“Temporalis” and “epiphysis” are both terms related to human anatomy (specifically bones, joints, and muscle), which is at once a little surprising, and then later completely understandable for Paw Paw’s latest work, which is this deeply chill double tape for Fire Talk. The ex-Woodsman-man Eston Lathrop’s music and its inherent psychedelia might seem to stare straight out into the cosmic abyss at first, or rather, it might already be up there looking back down on pitiful ground-dwellers below. But instead, as Paw Paw, Lathrop engages music at a primal, elemental level, keeping everything focused inward to tap directly into the body vis-à-vis an extremely relaxed brain. The rhythmic core to each piece is integral to the feel and effect of the music, but it’s less about the syncopations that are present and more about the way Lathrop captures things like the texture of the skin across the drum’s frame, or the brittle scrape of beads in a gourd shaker. You get a sense for the stuff that is between the sounds you actually hear — spaces become organic tissues, ligaments holding together a living thing’s delicate, emotive and graceful body. And that body lopes along with slow tempos and trails of guitar harmony smearing their cool colors softly into one another. Light melodies circle ‘round the campfire while the mix takes a nice yawning stretch in a bath of reverb. Yep, a real spa-fest, body massage to the max.
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