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Across Tundras Release Complete Altered States Companion Remixes for Latest Album

Posted in Whathaveyou on November 11th, 2019 by JJ Koczan

I’ve been kind of expecting something like this, but it’s still kind of an overwhelming project. Since the release in June of Across Tundras‘ latest full-length, The Rugged Ranges of Curbs and Broken Minds (review here), founding guitarist/vocalist T.G. Olson has been going through and revisiting the album with track-by-track remixes, resulting in a series of digital EPs that have been trickled out one at a time over the past few months. He’s gone in order, one to the next through the entire album. They range from the “Hot Radio Mix” collection — which probably could’ve been released as the album proper — to more experimental styles like the “Ennio’s Mix” tracks, but the root of each is still the original itself. It’s in there somewhere. The only question is how hard one has to dig to find it.

Olson — self-releasing, as ever, through Bandcamp as a name-your-price download — has it organized in the same order as the tracklisting of the album, but as I’ve been going through, I’ve been listening to one version of the whole record at a time. I admit I’m not through the entire 28-track Complete Altered States at this point — only so many hours the day — but it’s a fascinating project however one might want to take it on. As Olson has done homemade CD box sets in the past, the chance to do a Complete Rugged Ranges collection seems to be self-evident.

Whether or not that comes to fruition, here’s the info off Bandcamp and the streams of both the remixes and the original for those feeling adventurous:

across tundras the rugged ranges complete altered states

Across Tundras – The Rugged Ranges of Curbs & Broken Minds ~ Complete Altered States

Altered States of The Rugged Ranges of Curbs & Broken Minds

released November 7, 2019

1. The Rugged Ranges of Curbs & Broken Minds (Ennio’s Mix) 03:35
2. The Rugged Ranges of Curbs & Broken Minds (Hot Radio Mix) 06:05
3. The Rugged Ranges of Curbs & Broken Minds (Stereo Cinemascope Instrumental Mix) 06:57
4. The Rugged Ranges of Curbs & Broken Minds (Campfire Mix) 05:52
5. Slow Down and Breathe (Ennio’s Mix) 02:29
6. Slow Down and Breathe (Hot Radio Mix) 04:18
7. Slow Down and Breathe (Stereo Cinemascope Instrumental Mix) 04:18
8. Slow Down and Breathe (Choral Mix) 06:22
9. Talkin’ Rust Cohle Existential Blues (Ennio’s Mix) 01:43
10. Talkin’ Rust Cohle Existential Blues (Hot Radio Mix) 04:22
11. Talkin’ Rust Cohle Existential Blues (Stereo Cinemascope Instrumental Mix) 05:41
12. Talkin’ Rust Cohle Existential Blues (Campfire Mix) 05:44
13. Boots of Snake Leather (Church Organ Mix) 04:44
14. Boots of Snake Leather (Hot Radio Mix) 04:14
15. Boots of Snake Leather (Stereo Cinemascope Instrumental Mix) 05:00
16. Boots of Snake Leather (Big Bass & Wide Slide Mix) 05:09
17. Whirlwind Reapin’ (Drone Out Mix) 03:00
18. Whirlwind Reapin’ (Hot Radio Mix) 05:17
19. Whirlwind Reapin’ (Stereo Cinemascope Instrumental Mix) 06:50
20. Whirlwind Reapin’ (Bass & Drumz Mix) 06:49
21. When We Were All One (Ennio’s Mix) 02:16
22. When We Were All One (Hot Radio Mix) 03:41
23. When We Were All One (Stereo Cinemascope Instrumental Mix 04:00
24. When We Were All One (Sky Jam Mix) 04:00
25. New War on the Range (Ennio’s Mix) 04:48
26. New War on the Range (Hot Radio Mix) 05:55
27. New War on the Range (Stereo Cinemascope Instrumental Mix) 07:39
28. New War on the Range (Thunder Jam Mix) 04:48

Tanner Olson ~ Ben Schriever ~ Caleb R.K. Williams ~ Abigail Lily O’hara ~ Noel Dorado

https://acrosstundras.bandcamp.com/

Across Tundras, The Rugged Ranges of Curbs and Broken Minds – Complete Altered States (2019)

Across Tundras, The Rugged Ranges of Curbs and Broken Minds (2019)

