A few copies of the Dark Sunny Land LP can still be had directly from One Hand but we’re getting low …
Otherwise, in the US, spend your money at the top notch distributors Fusetron or Little Big Chief, at Aquarius in San Fran, and Weirdo in Cambridge, MA. If you’re in the UK, or elsewhere in Europe, please buy from Volcanic Tongue.
One Hand is excited to release the forthcoming Fadensonnen LP sometime in Spring 2014. It promises to bulldoze anything in its path.
Mr Stigliano of Black To Comm raves:
… here’s the new release from Steven Painter a.k.a. Dark Sunny Land which, as you’d expect, is every bit as powerful as those other Dark Sunny Land and 12-Cent Donkey albums that have come out and have been ignored by people who I must admit are lesser beings than WE most definitely are! In case you were wondering, EMANATIONS FOR A RETURNING is, like Mr. Painter’s other recording endeavors, stark ambient music (perhaps even in a “rock” vein) that for some not-so-strange reason reminds me of the early recordings of the infamous German duo Cluster. You don’t exactly feel as if you are “floating on air” while listening to this (to use Greg Prevost’s description of the early Cluster sound), but you are taken through a rather enticing aural trip that on one hand relaxes and the other creates a strangely eerie if enveloping emotional atmosphere. Listen closely and you’ll even be able to discern the guitar and percussive lines amid the keyboard wash. Made for good late-evening listening last night and will most definitely be a nerve-calmer for weeks to come. Another hefty one …
The incomparable Volcanic Tongue says:
Got one of the micro private press monsters of the year here, Dark Sunny Land aka Steve Painter’s edition of only 150 hand-numbered psych/zone masterpiece, Emanations For A Returning: right from the classy weirdo/kraut sleeve this one comes over as a broadcast from deep within the zone that knows, with four extended, elegiac movements through a blurry/blissed out void of guitar, F/X, keyboards, theremin, singing bowls, recorder, assorted percussion and household objects that touches on classic Euro communal wipe-out ala Kalacakra, Yatha Sidhra, Popol Vuh et al but dredged through a modern loner/drone mindset. Indeed, a buncha heads have been raving about this album, guys like Chris Stigliano of Black To Comm, and it sits just right, with massive pools of slow-dazzling tone float cut with enough tactile spuzz that it feels played more than generated. Indeed, there are nods at points to the kind of slow string mesmerism of Taurpis Tula circa Sparrows and even a little of the classical grace of William Basinski but throw in your favourite deep space/no zone ritualists – say, Taj Mahal Travellers – and you’re close to the kind of euphoric floating in space depths of this massive side. Lose yourself in here, very limited supply obviously but a future beast. Very highly recommended.
The legendary Aquarius Records writes:
DARK SUNNY LAND “Emanations For A Returning” (One Hand) lp 21.00
… for a longtime, the mighty Julian Cope, via his amazing Head Heritage website, has been a sort of all seeing mystic, well versed in the arcane arts of drone / metal / psych, and weirdly attuned to EXACTLY what we love. So knowing that Cope had flipped his lid for this, the debut from Dark Sunny Land, we were prepared to dig mightily, and were not disappointed.
This Boston based one man outfit delivers a sort of dense psychedelic kraut-drone that balances somewhere right between the hushed guitarscapery of Stars Of The Lid, the abstract avant drift of Taj Mahal Travellers, and the soft noise blackened ambience of the best floorcore technicians. DSL weaves all of that into something heady and hypnotic, ritualistic and mesmeric, long tones blur into soft sheets of billowing feedback, synths and theremins drift and waver, melodies surface, and fragment before submerging beneath the softly undulating thrum, it’s the sort of ambient dronemusic that’s anything but tranquil and/or new agey, the sound here is dense and tense and rife with some sort of dark energy, while it may be hypnotic and mesmerizing, it’s also intense and aggressive, moody and atmospheric, but sinister and shot through with a sort of impending doom, whereas a lot of this sort of music drifts and floats ethereally, the sound of Emanations For A Returning sounds more like the soundtrack to a black hole, to collapsing universes, the score to the scorched expanses of dead planets, to a mysterious blackness that lurks in the shadows, it manages to sound like all that, while being breathtaking beautiful at the same time. Obviously so recommended!
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES, and housed in super striking silk screened sleeves!
One Hand Records 