HERBCRAFT

Herbcraft was on the bill at the Taterbug + Tracey Trance show at King Street Mansion last week. I hadn't heard of the project before, and for good reason - it was literally his first show playing out Herbcraft songs live for people.

The project is a solo venture (with a friend's help live) for Matt from Cursillistas. He's from Portland (Maine) and traveled down for the show since he loves Western Mass so much ("Northampton/Amherst is definitely one of my favorite spots in the world that I've seen in my short life"). I caught him play with Cursillistas in the same living room within the past year and I enjoyed the set, but Herbcraft was something a bit different.

Smoldering guitars played back from his looping pedal as he shredded over them, slowly burrowing into stoned ears and Narragansett minds. And I do mean stoned - stoned enough to warrant Charles Taterbug himself to refer to Herbcraft as "such stoners," which is saying something seeing as he was showing off a tattoo on his arm that reads "so what I'm far out."


Currently, Matt only has a few Sa tapes dubbed (J-card directly above), but the Herbcraft Discovers The Bitter Water Of Agartha LP drops at the end of May on Hello Sunshine Records. The Sa tape (measly $3) contains a few tracks from that record plus outtakes on the b-side. Matt said the album was the product of a Cursillistas hiatus and his long-time love for "the kind of music that I spend most of my time listening to: the late-60s early-70s Bay Area freak bands, obscure private press psych-rock records, krautrock, classic rock, etc."

Check out the first download from the LP below, "Road to Agartha," stream another from his Soundcloud page and keep an eye and an ear out for the record dropping within the next couple months on Hello Sunshine.





Herbcraft - Road to Agartha