Colorado-based trio Prairiewolf’s latest long-player for La Selva Beach-based label, Centripetal Force, blurs the boundary between live and studio recording. The band have taken tapes of 2 club performances, edited, layered, collaged them, and added overdubs to construct 6 new tracks. The music, in their own words, was then “mixed for the hallucinations.” If this is a trip, though, it’s micro, not macro, dosed. The 40 minute journey we experience is not mind-bending, but mellow. The music moving through serene, ambient atmospherics of microtonal fretwork frequencies and tender tortured electric arcs. An exploration / expedition that becomes increasingly delayed / dubbed as it goes. 

Bits flit, glitched, backwards. Beats clank and hiss like a broken down steam train, slow, steady, puffing and wheezing beneath Echoplex-ed country-fied licks and whammy bar-ed twang. Drifting, dream-like into synthetic strings, and percolating, percussive bossa nova programming, where precise picking sends out signals of projectile particles, clusters of quick, Manuel Gottsching-esque kosmische cascades.The playing blues-derived, but the blues left far behind.

A jump-cut takes us into almost Stereolab territory. Drum machines popping like a plugged-in tribute to Brazilian Tropicalia. Stefan Beck adding a rolling, fluid guitar solo. Filtered, and fuzzy at the edges. In places his tremolo-ing a tad Chris Isaaks / Twin Peaks-y. His lap steel shapes then riding the rattle of a rudimentary Rhythm Devil. The groove, when glimpsed, is a muted, mutated echo of Steve Hiett, or Michael Brook’s “Breakdown”.

Jeremy Erwin’s keys – organ and Mellotron – raise a Muscle Shoals / Southern gospel shimmer. Tyler Willcox’s bass grounds, and underpins everything. Together, these 3 amigos collectively spin cosmic Americana into bright, optimistic landscapes. Their creations conveying a sense of communion with, and a wow at, the wonder of nature. 

Prairiewolf’s Zone Poems can be ordered directly from Centripetal Force.

A big thank you to Matthew Specktor for the heads up.