Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice, XIAO (4 x 4 review)

Artist: Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice
Title: XIAO
Label: Troubleman Unlimited (2005)
Genre: Experimental Folk
Rotation: Medium-Heavy

New York’s transient acoustic experimental conglomerate (here comprised of no fewer than eleven players) Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice here bring us a low, slow, haunted minimalist clatter of a record spattered with a host of instruments, including flute, piano, accordion, various percussion, various guitars, bells, cello, and violin. The chiming string-by-string currents that crawl across each track, along with occasional wooden flute counterpoints, lend the album as a whole a vaguely Asian aura. Each song has a spoken story underlying the acoustic noise, but the vocal levels and the echo effects make it difficult to follow what, if anything, is going on--you get perhaps a phrase at a time that you can hold onto . . . or let go. “Caribou Christ in the Great Void” (2) and “Return of the Nose” (6) have some psychedelic electric guitar pickin’, dronin’, and female croonin’.

I’m reasonably sure that this band does an awful lot of colorful drugs. The rather amazing liner notes are by Thurston Moore, for all you cred-hungry types. Xiao was originally released in 2003 only on vinyl, and WW&TVV has otherwise only appeared on cassettes and homemade CD-Rs, so with this re-release, Troubleman Unlimited is making a really interesting musical group available to a much larger audience.

All Clean. Recommended Tracks: 6, 1, 5, 4, 2