Fursaxa

Listening to Fursaxa’s music is like strolling around at night in a dark forest under a full moon’s gaze and getting lost in crystallized spider webs spun by Rumpelstiltskin. Boiling down Hildegard von Bingen, Nabakov and Nico in heavenly spiked acid folk layered with organ drones, percussion and chanting. 300 copies.

The best way I can think of to describe Fursaxa's music would be, psychedlic acid-freak-folk and the project is led - and vocalised by - Tara Burke. Cheap casio keyboards, acoustic guitar, accordion and dulcimer are utilised - as well as Tara's haunting vocal, sometimes primal-scream-ish wails, sometimes pretty and Nico-ish, chanteuse-like; the overall effect is spooky and beguiling. The kind of music Liz Harris of Grouper fame is probably well into.

Tara is influenced by minimalism, Medieval and Renaissance music and the song titles kind of give this away; "Moon in Cancer" opens the record and elsewhere titles such as "Ancient Anodyne", "Standing Stone" - particularly ancient sounds on this track; "A Pomeranian Rite" and "Outside the Cloister Walls", which is a highlight featuring multi-tracked vocal at varying pitch; the effect is a little unsettling. "TKSI" is a particularly languid, solemnly droning example of freaky folkness. "Troglodytes" closes side A and is one of the many gorgeous, multi-tracked vocals which recur throughout the record.

Accordion crops up on "Triptych", primeval howls and organ on "Sardonyx", and more shivery Medieval sounds than you can shake a stick at across the remainder of the record. Interesting. But probably better not to listen to if you're alone and in the dark. (Norman Records)