Something Old Something New

Penner of the Penner Sisters It's the darkest month in what will likely be remembered as an extremely dark year, and most of us are cloistered away from our friends, music and culture. So in the spirit of finding some communal joy in our secluded cells, here are a couple of local new releases you can enjoy with even limited broadband access. Datura Blues recorded a long-form improvised jam together in August of 2019 called Silence for the Apple to commemorate its 20th anniversary as an outré folk rock collective. Then with the help of local DJ Pandemonium Jones, they stitched the whole thing together into a coherent concept album revolving around a fictitious radio presentation. Jones' script is mostly composed of various reviews which the group has garnered in its two decade run, with a bit of sassy ad hoc banter tossed in the mix. The music is, as always with this group, meandering and fun, an occasionally discordant batter of oozing psych test patterns with acoustic/electric flourishes. Think about a roomful of common-to-less-common instruments played in the cut-up spirit of a collective mind palace by a group of sympathetic practitioners. I like to imagine that scene in David Cronenberg's Scanners, where all of the benign characters with the movie's titular affliction sit around in a circle wearing turtlenecks and practicing ecstatic ESP on one another. Just add some flutes and mandolins to the rock track and let the process figure itself out. I don't want to write too much more for fear my words might show up in a future release that I have inadvertently influenced because of that brilliant trick the artists are playing on us all by demanding our active involvement with their process. Suffice it to say, I had a good time listening and if you want to check it out you can do so on Bandcamp.