Cathedral by Castanets

Cathedral is the debut release by a unique new voice of avant-country, San Diego's Castanets. Backed by the haunting, angelic voice of newcomer Bridgit DeCook, and recorded mostly in a secluded cabin in the northern California woodlands, Cathedral illuminates the dark architecture where faith and doubt clash in an often-ambiguous search for the divine.

We need songs for shelter, and Raymond Raposa can build a shelter from almost anything: the sun-bleached bones of a drum track and a couple spare organ chords; a carpet of creeping synth arpeggios, a scaffolding of multi-tracked harmonies, a few scraps of alto sax to prop up the whole structure. Decimation Blues, Raposa’s sixth release as Castanets, marks a decade of scavenger architecture.