With "Songs of the Forest," Minneapolis' own Magic Castles introduces its engrossing, psychedelic assemblage of pop and experimental music. The band crafts its songs using an expansive approach that deftly oscillates between traditional song form and stretched-out, slowly unwinding abstract passages, managing both poles without a smudge of awkwardness. This is best exemplified by the nebulous duo of "Herbs of Life" and fuzz-addled "The Mole People," which together bound from vocal melodies to hypnotic lengths of slowly disintegrating, Spaceman 3 style space-rock meditation. Meanwhile, "Songs of the Forest," one of the tape's intergalactic highlights, is like an extended Brian Jonestown Massacre jam. Based around a simple, eternally repeated fuzz bass/keyboard riff, it constructs its layers of melody out of ethereal vocals and twangy background guitar – but its crowning moment is its winsomely spacey outro, which soars away in a blissful fog of swirling electric guitar and resplendent keys. "Katie Crow," meanwhile, is Kinksy British Invasion pop steeped in onion-like layers of haze and reverb. And then there's the sterling, trombone-laced chorus of somewhat too-long "Wander" and the brilliantly infectious, psychedelic blaze-out "Wayne-O." Ultimately, the vast bulk of this cassette is solid as anyone could desire, crossing-breeding a swell experimental spirit with refreshing hooks; only occasionally does the band harp too long on limited subject matter. Psych-heads would do well to snag one of these canary cassettes before all 100 copies radiate away from their creator. 7/10 -- Michael Tau (2 February, 2010)