Description:
Elkhorn – The Red Valley (2024)
Review:
Debut standalone VHF LP by the Elkhorn duo of Drew Gardner and Jesse Sheppard, a tight set of six studio recordings in a variety of moods and featuring a lot of new sound textures. Elkhorn’s prolific stream of releases since 2016 has highlighted their mastery of sprawling long-form, acoustic-driven hypno-jams, with an emphasis on live performance (including on their collaboration with Pelt’s Mike Gangloff on the Shackamaxon Concert LP). The Red Valley is a more layered and composed-sounding set, with the duo overdubbing extensively on top of their own dual guitars. Leading off the LP, “Crystal Hummingbird” features one of their signature minor-modal vamps, with layers of fuzz bass, zither, and frame drum providing weight and psychedelic density. “Gray Salt Trail” continues the vibe, with thick fuzz vibraphone supplementing the cinematic palate, leading into the spare side-closer “Black Wind of Kayenta, where Sheppard plays electric 12-string and Gardner solos on acoustic guitar. Side two starts with “Road to Chaco Canyon,” a brooding duet that builds momentum with Gardner’s insistent frame drum cadence, dropping down into the quiet string pool of “Inside Spider Rock” (featuring Fern Knight’s Jesse Sparhawk on gloriously swirling lever harp) and the graceful finale “Jackrabbit Hops.”
***
…Their emphasis has been on sprawling long-form works and live performance, but on this latest set, they head into the studio to lay down a more layered and intricately composed set – and it’s their most absorbing to date. The backbone is still Sheppard and Gardner’s interlocking guitar parts, but they augment the sound with more instrumentation, adding vibraphone parts, frame drum knocks and glittering zither parts, plus lever harp and pedal steel from Marissa Nadler and Greg Weeks collaborator Jesse Sparhawk. And although the songs are shorter than usual, clocking in at 5-10 minutes rather than 20, they don’t sound truncated. Elkhorn are more economical with their sounds on this one, focusing on the momentum and the rich, cinematic instrumentation rather than hypnotizing us with duration. Fans of Grails’ early material – this one’s worth a closer look. — boomkat.com
Track List:
01 - Crystal Hummingbird
02 - Gray Salt Trail
03 - Black Wind of Kayenta
04 - Road to Chaco Canyon
05 - Inside Spider Rock
06 - Jackrabbit Hops
Media Report:
Genre: alternative folk
Origin: New York, New York, 
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)
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