Kin by Fletcher Tucker

released August 15, 2025

– RECORDING NOTES –
Recorded between winter and summer 2024 at home, high on the western slope of the so-called Santa Lucia Mountains, on the unceded ancestral lands of the Esselen People in present-day Big Sur, California. Additional bass, drums and synthesis recordings made on Tongva land (Los Angeles, California) by Sean Smith. The Mellotron recordings were made at the Vintage Synthesizer Museum, also in so-called Los Angeles. Phil Elverum recorded his own drum parts at home on the Lummi lands of Swa'lax, also called Orcas Island, Washington. Mariam Wallentin recorded her vocal parts at home on the west coast of Sweden. And Chuck Johnson recorded his pedal steel in his studio in Ohlone territory (Oakland, California).

– PERFORMERS & INSTRUMENTS –
• Fletcher Tucker: Svensk säckpipa (Swedish bagpipes), melodeon (reeded pump organ), elder flute, bamboo flute, humla (Swedish mountain zither), leaves, oak branches, bells, bowls, chimes, gong, cymbals, cabasa rattle, hand-drum, bass drum, 12-string electric guitar, field recordings, treatments, voice. Words, melodies, and compositions. Recording and editing.
• Sean Smith: Electric bass guitar, Minimoog Model D synthesizer, Moog Matriarch synthesizer, drums.
• Spencer Owen: Drums, Mellotron.
• Chuck Johnson: Pedal steel. Mixing & mastering.
• Mariam Wallentin: Voice.
• Phil Elverum: Drums.

– PRESS –

“[With] hypnotic, multi-tracked spoken-word poetry delivered over a droning swell of ‘breathing’ instruments…. Big Sur artist Fletcher Tucker’s musical practice endeavors to connect with the land, the people, and the invisible ancestors around him” – The Fader

“For fans of the sum total of the energy of all living things.” – Outside Noise

“Kin takes cues from ambient, outsider folk, and new age, but as one coherent piece of music, it sounds like absolutely nothing else.” – Pop Matters (8/10)

“Our owls here enjoy Fletcher’s poetry” – Aaron Weaver of Wolves in the Throne Room

“This one feels like it’s come crawling out of a cave older than memory… ancient, psychedelic folk at its most spellbinding”  – Where the Music Meets

“Kin genuinely sounds like nothing else, an album full of ritualistic sonic patterns and precisely detailed shifts in tone and mood, an album rooted less in a single landscape than in the very idea of landscape, and all the ancientness and weirdness that implies.” – Klof Mag

“feral dirges and tangy earth mantras that reflect a more haunted and desperate sense of wilderness love” – Erik Davis

“Cooked up in the depths of the Big Sur wilderness, Kin feels like it was born from the earth itself. Droning nature meditations from a Californian mystic.” – Uncut Magazine (8/10)

“In an age when our default cultural settings place us ‘outside’ or ‘apart’ from nature, Tucker’s music reminds us that we are instead of a piece with it—natural expressions of its continual process, just like the tall trees, writhing dirt dwellers, and mountains themselves. This isn’t a record for passive listening, but one made for contemplation, meditation, and connection, songs made to extoll the kinship that permeates our existence...” – Aquarium Drunkard