Album Reviews

Southern "New Age" is a new musical sub-genre for me, but if this is a typical example of it, y'all can be sure I'm on board. Luke Schneider coaxes from the 1967 emmons push-pull pedal steel guitar (named for the pedal steel guitar great, the late Buddy Emmons) cosmic otherworldly, uplifting heavenly sounds that instantly engage the head and message the heart.

The pedal steel guitar has always had a "spacey", sound, in great part due to Emmons' "split-pedal" invention that can raise or lower the pitch of any given string and return it to its original pitch. Who doesn't respond positively to the pedal steel's oozy, harmonically rich sound that seems to shimmer and move without ever making ground contact?

But what Schneider does here takes the instrument beyond floating, hurling it into outer space starting in subterranean territory from where it expands molten-like as giant tentacles of sound that reach beyond outer space to the infinite. Even atheists will respond, even if to the point of cosmic unconsciousness.

This is an abstract sonic spectacular that will wake up the ghosts lurking within your stereo system and send them (and you) floating across an enormous, harmonically enriched cinematic soundstage populated by layers of swirls, zooms, shooting stars and a comet or two. Nicely pressed at Third Man Pressing so the music "pops" flourescent paint on a black velvet canvas.

Lower the stylus and off you'll go! Follow with Harmony Rockets' Lachesis/Clotho/Atropos and you may never come back!