Amen Dunes (Damon McMahon), has sculpted a near-perfect album of outsider psych that is both hermetic and open, private and welcoming. The underground certainly has it's share of outsider saints and it's often the persona more than the music that resonates. Sometimes the music and the person come together perfectly, as in the case of Skip Spence's Oar. Amen Dunes draws on the private hauntings of the mind, but instead of making his psych-cosis (if I might coin such an awkward phrase) something to watch from afar, McMahon doesn't want to live in the isolation that was required to craft the record. It's like watching someone return from the underworld with some stories to tell, of the trouble of gods and men. Influences here range from Barrett, particularly in the guitar work on "Diane" to a wonderful channeling of Roy Harper on "Murder Dull Mind." A little bit of noise reminds you we are not completely free and clear of psychic disturbances, but for the most part, it's a quiet, extremely lysergic meditation that expands both the mind and the heart.
Listen to "
Murder Dull Mind"
--Buy it here--
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