Sky Burials – CD-R

Cat #: SB 01 — Year: 2009 — Format: CD-R

Dense yet strangely soaring drone-ish project self-released by two guys going by the name of Sky Burials. At first I thought this was one of a seemingly never-ending line of navel-gazing drone records that have cropped up over the last few years, but the longer in I listened to it the more I discovered other things going on. For one, unlike a lot of cookie-cutter drone records, things actually seem to be happening here. Sometimes there’s a pulse that will remind me of Gas, or there will be some really deep, subharmonic patterns that bring to mind Rhythm & Sound, but filtered trough a very American sensibility that isn’t too timid to have the gall to lay a fractured guitar solo over the drone. I’m not trying to be nationalistic here or anything, but there really is this palpable rugged individualism at play that I don’t really hear on, say, Type Records stuff, which I really love as well, but which strikes me as being very European. There seem to be many multiple layers to this music, to where the sounds almost start to feel brittle and fragile, yet still lived in and warm. A very engrossing listen, and far and away one of the better self-released albums I’ve heard in a long while. [Michael Klausman, 2009]

  • Elegant DIY packaging with hand-stenciled black on black CD-R.
  • Hand-assembled, black “railroad board” jackets.
  • Very limited, made to order by Celestino himself.