Gifted Ruins by jphono1

The album began as a session with friend, musician and producer Matt Southern, at his studio for a new 7”. The collaborative process and results were so enjoyable for Harrison, that new material was developed and older, unrecorded instrumentals were retooled until a full-length record was formed.

Throughout this album, you are privy to a more organic and woody section of Harrison’s sound, where acoustic guitars and pianos dance across a bed of Mellotron-like keyboards, and banjo jigs can transform into grand musical saw soundscapes. Some tracks lean heavier into a rustically homemade singer-songwriter vein, while others bloom into full-on kaleidoscopic folk abstractions.

There’s a feverish devotional quality to many of the songs here, especially on the record’s many surreal instrumentals. Within the context of the album, some of these pieces possess the ambiance of mythical places in the mountains, and feel like the hallucinated spirits of Appalachia’s musical past. On one end of this spectrum, you have “Never Say Nothing,” which is a ghostly banjo ballad layered deep with howling tape loops, of which give Harrison’s cavernous, reverb-rich vocals a haunting analog atmosphere to ring out against.

Then on the other, you have the thumping ritualistic boogie of “Architects of Puzzles,” which sounds like a primal ancestor to a Blind Owl Wilson jam. Meanwhile, you have the sauntering dream folk raga of “You Don’t Know My Mind,” floating somewhere in between all of that like a lazy cloud hovering over a bright sunset.

Harrison took great advantage of the recording space he was in, and often chose to cut tracks live, allowing for the shape and other qualities of the room itself to help build the album’s sound. He was also particularly drawn to the studio’s in-house piano. Its distinctive, roughened honky-tonk like quality sets the tone for the record, with a solo piano motif threaded throughout the album.

This slightly creaky, lived-in aspect of the studio piano is echoed through all of the warmly recorded old-time string instruments, twinkling percussion and the record’s general tape-machine-in-a-toolshed ambiance.

The title track for instance, is a handmade prog ballad with warped waves of keyboard, ringing front parlour piano and soulful vocals that sounds like a lost private press gem from decades past. The wholesome fingerstyle guitar and lullaby banjo piece that is “Be the Moon,” meanwhile, glows with the intimacy and quiet of a string band’s private back porch jam session.

Like a thoughtful digestion of the folk world and our current climate at large through the third eye, this is a cathartically reflective and refractive album that feels both relatable and also captivating. A record you could both find solace in but to also escape into. It’s simultaneously comfortable and familiar, while also distorted and dreamlike.

A psychedelic rural neighborhood vision quest? Perhaps. A deep look inwards while keeping one’s ears open to the sounds around them, and how their own sound occupies and fades within the space? Indeed. For a welcoming yet wistfully gorgeous sonic journey with a home-recorded ethos, give this record a deep listen.

Rock, folk, drone, beats, electronic / sometimes solo and other times band / it's all covered in space dust

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