WELCOME TO THE MACHINE, ANY BIRDS, INDIAN SUMMER, THE DRIVE-IN, THE YEAR OF THE SNAKE, THE SIGNS OF LEO AND ALSO SCORPIO, WHITE NOISE, SYD BARRETT, POLAROIDS FOR PICTURE-TAKING, LINDA PERHACS, RUTHANN FRIEDMAN, JOHN MARTYN, BERT JANSCH, PINK FLOYD, KING CRIMSON, HELDON, THE GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS, SANDY DENNEY, THE PENTANGLE, VITAMINS AND MINERALS, TREES THE BAND AND ALSO REAL TREES, GENESIS, THE TWILIGHT ZONE,WE ARE WARRIORS ON THE EDGE OF TIME, STEVIE NICKS, DAMIN, EIH, A.L.K. AND BROTHER CLARK, THE MOOON, SLOWW JAMMS, PUCE MOMENT, THE NIGHTFLY, HARD BOILED WONDERLAND AND THE END OF THE WORLD, THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND, FLASH GORDON, HEADPHONES FOR THE EARS (THE EARS FOR HEARING), SPECIAL HATS FOR THINKING, TODD RUNDGREN, RED APPLES AND GREEN, A'SITTING ON A GATE, TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE, ANNE BRIGGS, SPACE RITUAL, THE HUNGER, TWINK THINK PINK, YES, AM GOLD, GRAND HOTELS, HALLOWE'EN, MEIC STEVENS, POPOL VUH, ICE HOTEL, BLACK LICORICE, POWER ANIMALS, TOMAS PENGOV, SOFT 70S, A WRINKLE IN TIME, JUNE TABOR, WHEN I HEAR THE GRASS GROWING, A GIFT FROM A FLOWER TO A GARDEN, PANTHERS JUMPING OUT OF PYRAMIDS, ZED VISIONS OF DUNE, THE SUN, MOTHER EARTH'S PLANTASIA AND ALSO REAL PLANTS(THE SECRET LIFE OF), ALPHA CENTAURI, PLANET B-6-12 AND OTHER PLANETS, BLADERUNNER, VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR, MUSIC FOR CAROUSELS, SUPPER'S READY, SHIRLEEE COLLINS, ALKALINE WATER FOR DRINKING, AIR FOR SWIMMING, KEV'N AYERS, ROY HARPER, ROKY ERICKSON, PAUL MCCARTNEY AND WINGS, THE LIGHTS, THE NITE, THE DREAMWORLD, EROS AND MAD MAX.
Sounds Like
WIRE MAGAZINE JUNE '09 REVIEW OF SILVER WINGS 7": Former member of Detroit revo-glam stompers, The Sirens, has been reborn as a droney electro-volk songstress. This single pairs acoustic guitar with effects very well, creating a trippy tribute to predecessors like Linda Perhacs and Ruthann Friedmann in the process. Extremely stylin'. -BYRON COLEY
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SILTBLOG REVIEW OF SILVER WINGS 7" JUNE 22 '09: Comin outta nowhere is this shimmering nova of blissful folk-psych from the leading voice of the Newe Detroite (?), Aran Ruth. I gotta admit, she cut me off at the knees, what I know about her (& this Newe scene) wouldn't fill the paper on a hit've blotter, but wow, I sure am willing to change all that right here 'n now! Ruth ably summons a voice & ethereal aura not unlike Linda Perhacs & while it may not play as vocally zonked as the tastier cuts on 'Parallelograms', the 3 tracks on this 7" ep are still pretty tranfixing stuff. Even a tune as seemingly 'straight up' as 'Cast Your Ship Upon Rain' is so coddlingly lysergic it feels like 4am no matter what time've day it's played. And the flip delivers the goods as well, this time dressed in wisps, hums & echoes of practically kosmische design. Comes in a lovingly handmade jacket, penned w/all the baffling geometric artful whatsis once attributed to the El Saturn style. What a treat.
Each night, as it passes from its waking state into the sleep-and-dream state, the brain spends some time in the alpha wave frequency. During this brief pit stop before sliding into actual sleep, the consciousness is momentarily bombarded by a rapid-fire barrage of vivid imagery and dream snippets. Boundaries of time and space collapse, and sprawling epics are sketched out in the span of a few breaths.
The black magic space folk of Aran Ruth seems to emanate from that same alpha wave ether; beamed to us, one reckons, by a phantom network of invisible AM radio towers. Her first debut appearance was Fright Night, an offering on Bellyache Records' Ghoul's Delight compilation for Hallowe'en 2007. Fantasy and storytelling have long been staples of acoustic music, and Ruth's songs certainly revolve on that axis.
But while Ruth's looking glass reality is cohesive, it's never predictable. She teleports wildly from one otherworldly setting to the next: Here, she hesitates on the steps of a dilapidated haunted mansion, there she observes the implosion of an alien sun, while overhead, in the show-stopping (and brilliantly-titled mini-epic) "Cast Your Ship Upon Rain" a lover departs and promptly dissolves into thin air while massive galleons glide by in the stratosphere. Ruth summons an impossible world into existence, then maps it out three minutes at a time.
Meanwhile, the world depicted in these songs feels distressingly unsafe. Everything is temporary in Ruth's songs; there's sunshine, but it casts tall shadows large enough to hide monsters. Voices murmur in dark cellars and there's safety in the clearing but black fuzz ogres lurk in the forest nearby. Beautiful-blue-sky melodies square off against Floydian-bad-trip storm clouds while Ruth moderates the conflict with the saucer-eyed detachment of a Martian May Queen or a lost, runaway daughter of the Manson Family.
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