The second piece Shrinks The Day – basically a contiunuum form the first which illustrates the sonic arc they were on – gently pulls us back to Haight-Ashbury for some Indo-folk rock (KM have sitar player Ryu Kurosawa among their number) and something more swirling and Quicksilver-Grateful- Airplane.įor music improvised on the hoof after just one rehearsal by Walker and his four-piece band with the five-piece Kikagaku Moyo, this edit of the event is very much an album of “smoke 'em if you got 'em”. Kikagaku Moyo dial back from their more psych-rock approach into a lovely post- Grateful Dead exotica psych-folk style for the opening half of the first of these two 18 minute pieces, Pour Dampness Down in the Stream.įor the second half they all shift pace, tempo and attitude into something akin to a minimalist folk-prog motorik groove which devolves into brittle, popping rhythms with Indo-jazz guitar lines. Walker has an excellent new album Course in Fable (mentioned in emails by some after Elsewhere posted its mid-year report) but here we default to this tripped-out psych-folk album recorded live at a festival in Utrecht in 2018 but which has only recently been released. If we all get to live on that edge a bit more, we should be so lucky, but I’ll take the seven runs at it here and just put ‘em on repeat.Although the name of the Japanese psych-rock band upfront here may not be familiar (we were underwhelmed by their Masana Temples album), many will know of American singer-guitarist Ryley Walker whose reference points are in the experimental Anglo-folk of Bert Jansch, Tim Buckley and John Martyn (and of course Nick Drake) as well as Astral Weeks-era Van Morrison ( alluded to on his Primrose Green album cover, one of our Best of Elsewhere 2015 picks). There’s always a simmering feeling that the band will explore edges of the infinite, and they do for a time on “Pond Scum Ocean,” but Walker and his cohorts have perfected perching the slicked edged that runs between havoc and hooks. There’s a smooth veneer to the record that might harken back to Ryley’s Primrose Green, but this time around he lets the cracks show through and the improv soul saturate - breaking the stride on “Axis Bent” or downshifting styles on “Clad With Bunk.” Still, with his Genesis touchstone, he’s blending the wide-ranging touches on Course In Fable with enough pop to keep keep the record from getting bounced out of the indie bin and into the ‘Out’ row in the record shops. While I know that Walker has admittedly gone through a real Genesis phase during the recordings, they don’t feel as prominent to me as the shadow of prog-folk platters from Roy Harper, later period Tim Buckley, and the Suite years of Tim Hardin. The record that emerged from McEntire’s Northwest studio is touching, self-deprecating, and as complex as anything in Walker’s catalog.
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With an eye on the ambitions of his hometown’s post-rock past, he’s brought the legend, John McEntire (Tortoise, The Red Krayola) on for production and keys along with MacKay, Jewell, and bassist Andrew Scott Young. His first foray into a vocal record in three years finds him plucking a few of those collaborators back into the mix, while keeping a nice tie to his Chicago roots. He’s been plumbing the depths of the unspoken soul on records that nudge his playing into tangled visions, but have more or less left his voice out of matters. Bohannon, Kendra Amelie and Kikagaku Moyo. In the sunlight of sobriety, Walker has immersed himself in instrumental experimentation, racking up collaborations with Charles Rumback, Bill MacKay, Steve Gunn and Ryan Jewell, J.R.
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Ryley walker and kikagaku moyo full#
For his first record full studio LP on his own Husky Pants Records, Ryley Walker draws together parallels from his past while pushing the record further from his pastoral folk beginnings.