By the Gods you're thirsty—but frozen for the moment to your chair—a strained, wooden respite for your weary legs and back, amongst the dust, haze and impossible heat. You squint at the horizon, half caring as two riders approach on camelback.
The riders turn out to be Anthony Mangicapra and Ryan Lamm, whose packs open to reveal a modest array of mostly acoustic instrumentation. They're here to perform, to enchant and hypnotize, and ask only a meal, and a few metals of fixed weight in return—just enough to move them on to the next encampment.
To add to the remarkable gallery of live music recorded and presented in the past year plus on My Castle of Quiet, Hoor-paar-Kraat came and brought two sets of utterly possessing, ghostly organic music, full with steel hum and sparkle, and piercing, stringed overtones (and a distant voice murmuring about mental retardation.)
These sets bring to mind the more earthen work of David Jackman, as often as they do spaghetti-Western drones, and represent only one of many current faces of Hoor-paar-Kraat, started by Anthony in 1999, and since then encompassing a great many collaborators. Anthony's newest tapes, on Peasant Magik and his own Goat Eater Arts label, when considered with this session, are stunning and multifarious indicators of a project hitting a lovely stride, some ten years in.
Thanks to Glenn Luttman who engineered the audio with his usual sangfroid, and to Tracy Widdess who hit the mark again with her dazzling photo manipulation.
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