Biography
Jakob Olausson is best known, if at all, for his sub-radar activities with Sweden’s Joshua Jugband 5 (check yr Slippytown back catalogue for more of that brand of boo) but this, his first solo LP, is a whole other bucket of flesh. Moonlight Farm is one of the most beautifully nocturnal and disconcertingly intimate broadcasts to make it out of the heart of the wood since Joshua’s Gold Cosmos. The overall atmosphere has the same kind of early electric feel as MV’s Maximum Arousal recordings, while Olausson’s evocatively double-tracked vocals move from a weighted down Skip Spence/Ben Chasny hybrid to a pro-denim and leather Leonard Cohen (or does that make him Jim Morrison?). His songs cross endless tranced dirges with drones that are so lunar they illuminate the entire horizon and huge distorto-smears of backing vox that sound like tiny fists crushing the light from stars. Some of the instrumentals here are so evocatively conceived – beautifully reconciling handmade DIY traditions and higher-minded bliss – that they sound positively Japanese, with a track like “The Wind Combs Her Hair” almost passing for early Ché-SHIZU. But it’s the songs you’ll keep coming back too, elegiac teleports to the fringes of a whole other evocatively conceived universe, where every breath births reverberant shadows and the map of yr desires reads like a mirror of the constellations. From one loner to another, this is everything that the phrase ‘private press’ conjures up and more. A modern classic. Comes with full-colour stuck on cover in the patented De Stijl manner. Limited to 800 copies and already sold out at source. Highest recommendation.
-David Keenan
Volcanic Tongue
On "Welcome Traveler", from Moonlight Farm :
This is a great song for cruising around in the woods. Jakob is the new thing, one of the only people making folk-inspired music right now that I not only can get into, but am totally jealous of. The first time I heard his record I was thinking, "Well, no reason for me to make music anymore. This kid hit it." I'm over it now, which is good, so I can just kick back and listen and be amazed. Thick and multi-tracked vocals layered on dissonant reverb-laced melodies. Damn.
-Sweet Cheeks Chasny
San Francisco USA
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