Thuja

There are lots of improvisers who can play with sound, but few who know how to play with space. Thuja are one such spaced out, earthy group of naturalist improvisers who work at reaching out and connecting with their personal surroundings — the space around their sounds — so that they can interact with it, as though in conversation with the invisible vibes outside themselves. The stirring results they come up with are so full of life it truly has the effect of transporting a living, breathing musical landscape into your living room. As one of the most prominent and exemplary projects of the increasingly prolific Jewelled Antler Collective, Thuja are perhaps not the most concerned with capturing natural atmosphere in their music — indeed Blithe Sons and Franciscan Hobbies paint more vibrant and altruistically scenic portraits — but they could very well be the most ghostly and spiritually transcendent. Pine Cone Temples, culled from what the band consider to be the "most organic and beautiful ambience” they have conceived since their inception in 1999, is a double album that unfolds slowly and tensely, hardly ever creeping above a whisper, but packing a sonic punch that rivals the best of such legendary improvisers as Taj Mahal Travelers and such current ones as Double Leopards.