This
Ball of Wax #48 compilation release party features a rare
appearance by the Arcata, California/Portland group Die Geister
Beschworen, led by Oryan Peterson-Jones. Local scene vets may remember
him from his mid-’00s psych- and post-rock bands Datura Blues and Beast,
Please Be Still (they are still active, but now mostly based in
Portland). Enough history; let’s discuss DGB’s engrossing music. On
their well-stocked Bandcamp, you can find exceptional works like 2015’s
Music Feeds Stars, a suite of outward-bound folk-rock that harks back to those early-’00s Weird America (™
The Wire
magazine) days. Alternately dense and diaphanous, these songs seed
pastoral tropes with strange aural flora and fauna. This year’s “The
Psychologically Ultimate Seashore”—on a split release with Espers’
Helena Espvall—is a disorienting studio dream marked by children singing
“Happy Birthday” amid a menacing, industrial-folk panorama.
DAVE SEGAL, The Stranger
"Despite their name,
Die Geister Beschwören
appears to hail from greater Cascadia, from parts of Oregon and
Northern California. And despite adopting a spectral name in German,
their contribution to
Ball of Wax 48 is in Spanish. “Cerro de
la Muerte,” translating to “Hill of the Dead,” is a brief, feverish,
Lynchian dream of a Mississippi blues song that serves as more interlude
than fully-formed song. It’s evocative and atmospheric, like if
“Dueling Banjos” from
Deliverance was somehow dropped into
El Topo. See if Die Geister Beschwören can recreate their dusty magick live
on June 3rd at the Ball of Wax 48 Release show at Conor Byrne..."
ballofwax.org
