Lost In The Glare

Lost In The Glare is Barn Owl's latest release and their most cohesive record to date.  Engaging the listener even more so than previous offerings, it narrates a story from beginning to end in which our subconscious is free to assign the setting and symbols.  This will of course differ from person to person, but so too will it differ on each spin for the same listener, never quite setting you down where you would expect based on previous listens.  Each observation of the album is unique in some way - the mark of a truly great record.

Your particular journey may start in the sands of a sun-drenched desert gazing into a blue sky...or perhaps you find yourself waking in the forest as the first rays of morning sun cast through the spaces between bark, limb, and leaf.  It may take you to the top of a dune, gazing into the chill starry night, or down a wooded dirt path you've never traversed to a lost meadow, illuminated by moonlight.  Regardless, the celestial - sun, sky, stars, or moon - and terrestrial -sand, dirt, rock, or brush - are key.  Lost In the Glare provides an experience comprised of this duality of energy and its embodiment as our conscious physical form.

This album transcends the mysterious familiarity of its predecessor and provides its own paradox.  Lost In The Glare is more earthly and human than the ethereal, spacey, and mystic Shadowland - its closer to our natural experience.  As it spins it waivers back and forth between two worlds: the physical empirical micro world, and the metaphysical cosmic macro world.  Age old is the contemplation of the spirit, mind, or consciousness and just how it is connected to our corporeal flesh, blood, and bones: the Mind-body Dichotomy.  We can deliberately deny one or the other, but it never quite works...we feel that we denounce a part of ourselves or our experience.

We can assume a strictly physical world of cause and effect, actions and reactions...but what and when was the initial motion?  How did it happen?  What existed before it?  What is our consciousness?  Physics and science is our ever-changing theory to make sense of what we observe.  Very often a scientific breakthrough changes how we think of the world, leaving us in doubt of the "laws" we typically assume and take for granted.

We can also assume a strictly non-physical reality where everything we perceive is a creation of our mind alone...but then why do we experience life the way we do?  Why do all of our sensations and day-to-day passages of time feel so convincing and believable as an external physical world?  Are the other people we encounter in our lives real or just part of our mind's dream as well?  Why would our mind create a world in which we experience pain, disappointment, and so many unknowns?  If this experience originates in our mind why are we unaware that is case?

Lost In The Glare is a sonic expression that, perhaps subconsciously, reflects the human spiritual condition and the problematic duality of the very nature of our existence.  Its pieces wander between the warming, white energy of the celestial sky and the heavy, buzzing energy of the Earth.  The former enters through the scalp and crown, and runs down into the lungs, and pulls up to the heavens - a perfect love and presence represented by the synths, feedback, and airy electric guitars.  The latter vibrates and shimmies its way up through the feet and into the belly, and pulls down to the Earth's center - a massive hearth of rock bisecting two intense magnetic poles represented by the strummed and plucked acoustic strings, rhythmic percussion, and gritty electric tones.  We find ourselves in the middle - sometimes spiritual beings in a spiritual world, and other times physical beings in a physical world.  We try to understand our condition as a bridge connecting our two conceptual worlds, but cannot quite see how it all fits.

Without the personal spiritual revelation that reveals the oneness of these seemingly two different worlds we will forever search.  The problem really isn't a problem, but rather an illusion born of our perception of a duality...the problem is the very duality we think we are experiencing.  We are of the earth and of the cosmos - we are of substance and of space - we are of the same infinite fabric of all that is.  With this realization is also one of the holiness of flesh and the sacred observation of time.  Barn Owl's record reaches far and is an absolutely profound expression, and an astonishing work of art.  It's a set of signposts that point to this singularity, and even momentarily touch upon it by use of the gong and a very fuzzed-drenched guitar.  These two provide timbres that resonate with both earth and celestial energies thusly bringing our two worlds together...but it's just a glimpse.  Indeed, we may find ourselves at the end of our story searching in meditation while the answer lay without - lost in the glare.

The Darkest Night Since 1683 - The earth is lit only by the energy of stars.  A dark night is one in which the sun's light

nearly does not reflect at all from the surface of the Earth's moon, nor the light of other stars reach Earth through a thick veil 

of atmosphere, and perhaps some far off interference in space.  Sometimes we forget the grand scale of conditions that

provide the means for our life and ability to sense the world.