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Across Tundras, The Rugged Ranges of Curbs and Broken Minds: In the Ashes of Idealism

Posted in Reviews on June 18th, 2019 by JJ Koczan

across tundras the rugged ranges of curbs and broken minds

It has been six years since Across Tundras released their last full-length. That record, Electric Relics (review here), was a triumph of the band’s songwriting approach, blending elements from heavy rock and psychedelia with Americana and folk roots in a way that, even though they’d been at it for nearly a decade by then, still remained forward-thinking. It was also their first album to be released through their own imprint, Electric Relics Records, following 2011’s Sage (review here) coming out via Neurot and others released either by themselves and other labels. One could hardly say The Rugged Ranges of Curbs and Broken Minds follows a period of inactivity, given the fact that in the interim, the band has issued 2015’s Home Free EP (discussed here), a 2017 two-songer single, Blood for the Sun / Hearts for the Rain (discussed here), as well as various archival offerings, and founding guitarist/vocalist T.G. Olson has issued numerous solo full-lengths, singles and other releases, under his own name and several other incarnations, experimenting in folk, drone, assembled noise and so on, all being issued, like The Rugged Ranges of Curbs and Broken Minds, through Bandcamp with little to no prior announcement and as a name-your-price download and limited, usually hand-crafted, physical pressing.

That kind of promotional minimalism hasn’t done much for Across Tundras in terms of fanfare, but is has let Olson control and build his discography on his own terms, which is very much how the band operates throughout the new album, which, though again, they haven’t exactly been gone, has been nonetheless long awaited. To wit, before this stretch, the longest they’d gone between full-lengths was two years. And the crafting of these tracks would not seem to have been uncomplicated, recorded during moves between Nebraska and Nashville, Tennessee, with the final lineup of Olson, Ben Schriever, Caleb R.K. Williams, Abigail Lily O’Hara and Noel Dorado, but the fluidity that results serves as a reminder of what has always been a signature strength for Across Tundras in terms of creating space with their sound.

From their 2005 debut, Dark Songs of the Prairie onward, their mission has been in part to capture the spirit of a heavy Americana, and that remains true on The Rugged Ranges of Curbs and Broken Minds, but like the land itself, the shape that has taken in their sound has changed, and some of the ramble that found its way into Across Tundras‘ rolling grooves in years past has turned sullen, gazing less at shoes than out at an expanse of empty land, but gazing all the same. In darker moments like “Talkin’ Rust Cohle Existential Blues” or the wistful leadoff title-track, there’s a clear line to be drawn to some of Olson‘s recent solo work, which has blurred the lines between full-band-style soundcraft and guy-and-guitar folk, but one of The Rugged Ranges of Curbs and Broken Minds‘ most engaging aspects is the wash it creates and the deceptive depth of its mix, with pedal steel and drones resting far back behind the strumming electric guitar and voice, the drums subtle sometimes and more forward others, as when they lead the march of uptempo second cut “Slow Down and Breathe,” which boasts arguably the most memorable hook on the record, or in the later “Whirlwind Reapin’,” the midsection of which rises from a soundscape of distortion and heartsick melody to move into a wash of tone before closing with residual noise.

across tundras rock pile

Though it does not struggle to make an immediate impression, the album is best on repeat listens — a slow burner that lets the voice speaking at the beginning of the penultimate “When We Were All One” come through, and gives the soft-touch blues of centerpiece “Boots of Snake Leather” its proper room to breathe — and the more its genuine scope is revealed, the more those listens are earned. Whether it’s the tale-telling of “The Rugged Ranges of Curbs and Broken Minds” or the noisy, organ-laced finish of “New War on the Range,” which is also the longest track at 7:42, the band hold firm to an experimentalist purpose and care of arrangement that goes beyond the surface of Olson‘s songwriting, and the vision of the prairie they’re using as their backdrop is that much richer for it.

