Burkett, Joshua

On his new album "If You Can't Wander The Waffle, Wonder In Drizzle," Joshua Burkett takes hushed conversations and quietens them further. Listening to it is like reading under a blanket by candlelight. Yet an eerie buzz and hum cloaks the album, a lonesome spirit that's never comfortable or comforting. Burkett is a pioneer of free folk alongside Tower Recordings, Dredd Foole, and Sunburned Hand Of The Man. This "New Weird America" haze from from the early millennium took its cues from the Lorca-era of Tim Buckley, Incredible String Band's playful-yet-uncanny acoustics, the guitar deconstruction of Sonic Youth and John Fahey, and other unclassifiable outsider musics. Free folk is still at the heart of Burkett's music (and he has been at it for more then twenty years) but "If You Can't Wander The Waffle" is stranger than he's ever been. The more you listen, the further away it bobs from you, jealously guarding it's secrets. 
Joshua Burkett's storytelling is rich, unique, oblique. It is psychedelic without all the technicolor trappings that word implies. It's myth, distortion, and mysticism. Originally released in impossibly small quantities as a CDR, the album has been reworked and mastered, and is now a limited edition LP in a first edition of 300 copies, all with numbered/hand-painted/ collaged covers.