Joshua Burkett - "Life Less Lost" (Feather One's Nest)
From Aural Innovations #14 (January 2001)
Josh Burkett's name first surfaced in the early 90s, as saxophonist for psychedelic-exploitation band Vermonster (a Wayne Rodgers/Twisted Village project, like Crystalized Movements, Magic Hour, B.O.R.B., and Major Stars), most noted for playing interminable destructo-noise versions of songs from ultra-obscure collector-bait sixties psych artists. Forget about that part; the next I heard from him was finding him first on the bill when the Rolling Psychedelic Circus tour reached western Massachusetts in the fall of 1999, where he played electric/acoustic guitar while sitting down, improvising to loops he set up on a digital delay pedal. This album, housed in a nifty handmade cardboard fold-over sleeve, carries those sparse sounds further back into the mysterious late night fog, with plinking guitars, banjos & other stringed things (sometimes leaving delay-induced lysergic trails), softly-sung barely-there vocals, occasional woodwinds, electronics & noises, organ, tapes, and tablas or other subdued percussion. Fragile and enticing late-night (bed-time and beyond) psychedelic folk music for those not-so-well-balanced people who can still appreciate beauty in its roughest forms.
Contact via snail mail at Feather One's Nest; c/o Mystery Train; 12 N Pleasant; Amherst, MA
Reviewed by Doug Pearson