Artist: Birch Book
Title: Volume I
Label: Lune Music
Format: CD
Catalog: CAT#
Price: 13.00 USD
Psychedelic Folk Pilgrim JON MICHAEL B'EIRTH(IN GOWAN RING, MARY THROWING STONES, PSICKADILIK PSYRKUZ) re-collects a dozen years against the grain, hinging on the fringes of darkness and day, hand-bound in the Outsider's dreamscape of BIRCH BOOK.
B'EIRTH spent the mid 90's recording for the dark-starred WORLD SERPENT imprint (along with COIL, CURRENT 93, ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS, etc) with the soporific and supernatural IN GOWAN RING. Autoscopic affects and transfluent identity loss have been reported from In Gowan Ring induced swoons produced WITHOUT the use of chemicals.
BIRCH BOOK marks an evolution in sound away from the overtly psychedelic towards a simpler, highly effective, direct song based approach, reflecting the distillations of a perennial rambler, reckoning a road less traveled. On this album
we hear a more personal sound, approaching LEONARD COHEN in it's abstracted travelogues on songs like 'Train To Rome' and in the stark directness of the songs. The searching, probing melody of 'Leaf Patches on Sidewalks' is an unresolved circular figure, drawing out the seeming unclosed memories being explored. This feeling of searching carries on into the DONOVAN-styled 'Sleepless Search' with the ominous low tones of the piano and ends with 'Windows' which moves us back to a traditional folk sound with lute, layers of acoustic guitar, cello and a melody that sounds hundreds of years old. This manages to bring together the exploration of the earlier work of IN GOWAN RING in a more minimalistic way that points to the future for the artist.
It is appropriate that the best songs of B'EIRTH should be given the simplest arrangements in which to shine. It allows the exquisite quality of his songwriting to be appreciated fully not hidden by layers of instrumentation. This album is not what many expect, it is not overly experimental, not droning or psychedelic but it simultaneously brings the older mystical folk into the current and points a new individualistic way forward for the artist. It's a brave move and an album that is cohesive, beautiful and often highly moving.
B'EIRTH has been an influence to many of the new crop of post-millennial folkers, touring with FAUN FABLES, NICK CASTRO, STONE BREATH(with whom he shared a stage with at the 2002 TERRASTOCK FESTIVAL), DREKKA & THE IDITAROD; sharing stages with SHARON KRAUSS, PG SIX, FEATHERS, and PANTALEIMON among other avant-folk contemporaries.
B'eirth: guitar, cittern, piano, recorder, xylophone, sundry percussion, jew's harp, folk harp & Mouth harp (harmonica).
Seth Eames (Telecaster electric); Annabel Lee (viola); Moss & Victoria (vocal chorus)
Track List:
- Birch Bark [1:53]
- How The Hours... [4:28]
- Five Hundred Keys [6:12]
- Easy to Live [4:47]
- Coffee Morning [4:42]
- Eglantine [2:49]
- Train to Rome [4:12]
- Leaf Patches on Sidewalks [4:15]
- Sleepless Search [3:47]
- Warm Wind and Rain [5:10]
- Windows [2:27]
- Birch Bark [1:57]