Hey, folks! Thanks for joining me again in the quest for rare local music gems and forward thinking. I also want to thank all the rad people that added their voice in response to my post last week concerning my experiences at 242 Main. Check out this amazing clip of Jessica Amelia, of the band Spies in America, saying it better than I did onstage at 242 Main's final show last Saturday.


Keep the conversation going!

After last week's uproar, I'm going to take it easy this week with some thoughts about a fairly recent tape release from Burlington's Erasurehead, Yauhtli. Erasurehead is A. Cooper Reid, a multi-instrumentalist and recording artist. Yauhtli is Reid's second album, available through the Seattle-based label, Plume Records.

Yauhtli takes its name from an Aztec incense made of tagetes lucida, a golden yellow marigold indigenous to Mexico. The tape even contains a small packet of tagetes lucida seeds, with instructions for cultivation included. Yauhtli (the plant) was blown in the face of human sacrifices and used by the Huichol (native Mexicans) to induce psychotropic effects for shamanistic purpose.

The songs on Yauhtli are certainly psychotropic in auditory nature. Analog synths swirl around hypnotic drum sequences, bending with subtle tape manipulation techniques to create genuine, new age, psychedelic doo-wop. This is not Tame Impala's dorm-room toke-rock. This sounds more like John Maus meeting plant spirit archetypes in an ayahuasca tent. Yauhtli defies genre, yet his music is clearly unified by elements of pop.

The album communicates an experience of being pulled out of one's body and into the realm of imagination. From that disembodied vantage point, pop rhythms are elevated to a fourth dimension, where bass lines evoke the color blue, drums ripple like skipping stones and tape hiss turns into glittering molecules.

From the jazzy, labyrinthine bass of opening track "Potentials Unlimited" to the paranoid lo-fi pop of  "I'm Being Lied To," Yauhtli illustrates a portrait of a modern young American. Equipped with modern technology and ancient plant medicine, Reid awakens to the fabled spirit world and documents the experience. Encrypted in sound, the message from the spirit world finds its way to our ears and minds.

Bonus: I'm really excited to plant these tagetes lucida seeds. Listen and purchase Yauhtli below.