More conjuring masses of purple blackness! I am stoked! This one hits some real ecstatic peaks, pushing the air between their throats and yours into a tight ball and swallowing?I was talking to friends about this band the other day, and we concluded that The Skaters actually inhabit their own country. Their music is so informed by ethnic traditions and the feeling of different universes co-existing inside a single record that they produce music that contains a full, rich history of the stars.

The first track, and the longest, taking up about a fifth of the album total, is a huge transformation from drum patterns to strangulated gasping murky breath?keyboards, static beats and the ever-present cyclical vocal moans sway in a giddy pattern, tumbling over and over each other as I imagine James Ferraro and Spencer Clark writhing in their basement and wringing their hands and heads and feet as the sounds are shaken out of them by mountain gods and ghosts. This is some of the densest Skaters I?ve heard, yet out of the gloriously addictive shadow these high-pitched cries still emanate, still entice you inside.

The third track exhibits a whole bunch of ecstatic vocal loops, and the fact that the process of these moans being sung, looped, worked over and manipulated is part of the track itself is even more of a testimony to these dudes? improvisational prowess and ability to tap into any direction they want, allowing themselves to be transported by the spirits of the music they?ve made. This is almost the ghosts of music?echoes of ancient guardians of the muse throwing coins down the empty iron well?Sounds like they were just jamming for about a week STRAIGHT and every now and then a friend came down to put the tape recorder on and feed them. The high-white cries grounded in the sodden earth of rumbling tape-bass and everything in-between contains inflections and movements only they can hear, and they?re keeping it close. Surges and purges. Awesome. 8/10 -- Evan Rhodes (27 June, 2006)