Barn Owl 'Raft of Serpents' cd-r (Root Strata, 2008), Elm 'Bxogonas' cd-r (Digitalis, 2008), Elm 'Woven into Light' cd-r (Blackest Rainbow, 2008)

Thought I would post some of these as pretty much anything Barn Owl related is flying off of record store shelves at an alarming rate. These three cd-rs are pretty limited, so if you missed out here is your chance to at least hear the stuff. I also got a chance to catch Barn Owl live at Hoko's when they came up here from the San Fran Bay area. Don't miss out if they're playing anywhere remotely near your town, trust me, seeing them live is a very physical experience.

Barn Owl 'Raft of Serpents' cd-r
(Root Strata)

Personally, the best thing about this cd-r is the exquisite packaging. Honestly, I think this is the most beautifully assembled cd-r I've ever seen: metallic gold ink printed on a thick tri-fold black card stock sleeve, letter pressed specs and a pro-printed cd-r wrapped in Mylar paper. Wow. As far as the music goes, this album is waaay too short, 6 songs and the whole thing clocks in at just under 18 minutes. When dabbling in drugged-out folk drone fuzz you'd better let the tracks expand and unravel over time, nothing worse than a premature fizzle of a track. Great moments though... you be the judge.

Elm 'Bxogonas' cd-r
(Digitalis)

Elm 'Woven into Light' cd-r
(Blackest Rainbow)

Elm is the solo project of Jon's (1/2 Barn Owl) and it is under this guise that he is really able to shine. All the doom-y fuzzed folk psych crawl that is the signature of the Barn Owl sound is here, but with what seems to be a more focused blending of musical parts resulting in massive walls of hypnotic drone. These tracks are like comets, they start off as a solitary ball of slow burning psych folk but eventually the weight of the drone submerges the elements and they're left to disintegrate into a thousand kilometer tail of drifting particles and absolute stillness. These are both really good but of course limited, 250 of 'Woven into Light' and 90(!) of 'Bxogonas'. Oh, and the other member of Barn Owl, Evan Caminiti, has another project called Higuma with a woman named Lisa McGee. Might also want to check that out.

Two places you might still find these releases,
Twee Death
Aquarius

Raft of Serpents
Bxogonas

Woven into Light