Inca Ore
Inca Ore is the solo project of the musician Eva Saelens, who came up in the Portland, Oregon underground in the early 2000s before moving to Oakland, California. She performs alone at a keyboard, singing into a pedal-treated microphone, and her records mix sung and spoken poetry with keyboards and tape hiss. Saelens worked closely with Yellow Swans, travelling as a roadie on their first US tours and singing on their album Psychic Secession, and her first cassette and CD-Rs came out on their Jyrk label. She also appeared on records by Jackie-O Motherfucker and Gang Wizard.
Ring Mining
Ring Mining unites a psychedelic dream team comprising Brooklynites Heavy Winged and Portland's Inca Ore. On the first side its down to the epic fudge-filled grooves of Heavy Winged to dominate the horizon, blistering through their hallmark freeform avant-metal with an extra fathom or two of depth supplied by the wandering ambience of Inca Ore's toils. Flipping over, Ms. Ore takes to the mic - and it's as if Heavy Winged suddenly turn into a fully fledged rock combo with an actual lead singer. I…
Split
Limited vinyl pressing of this excellent split LP self-released by Grouper in this scarce second edition* The music on this split release arrives remastered after its initial release via C40 cassette a while back. Likeminded souls Eva Saelens (inca Ore) and Liz Harris (Grouper) are in brilliant form on these recordings, so it's great to hear them in a cleaned up format - though of course with these two, it's fairly difficult to tell where the muddy cassette hiss ends and the foggy, dusty …
Brute Nature versus Wild Magic
Inca Ore is the solo vehicle of someone who simply goes by the name Eva. "Brute Nature vs. Wild Magic" is her debut recording and is jaw-dropping. Eva hails from Northern California in the land of the cypress. These 22 minutes are pure bliss. Lying somewhere between Finnish princess Kuupuu and the snow queen herself, Fursaxa, Inca Ore's soft compositions are like an anvil hidden inside a pillow. On the surface, it seems like nothing is wrong and there's a semblance of order. But the deeper you d…
Inner Voices/Nerve Language
"Karl Bauer and Eva Saelens (Axolotl and Inca Ore respectively) are two like-minded Bay area psychers operating on two opposing levels. Axolotl marks the A-side with skyward streaking drones and ethereal loops tinged and focused, ringing with the joyous bliss of upward passage. An endless array of vocals, electronics, and violin looping and looping, building and growing: stasis. Inca Ore makes her craft from an Earth-bound level. Oneness with her surroundings, roots firmly planted. Eerie incanta…
Silver Sea Surfer School
More out-there song sculptures from Oakland resident Eva Saelens, this time with a little added clarity and decipherability: tracks like 'Shine On' really underline the strong compositional instincts lurking beneath the cassette recorder fizz. 'Always Have You' opens the set in stripped down, phantasmagorical, lo-fi lullaby fashion, but the album soon accumulates grit with moments like 'Ruff Ridin' and the distorted, spiralling keys on 'Adventure Of Light', beckoning you down all manner of confu…