The Far Sound

The latest album from Portland’s psych solo unit The Far Sound, finds Rick Pedrosa (Abronia, Federale, Jeffrey Silverstein, Rose City Band) stalking the edges of ambient country, Eastern textures, pastoral prog, and unsettling minimalism. To Heart, To Earth, continues The Far Sound’s plunge from the previous album; soundtrack psych filled with moments of quiet desperation and introspective angst. The pieces here evoke wide stretches of parched desert, unforgiving suns, and worse fates once it sets. Pedrosa has a way of painting far beyond the boundaries of the speakers, threading unspoken mythologies into mere minutes.

While pedal steel remains the central figure of these mythologies, Pedrosa frames it’s unyielding ache with, banjo and open-tuned 12-string guitar, augmented by violin, harmonica, and live drums from John Jeffrey (Rose City Band). The record could certainly find kindred fodder with some of ambient country’s leading lights — Nashville Ambient Ensemble, Aux Meadows, Suss — but like this year’s stunner from Shrunken Elvis, it’s much more than fits within that genre tag. Perhaps most akin to works from Stephen R. Smith and his rotting cast of Ulaan (Khol, Markhor, Passrine) this is film music searching for it’s lost link to celluloid. Fans of Pedrosa’s first will certainly find more to love here, but any travelers on the psych-scarred road will find something satisfying within To Heart, To Earth.

Support the artist. Buy it HERE.