As a fan and someone who — if I didn’t get the point across — was waiting for a new Across Tundras LP to come out, The Rugged Ranges of Curbs and Broken Minds is all the more satisfying because it doesn’t ignore what Olson has done over the last six years. It ties to his solo work in a way that isn’t trying to be something that it’s not. It’s still rooted in that heavy Americana ideal, but more patient in its songwriting than the band have ever been, and more willing to, like the song says and eventually does, “Slow Down and Breathe” almost as an act of escapism from the modern chaos hinted at in the album’s title. In its blend of naturalist wash and country folk, it is both lush and organic, with Olson‘s mostly laid back, breathy post-Dylan vocal style providing the human core around which the other elements swirl and churn and do whatever else it is they might do.

All told, The Rugged Ranges of Curbs and Broken Minds is seven songs/43 minutes of material that pushes the band into places where they’ve never been, and while it does so, it seems to find itself closer to the heart of what they’ve been going for all along, that kind of resonance shared between emotionality and place. In the howling leads of “Talkin’ Rust Cohle Existential Blues” and the way “When We Were All One” seems to bask in imaginary sentiment — what could be more American? — Across Tundras are able to manifest their ideas in a way they’ve never been before, and they’re ultimately stronger for incorporating what Olson has learned in the intervening years of solo work in making that happen. Though the American underground is rife with heavy blues of various shapes and forms, Across Tundras are unto themselves, and whether one thinks of it as heavy bluesgaze folk or whatever else, The Rugged Ranges of Curbs and Broken Minds is a welcome reminder of that fact.

Across Tundras, The Rugged Ranges of Curbs and Broken Minds (2019)

Across Tundras on Thee Facebooks

Across Tundras/T.G. Olson on Bandcamp

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Across Tundras Release New Album The Rugged Ranges of Curbs and Broken Minds

Posted in Whathaveyou on June 10th, 2019 by JJ Koczan

You know, after six years, I just didn’t want the release of a new Across Tundras album to go unmarked. I’ll have a review up in about a week after I sit with the thing and give it its due — it’s currently slated for June 18, if you want to keep track; that may change — but just for my own satisfaction as a fan of the band, I wanted to put up a post just with the stream for anyone who wanted to check it out to do so and just to say, hey, here’s a thing that exists.

So yeah, it exists. It’s been a long time coming. I’d love to know the recording circumstances, as frontman, founder and principal songwriter T.G. Olson has been back and forth between Nebraska and Nashville over the last couple years, but I guess that’s concern for another day. If The Rugged Ranges of Curbs and Broken Minds was pieced together over however long, it certainly doesn’t lack fluidity for that. But all that is concern for another time. Right now, I’m just glad it’s out there. They put it out the same way Olson does his solo releases: with just about no prior notice and no fanfare — a link shared on social media and that’s it. There are CD and tape preorders though — got mine in — and I imagine if those sell through, the topic of vinyl will be broached.

But anyway, it’s a name-your-price download in the meantime, and you can listen below as well as on the Across Tundras/T.G. Olson Bandcamp page, as always. Dig it:

across tundras the rugged ranges of curbs and broken minds

The new full length album from Across Tundras is available now for free/name your price download!

Pre orders for CD and Cassette are up now. All proceeds go towards getting this album pressed on vinyl. We need your support to get this album on wax where it belongs!

Pulled from the jaws of defeat 2018-2019.

Sounds by T.G. Olson ~ Ben Schriever ~ Caleb R.K. Williams ~ Abigail Lily O’Hara ~ Noel Dorado. Recorded by T.G. Olson and Caleb R.K. Williams, Mastered by T.G. Olson, Caleb and Abigail appear courtesy of The Eagle Stone Collective.
eaglestone.bandcamp.com

Photography and design by T.G. Olson.

Tracklisting:
1. The Rugged Ranges of Curbs & Broken Minds 06:58
2. Slow Down and Breathe 06:24
3. Talkin’ Rust Cohle Existential Blues 05:42
4. Boots of Snake Leather 05:02
5. Whirlwind Reapin’ 06:50
6. When We Were All One 04:39
7. New War on the Range 07:42

Thanks to Jackson C. Frank, Carl Sandburg and Librivox Public Domain Recordings, Rainy Day Women, Dogs, Road Trippin’, Strange Days and YOU for listening.

BLUE CHEERS Y’ALL!

https://www.facebook.com/AcrossTundrasBand/
https://acrosstundras.bandcamp.com/

Across Tundras, The Rugged Ranges of Curbs and Broken Minds (2019)

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