I am wildly fascinated by the melding of sounds, forms, & instruments across geographic & cultural borders. Mike Gangloff has paired the well known sounds of Appalachian folk with the less known (at least in American music) shruti box, an Indian drone instrument. The match, while unlikely, is sublime. What results is something at once familiar and hauntingly, beautifully unknown. This listening experience is not to be missed.
This supremely important collection serves up a small slice of the effervescent rock scene in Cambodia, before it was decimated by the Khmer Rouge. Let's not be led to think that rock and roll is the exclusive purview of white men; it's worth seeking out what everyone else has been up to.
I remember meeting Ben for the first time at a show in Boston and hitching a ride with him to Maine the next day. I remember sitting in a basement in Portland, eyes closed, as waves of sound took me further from corporeality than I'd ever been. This album rests on my wall as a watchful icon. The song is etched lovingly on the back of my skull:
You will be stronger tomorrow; you will be wiser tonight. You will find new love without warning; you will find new joy with every breath.
Freak folk in the best way, full of roiling emotions and tumultuous melodies that force you to fall in deep. These are modern-day shanties for the rambling West Philadelphian in all of us.
