UNDERGROUND
BY JOHN MULVEY
MV & EE
★★★★
Green Ark
RAMBLE. DL/LP
The first couple of New Weird America… in dub!
Discogs currently suggests that Matt Valentine and Erika Elder have released 133 albums since 2001 – a likely conservative estimate, especially when you factor in formative projects like Tower Recordings and current side hustles like Wet Tuna. Honesty compels me to admit I can’t vouch for every single one of them, but Green Ark still feels like a great entry point into their mulchy Vermont backwoods zone. If Valentine and Elder’s underground rep stems from the turn-of-millennium freak folk scene, their ambit now is vastly wider: track one alone, Free Range, packs sitar recitation, strafing funk, Can telepathy, heady dub FX – Green Ark presumably paying homage to Lee Perry’s Black Ark – and much more into 19 intensely psychedelic minutes. The jams don’t relent, either, notably a spectacularly dislocated Dancin’ In The Streets that makes multiple Grateful Dead versions of the song sound almost straight.