![Pocahaunted – Island Diamonds (2008)](https://www.gritfx.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Pocahaunted-–-Island-Diamonds-2008-cover.jpeg)
Set your delays and reverb dials to eleven folks, and get ready for this implosion of sound that’ll have you falling into yourself, blurring the boundaries of inner and outer as your descent takes the scenic route to the cosmos within. These two Californian girls have been hard at work producing music and releasing it via various indie/DIY labels and gigs, and they’re deservedly starting to gain more recognition for their output. The music is kinda hard to neatly categorise, and I guess a few knee-jerk references would/could be Down-Tempo meets Trance meets Ambient meets Dub meets Noise meets the rhythms of Tribal Ethnic World Music. The music slowly swirls and ebbs and seeps, while the vocals are filtered and fucked-with in a lovely messy manner that renders them just long strange chants that continue to echo throughout the distant saga of each song. They’re reinventing the Wall-of-Sound with a beautifully balanced mix of crowded sound and stark silence. Kinda like the yin-yang effect of slowly pouring milk into unstirred coffee, the ingredients of guitar and percussion become unidentifiable in the whole, and it’s a tasty checkered blend. The first song “Ashes Is White” perfectly illustrates this thing I’m (failing at) describing; sounding like the memory of a backyard Corroboree, where this strange sound is the only souvenir of your mystic experience. And it just rolls on with “Ghetto Ballet” and the rest of the album. Simultaneously, the music makes me think of ‘being outside’, yet it makes me feel like I’m ‘travelling inside my own body’. The kinda thing I imagine would go down a treat at Burning Man, with the right kind of cocktail in your blood-stream inducing some serious religious experiences. Godahaunted.
~ DECOY SPOON
2009/01/29