Crow Tongue — Ghost:Eye:Seeker

tiMOTHy is the artist behind Crow Tongue, a solo project which takes a slightly different path from acid-folk/psych ensemble Stone Breath, with whom he takes part. Crow Tongue does include some acidic touches to be sure, and some folky elements as well, but it follows a dronier, doomy path. Ghost:Eye:Seeker is one strange album, and I mean that in the positive sense of the word. The first couple of listens may leave you scratching your head though. It's hard to say whether tiMOTHy is totally serious or whether there's a deadpan, dour sense of humor beneath it all. You could compare some of this music to the droney side of the Current 93 catalog, especially since the subject matter is said to be linked to Christianity. You'd have to be either psychic or observant on some level beyond ordinary to be able to pick up on the religious aspect, as the lyrics are obscure, to say the least.

The music is split into three parts, the first being a series of tracks with Ghost Eye Gaze in the title. This section of ritualistic psychedelic weirdness culminates in the ten minute-long Ghose Eye Gaze: Cloud Eye Sight, a Middle Eastern influenced raga with distorted feedback phaser effects. The take it or leave it aspect of this album is undoubtedly tiMOTHy's vocals, which are delivered with a solemnity and dead serious tone normally reserved for rituals which take place over the cover of night. I happen to think that, within this context, the vox sound great.

The "Seeker" section of the album is again a different proposition. It's less droney, but what it is, you would be hard pressed to classify. It starts off with the minimal Seeker:Seeker Chant, another strange vocal track, and one of the best on the album. It includes a quiet, psychedelic guitar riff repeated over and over, with strange, subtle background effects, and some nice tabla courtesy of A.E. Hoskin. The second part of the "Seeker" section is the obtuse and noisy Seeker:Dream Asleep, Pray Awake. It changes from the distorted and blurred beginning to a vocal incantation, and finally to near silence towards the end of its duration.

The last track, Candle, Corpse and Bell is kind of like a coda which reuses the music from Seeker:Seeker Chant with different lyrics. The imagery presents the most obvious reference to Christian themes, yet it's certainly not preachy. The whole affair seems to point to the idea that man's days on Earth are numbered. But though the concept is doom, it is presented in such a fresh, original, and frankly, bizarre way, it's not only hard to turn away, it's downright entertaining. You will not hear another album like this by anybody else, and that's saying something.