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Iowa's Raccoo-Oo-Oon (Andy Spore on
vocals, electronics, percussion and saxophone.
Daren Ho
on vocals, guitar and electronics,
Ryan Garbes
on percussion and electronics,
and Shawn Reed
on vocals, guitar, electronics and percussion)
dabbled in
dense tribal jazz-infected psychedelic rock with electronically-altered vocals, fuzzed guitars and gnomish synthesizers that seemed to sum up the 1970s of
Hawkwind,
Gong and
Faust
via the
Animal Collective.
The mini-album Is Night People (2005) contains references to
Native American rituals, notably
in Fluff Up You Fur, an amateurish folk jam that evokes the meeting of a bunch of drunk shamans, and in
Call Out Your Friends, a pow-wow dance with choir of stoned hippies
that suddenly turns into an electric freak-out.
Stamped From The Stump is the archetype of their chamaleon-like
songs: a shaking blues riff a` la
Rolling Stones turns into a percussive feast
which then turns into a chaotic languid bacchanal.
In that sense the mock-solemn march and singalong Uh-Oh is unusually
cohesive.
The Canyons Long Winding Words is the longest and viscous
improvisation, seven minutes of random vocals, relentless drumming,
dissonant guitar and droning bass.
Their jazz credentials surface in the grand finale of
The Great Horn Of The Wilderness, with a saxophone unleashed over
a solid, rocking rhythm and a drilling guitar distortion.
Mythos Folkways Vol. 1 (Woodsist, 2006)
indulged in that
spastic fusion of new wave, garage-rock and jazzcore.
The whole series of
"Mythos Folkways" recordings documents free improvisations.
The mini-album The Cave Of Spirits Forever (2006) excelled in variety
if not in any specific style.
Cave Of Spirits unleashes the frantic choral voices of jovial dancing
hippies while every instrument is used as percussion, a bit like the
Holy Modal Rounders.
The anemic horn-crazy jazz fanfare Under The Deck is followed by the
gently jangling ambient vignette On The Roof.
The abstract soundpainting of Hundred Eyes and the stuttering pastoral
march of In The Woods photograph the band in its most elusive state.
Surprisingly, the nine-minute Forever is a cohesive instrumental,
basically a fantasia of anthemic garage-rock.
The most unstable piece is Stick Eaters, in which an overcharged pow-wow dance morphs into a soaring space-rock jam which in turn decays into stoned shamanic convulsions.
The messy, anarchic and unfocused vocal harmonies remained the distinctive feature of the band.
The rather aimless jams of Mythos Folkways Vol. III - Divination Night (Woodsist, 2007) diluted the band's concept whereas
Behold Secret Kingdom (Release The Bats, 2007) steer it towards a
more dissonant and harder-rocking approach.
Middle Eastern riff and spaced-out vocals duel over odd-tempo drumming
and guitar cacophony in Black Branches.
The guitars are not only cacophonous but also chaotic in
Mirror Blanket, with creative drums that, again, choose tempos that seem
unrelated to the song, and a petulant synthesizer to mock the vocals.
Visage Of The Fox begins like one of their charming pastiches of abstract
soundpainting, then it falls apart and finally it resurrects in the form of a
driving space-rock jam.
Antler Mask follows the opposite route, starting like a rocking shuffle
and ending like a free-form jam.
Both highlight the skills of the band in bridging structure and disorganization.
The drum-less quasi-instrumental Diamonds In The Dunes for sound effects and guitar solo
is the launching pad for the pounding nightmare of Invisible Sun, another
song that starts cohesive and ends in utter anarchy.
Fangs And Arrows is even more hysterical in attaining that chaotic
nirvana from a propulsive beginning, and, at the same time, it brings forth a
strong element of trance.
Tail At Prospect Peak achieves an even more unlikely synthesis of
musique concrete, industrial music,
Jimi Hendrix-ian jamming,
pow-wow drumming and minimalist repetition.
Mythos Folkways Vol. IV, Future Vision (2008) and
Mythos Folkways Vol. 5, Future Fusion (2008) were too self-indulgent.
After Raccoo-oo-oon disbanded,
Shawn Reed and Ryan Garbes formed Wet Hair (both on synths) that debuted with
Dream (Not Not Fun / Release The Bats, 2009).
The posthumous
Raccoo-Oo-Oon (Not Not Fun, 2008) packed everything that the project
had to say in one dynamite performance.
The glorious bacchanal that arises from the shaky foundations of 8:36
is prime Raccoo-Oo-Oon-ing science.
So is the senseless cacophony of 18:10.
16:13, on the other hand, well represents their skills at squeezing
several incoheret ideas in the same package.
Daren Ho wrote:
The other full length recordings (Is Night People, Cave of Spirits
> Forever, Behold Secret Kingdom, and S/T) are about 95% written and 5%
> improvised. The only except was the very last album "Raccoo-oo-oon". As the
> final album, we thought it was proper to mix the best of our written abilities
> and improvisations. These were treated with more importance to us because of the
> amount of work spent on them and we would plan our tours around these releases.
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