Eyes of Stone and Water: Perspectives on Cuba

Kind Words about Die Geister Beschwören!

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

Radio interview with Oryan Peterson-Jones

In an interview with Bob Doran for The Hum, Oryan Peterson-Jones discusses the history of Datura Blues, Die Geister Beschwören and his background as an ethnomusicologist...  This piece was produced for KMUD and aired on the Monday Morning Magazine show (05/29/2017)

Listen to the interview here!

With Eyes of Stone and Water: Perspectives on Cuba

Die Geister Beschwören VS Helena Espvall

Die Geister Beschwören and Helena Espvall met in 2015 on a small Danish island...

Both acts were scheduled to perform at the Fanø Free Folk Festival and their mutual appreciation for one another led to this collaboration. Tandem Tapes, a boutique label based out of Jakarta, Indonesia kindly offered to release the collective material as a split cassette.  Enjoy!

Migrations - Die Geister Beschwören

Namaste, Motherfucker - Beast, Please Be Still...