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US Booking/General Inquiries: barnowlband@hotmail.com
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EU/UK booking - Nikita Lavrinenko // nikita@paperandironbooking.com
San Francisco-based drone duo Barn Owl follow in the footsteps of provocative avant-gardists Alice Coltrane and Keiji Haino, while building on the doom metal foundation planted by Black Sabbath. Guitarists Jon Porras and Evan Caminiti started playing music together soon after meeting in an American Indian science class at San Francisco State in 2005 and realizing they had similar backgrounds playing in metal bands and a shared interest in meditative, psychedelic music. The two made home recordings for the latter half of the 2000s while pursuing a number of side projects. Barn Owl's year of fruition proved to be 2010: as well as starting their own label, Electric Totem, the band released three albums: The Conjurer on Root Strata, Headlands on Important Records, and Ancestral Star on Thrill Jockey.
-Jason Lymangrover
"Prayers from the prairies: rumblings from the deeps of the American mesa…throws its arms open, in a slow-burning ritual, to the infinite, star-flecked space above the Californian wilderness." – Uncut
"Sounding almost literally hewn from "the elements", this is curious and compelling work, rich in texture and mystery and unafraid of taking its time." -The Line Of Best Fit
"Barn Owl have built themselves up from the confines of sludge, doom, ambient, and even shoegaze, to a place of singular vision and no boundaries. Their new album, Ancestral Star, doesn't fit into a convenient sub-header. It's just powerful music. In a year of powerful musical statements from fusion artists, the album stands strong amongst the best of those, and will be essential for the experimental and drone aficionados." -Groovemine
"Only in this type of music do you truly hear the range available to the electric guitar, through the enhancement of distortion, reverb, and so on. The guitar becomes a new kind of instrument, no longer the strumming backbone of a pop song…though metal is a clear predecessor, Barn Owl travels a completely different road."
-PopMatters
"I would like to clarify something: many people claim that Barn Owl, the duo of Evan Caminiti and Jon Porras, create soundtracks for Western Skies, the age-old 'scores for films that don't exist,'. I think it is more apt to say that Caminiti and Porras CREATE WORLDS, whole geological strata; flora and fauna; weather systems and patterns. There is no sense of human drama, no fleeting flitting narrative.
Clearly in the drone/raga-rock tradition, they are more indebted to the guitar flailings of John Fahey and the Tacoma camp, as well as other mystics of the wide-open spaces, than Dylan Carlson and the like. However, there is a smidgen of Black Sabbath dirge, alongside pulsing harmoniums and bowed guitars, chanting, hypnotic violin, temple bells and throbbing synthesizer. The best thing about The Owl is they seem to encompass the strengths of all manner of ritualistic, droning music: the tone, the attitude, the volume, the sheer physicality of sounds eeked out from fingers on wood and string."
-J's Heaven
"Barn Owl's droning soundscapes and dusky stomps may be influenced more by shoegaze and black metal than the traditional desert noir of, say, early Calexico instrumentals or Friends of Dean Martinez's moody Spaghetti Westerns, but they, too, capture the desert blend of bleakness and wonder.
-Blurt
"A beautifully constructed album which feels like musical nihilism on first listen but will drawn you into its inviting charms and hooks once you've given it a second chance. Magical."
-Soundblab
" They have obvious forbears in form of fellow drone artists such as Earth, but on Ancestral Star Barn Owl's dedication to establishing and maintaining the record's own sense of place is focused enough that none of their influences can really penetrate it."
-Drowned in Sound
"…masterfully executed pieces of art, in which elements of drone, raga and all things kosmische are woven into gorgeous, textured sonic tapestries. Ancestral Star is all bombast without the bluster; it's an album whose tones must have been sourced from the heavens"
-Exclaim!
".Hardened sun baked drones straight from rusty Californian deserts. Wide open dust caked steel, endlessly ringing through the black heart of daytime stars. Lonely, blissful, & dark, dreaming of a distant oasis with the weight of a dozen buffalo on your shoulders…They're master crafts of the new American raga desert psych thing."
-Anti Gravity Bunny
"Barn Owl's Evan Caminiti and Jon Porras are obviously steeped in the art of guitar drone"
– The Wire
Barn Owl - Light from the Mesa from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo. Film by Paul Clipson
Visit Electric Totem on Soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/electrictotem.
ELECTRIC TOTEM
ELECTRICTOTEMBLOG
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BARN OWL DISCOGRAPHY:
"s/t" cd-r, foxglove 158 2007, 100 copies
"Bridge to the Clouds" cd-r, self-released 2007, 100? copies, Not Not Fun cd-r 2008, 147 copies
"Smoke Loom Ceremony" live in LA, one sided cassette, Blackest Rainbow 2008, 80 copies
"From Our Mouths a Perpetual Light" LP, Not Not Fun 2008
"Raft of Serpents" cd-r, Root Strata 2008, 120 copies
Split LP with Tom Carter, Blackest Rainbow 2008
"From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light" CD+ special edition, Digitalis 2008
"The Conjurer" LP/CD, Root Strata 2009/2010
"Transfiguration" cd-r, Electric Totem 2009
"Ancestral Star" LP/CD, Thrill Jockey 2010
Forthcoming:
Barn Owl and the Infinite Strings Ensemble "The Headlands" LP, Important Records 2010
Related Discography:
Evan Caminiti "Buried Light" CS, 88 copies, Digitalis Ltd.
Higuma "Haze Valley" cd-r, 100 copies, Root Strata
Elm - "Bxogonoas" cd-r, 90 copies + second edition of 100, Digitalis Ltd.
Elm- "Woven Into Light" cd-r 250 copies, CS 25 copies
Hanging Thief "s/t" CS 120 copies.
Evan Caminiti "Digging the Void" cd-r Students of Decay, 100 copies
Evan Caminiti "Psychic Mud Shrine" CD, Digitalis
Elm "Nemcatacoa" CD, Digitalis
Higuma "Den Of The Spirits" LP, Digitalis Recordings ltd 250.
Evan Caminiti "West Winds" LP, Three Lobed Recordings 2010
Related forthcoming:
Higuma "Pacific Fog Dreams" LP, Root Strata 2010.
Jon Porras "Undercurrent" LP, Root Strata 2010
Garden Sound "Black Summit" LP, Digitalis 2010 (collab with Dewey and Jed of Eternal Tapestry)
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