catch up on all the recent and upcoming releases from label favourite Thrill Jockey , starting with these three lovelies. Jon Porras is more ...

Evan Caminiti of Barn Owl’s latest solo release is Night Dust, out now on Immune Recordings. The album is out on LP and cassette, and, as Caminiti told Fluid Radio, tape played a big role in Night Dust‘s composition: I just used a cassette 4 track for basic tracking but then bounced the tracks through [...]

Taking a step back from his duties in Barn Owl seems like a golden opportunity for Jon Porras to break out and make a record that sounds nothing like Barn Owl. I’m envisioning a quiet folk record or a more rock-inspired, Sonic Youth-esque instrumental album. Instead Porras returns a solo effort that [...]

Part of the amazing duo Barn Owl, Jon Porras has long been an inner astronaut, exploring the endless enduring power of the drone and psychedelic music. With this solo effort, Porras continues to find new colors and reach new heights of emotional engagement with sound. While "Black Mesa" as a title may make you think that this is a brooding, somber affair, it is most certainly not. The blackness here, I think, suggests depth. The opener, "Into Midnight," leads off with a brittle, Barrett-esque drone, muffled acoustic and electric psych chords, occasionally jarred loose by abrasive electric runs, runs that ...

MP3: YYU - yourhands/ moo .3 Really enjoying these mystically gentle tracks from California artist YYU that the good people at Beer on the Rug sent me the other day. "yourhands/ moo .3" captures some of that organic niceness you got with a lot of the post-noise-folk stuff like Grouper or Barn Owl, but complicated things with an admirably schizophrenic approach that approaches Brainfeeder-esque glitchy difficult-ness. TIMETIMETIME&TIME; is out now on Beer on the Rug. buy / soundcloud

Dewey Mahood is all over the place. Not only is he a member of Eternal Tapestry, Gärden Söund (with Barn Owl), Edibles (who released a cassette on Not Not Fun a couple years back), Bloodbiker, and Jackie-O Motherfucker, but since 2008, he’s also released a steady stream of solo music under the name Plankton Wat via labels like Digitalis, Stunned, Sloow Tapes, and DNT. He’s probably outside his Portland home right now, thinking up ways to reconcile what he sees with the psychedelic, cosmic drone improv that constitutes his music. Which is in fact the approach he took ...

Jon Porras Black Mesa [Thrill Jockey; 2012] by Jordan Redmond Rating: The first thing one must realize about the music of Jon Porras is that it’s indelibly tied to the visual. It’s impossible to listen to his refined, meditative guitar style and not find it evocative enough to conjure vivid mental images of the bleak, unforgiving desert. In fact, through his work as Elm, as one-half of Barn Owl, and under his own name, Porras shows a singular fascination with not simply painting pictures of that solitary, arid landscape, but also animating them. It’s fitting then that ...

Watch the video for 'Returning Spirits', a track from Barn Owl man Evan Caminiti's new solo album Night Dust

Honestly I'm not really sure when the two halves of Barn Owl ever find time to sleep. With their own prolific output, numerous collaborations and two solo careers that would make most artists blush with their constant output of quality; the pair are something to marvel at. On his first record for Immune, Evan Caminiti seems to have walked out of the dust coated desert that serves as a setting for so many of Barn Owl and co.'s releases and into the billowy coastal fog beyond. The album admittedly plays with kosmiche synth and dub themes, marrying them ...

by Adrian Dziewanski Last year's Undercurrent marked Jon Porras's debut release under his own name, and saw a subtle, yet prominent shift from the sound that him and fellow bandmate, Evan Caminiti, spent years developing as Barn Owl. Time has seen Barn Owl's skills and influences transform their monochromatic... Read More

Barn Owl hooter's latest drone LP is overwhelming and hypnotic. Perfect for testing chakras and patience.

Remember a couple months back when I told you about Jon Porras’ solo LP? Let me tell you a bit about his partner-in-crime, Evan Caminiti. In addition to his work with Porras as Barn Owl , Caminiti has worked with Lisa McGee as Higuma and released three LPs under his own name — and on May 15 he’ll release another one on Immune Recordings called Night Dust , on limited LP and cassette. Immune tells me that, for this record, “Caminiti shifted the focus away from amplifier worship and the desert themes his work is often associated with to focus on texture ...

RSTB readers should be no strangers to the name Dewey Mahood. The Portlandian has held down time in RSTB faves Eternal Tapestry, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Edibles and Garden Sound so it’s only natural that his latest solo stint in Plankton Wat should perk a few ears over here too. Spirits belies Mahood's work with labelmates Barn Owl and its parched Earth, sun scorched tones act as a perfect accompaniment to Jon Porras' recent album of time-displaced drone psych. Though the album is rooted in much deeper histories of the psychedelic plain, pulling from a history of kosmiche and fringe ...

Can this be right? A gig by Jandek in Manchester this month? Indeed it is. An ultra-rare appearance by the ultra-elusive outsider folk-blues musician put on by a partnership of enterprising promoters Buried Bones and MIE Music . For all his shadowy elusiveness and absence of biographical information, Jandek has an extensive discography – 50 albums and counting . For this live show, ' The Representative of Corwood Industries' will be joined by drummer Alex Nielson (of Trembling Bells and numerous collaborations) and experimental guitarist Richard Youngs. Tickets here . In a cruel clash on the same Saturday is the 11th Carefully Planned All Dayer ...

San Francisco based Jon Porras, who is also one half of guitar drone outfit Barn Owl, is set to release Black Mesa, his new solo LP. The album was recorded by Porras at home and in his practice space over the course of ten months. “Black Mesa is intended as a reflection on desolation and [...]