17 October 2022

ELKHORN – Distances (2022, LP Feeding Tube Records)

RELEASE INFO:

Label: Feeding Tube Records

Format: LP, Album, Limited Edition, 400 copies

Release Date: 18 Sep 2022

I believe that by now all TimeMaZine (especially the European ones) readers are familiar with the instrumental guitar duo Elkhorn and their musical quests (Our radio audience, too!!!). Elkhorn is a New York guitar duo featuring Jesse Sheppard on twelve-string acoustic and Drew Gardner on electric, interweaving the extended folk tradition with psychedelic improvisation, moving freely from pre-rock to post-rock and beyond.

Elkhorn has been releasing their music since 2016 and their latest ‘adventure’ is called “Distances” and is a limited run of 400 vinyl LP copies released by Feeding Tube Records. “Distances” contains music that deals with folk, American primitive, avant-garde psych, and rock, the music is instrumental and improvisational, and the album contains just 4 tracks. On “Distances” the duo is being helped by two drummers, Ian McColm and Nate Scheible… The opener “Train” is an acoustically drenched impro tune with some super cool cosmic electric guitar sounding, some abstract drumming completes the puzzle while the track slowly becomes something like a Stoned Jam, an amazing psych hippie-like electrified cosmically trippy theme! The scenery rapidly changes with “Wilderness”, an 180 degrees turn I may say, as the duo decides to improvise on some Baroque-Folkie sounds, emerging a very strong late 60s Grateful Dead feel! The soundscape changes once more with “1919”, the night falls, the music becomes darker and more melancholic, and there’s a tremendous acoustic/electric guitar rhythm, a short ‘drummy’ jazzy break, while the track continues to ‘flow’ or maybe ‘fly’ driving the listener into that ‘cursed’ Laurel Canyon scene (well, not exactly a scene, but…), resulting an improvisational country-folkish jam… Side ‘B’ occupies just one track, the self-titled “Distances” which is divided into two parts, the first part has an acoustic start that acts like a guitar tuning or maybe a warm-up thing, it seems that the guitars and the percussion are trying to find a common place to meet and finally when they meet they drive the track into a glorious improvisational late 60s West Coast jam, a folkie & Rockie one… Part two of “Distances” has a more laid-back rhythm, still acoustic with a country-folkish sound, a much more ‘grounded’ track… In conclusion, “Distances” is an inventive, essential, earthy, journey that somehow magically manages to annihilate any… distance! Superb! TimeLord Michalis