Even the most fearless exponents of weird prog rarely reach such heady realms of unfettered sonic exploration as Oregon space foragers Eternal Tapestry.
After getting together in the 1990s through a mutual love of Krautrock legends NEU!, Nick Bindeman and Dewey Mahood started getting serious around 2006. They released a string of albums before signing to Chicago’s Thrill Jockey imprint in 2010. After solidifying as a quintet, they unleashed stellar albums such as 2012’s World Out Of Time and last year’s limited vinyl album Guru Overload (in aid of the Bornean orangutan). For their latest outing and most expansive project yet, the band shut themselves away in a remote cabin in Zigzag, Oregon, recording sprawling space-jams on an uncovered stash of Phish live bootleg cassettes. Influenced by the solitude and forest around them, they played for hours, then edited the results together into a psychedelic masterpiece. Spectral motorik, incandescent Doorsy mantras, Quicksilver Messenger Service jams or early Floyd may spring to mind, but ultimately, this is something much more uniquely personal, raising the bar for 21st-century aural anarchy.