Planets Around The Sun - “We Owe”


LTFR 031: PLANETS AROUND THE SUN: WE O WE

FORMAT: CS [C-43]  //  EDITION: 75  //  RELEASED: 09.13.11  //  $5.00 + shipping

Ditching the domestic life for a stint of wild-abandon nomad drift, Planets Around the Sun departed from Maine in July to unplug and roll on down the line… WE O WE is their parting gift to the musical community that launched them into new orbits. Drawing from every era of the band’s career and pointing forward to new phases, it is a carefully crafted full-length mixtape of past trysts and future haunts. From the opening acousto-electro instrumental shimmer we move to a stretched-out heavy drone-folk version of the classic White Light side “Saraswati”, here completely re-figured with the addition of guest baritone guitar and cello from local duo South China. The Ian Paige solo excursion “Agnes” follows, with drones and steel strings lulling raga moves into your atmosphere; once the tablas and electric guitar hits, you’re halfway between Demolition Derby and Country Stash, truly a vapor to be savored and returned to often. The B-side hits with “We Owe”, a possession-ceremony standard with netherworld vocal chants circling around watery bass wobbles and wah’ed synth stabs. This flows into “May Day” and its extended doom-dub treatment “Version”, moving from Velvety melodic guitar-scorched psych to a half-tempo high-stepping astral-funk groove. But enough about the past. Planets point to their present/future with the closing track, a cracked lo-fi country-folk tune that serves as their on-the-road calling card. Sure to be a counterculture hit in 22nd-Century America. Hand-written (in white paint) cassettes held in a case with full-color pro-printed art, featuring a reproduction of a totally psychedelic needlepoint by Paige’s grandmother. Limited to 75.

ORDER HERE

LTFR 026: PLANETS AROUND THE SUN: TOWER

FORMAT: CS [C-32]  //  EDITION: 45  //  RELEASED: 01.25.11  //  SOLD OUT

With an out-of-print debut cassette [GOLD, Digitalis Ltd.] under their asteroid belt (and a double-lp waiting in the wings), Planets Around The Sun emerge from their psychic sabbatical to present the Tower cassette. Selected from nearly three years of documented experimentation, these four tracks play like radio transmissions from extended trips into a starless void, returning with the message that psychedelia isn’t all paisley and peppermint swirl. The curious psilocybin-navigating opener winds into the ritual doom-march of long-time live staple “Slow Horse”, here captured in all its blown-out live-fi glory. A tape-flip reveals even darker roads ahead: wailing ecstatics pulled subterranean, surfacing for air to the Obeahically-warped inner-grooves of a possessed Black Ark dubplate. The tape runs out on an organ-and-wah-pedal-stomping free-psych jam, ambiently recorded amongst the blips and whirs of the space vessel’s electronics running on zero-gravity autopilot. A mixtape for your next trip along innerspace highways, Tower is strictly limited to 45 hand-numbered home-dubbed black foil cassettes, packaged in full-color pro-printed heavy stock j-cards in Norelco case.