Category:
Roots

Try if you like:
Barn Owl, Plankton Wat, Syd Barrett

Part of the amazing duo Barn Owl, Jon Porras has long been an inner astronaut, exploring the endless enduring power of the drone and psychedelic music. With this solo effort, Porras continues to find new colors and reach new heights of emotional engagement with sound. While "Black Mesa" as a title may make you think that this is a brooding, somber affair, it is most certainly not. The blackness here, I think, suggests depth.

The opener, "Into Midnight," leads off with a brittle, Barrett-esque drone, muffled acoustic and electric psych chords, occasionally jarred loose by abrasive electric runs, runs that eventually take over at the end. This is nine minutes that play like the intro to an eternal song. "Blue Crescent Vision" follows-abstract, southwest blues mixed with shimmering ambient touches.

With "Candlelight Mirage" and "Desert Flight," Porras offers echoing, dreamlike soundscapes, with a sustained raw Krautrock  drone.

There are two other tracks that can only be described as epic. "Into the Black Mesa" is celestial: droning guitars, tambourine, a ritual, Doors-y groove. "Beyond the Veil" is a six minute exploration of the various themes touched upon throughout the record, with a big nod to a Neil Young-like fixation on echo and reverb. As this record

progresses, it grows deeper and more expansive, until it hypnotizes. 

"Black Mesa" is brilliant and beautiful, full of raw power and meditative grace. Recorded in his home, Jon Porras started from a comfortable, intimate space, and branched out into the cosmos.