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Buried Treasure: Tlön and the World of Ideas

I seem to recall being in touch with Nasoni Records at one point in my life and reviewing their stuff, but these days, any chance I get to buy Nasoni releases at non-import prices is both a rarity a boon. As I perused the Exile on Mainstream merch area at a certain European fest in the Netherlands a couple weeks back that I think I may have already mentioned once or twice, I was able to pick up a few Nasoni discs without thinking twice, and one of them was the 2010 sophomore outing from Peru/Argentina heavy psych trio Tlön.

Called simply Tlön II, it’s a record that makes its bed on organic low-end warmth. Tlön was founded by drummer Walo Carillo, who was a member of early ’70s curios Tarkus, and so they come by the heavy rocking traditionalism honestly. Joined by Marcus Coifman of Reino Ermitano on bass and principal songwriter Christian Van Lacke on vocals and guitar, Carillo dutifully marches into echoing caverns of groove. Van Lacke is occasionally given to a classic falsetto as on opener “El Banquete De Los Niños” or the acoustic-led later cut “Ave Azul,” and it adds an oddly mystical element to his songwriting, but is never fully cartoonish. It’s just one more way in which Tlön present their ethereality.

The band take their name from the noun-less fictional world in the 1940 short story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, and sure enough, Tlön II has an otherworldly feel to it. Its 10 songs vary some in mood, but all are presented as though from a distance, and even the doomed pacing of “El Día Aquel” or the crunch in Van Lacke‘s intro riff for closer “50 Siglos” seem beamed in from a sonic elsewhere. I don’t really have a full grasp on the vibe as yet — my sense is that to get one would take more than a little while — but it’s a record I’ve been digging since I first put it on, so I thought maybe I’d recommend it to anyone else who might be interested.

Tlön have two other albums to date: a 2009 self-titled debut and this year’s apparently-vinyl-only Tlön III, both on Nasoni, so if you’re up for it, there’s a bit of investigation to do. To get you started, the band have a track from each record on their Bandcamp, and the label’s site has notes about each release, including the different and varying limited editions of the LP versions, should you want to go all out. If you don’t feel like clicking off, here’s the live version of the band doing “El Día Aquel” in 2010:

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