Slow Draw Premieres “The Mystic Crib” Video; Album Out Nov. 10
Hurst, Texas-based ambient/psych experimentalist solo-outfit Slow Draw will release The Mystic Crib on Nov. 10. The project of multi-instrumentalist Mark Kitchens, also known for his work on drums in Stone Machine Electric, has issued a handful-plus of full-lengths and singles, etc., over the last six years, but the 11-song/56-minute collection stands out in sound and purpose, Kitchens honing a style that finds root between stonerjazz, mellow desert, acid funk, krautrock, quietpsych and ambient prog, and it’s never quite doing the same thing twice from song to song, even if it wants you to think it is.
Fair enough. As they invariably would be, Earth are a touchstone here, in “The Mystic Crib” (premiering below) and its album-closing companion-piece “Return From the Mystic Crib,” and in the shimmering cymbal splash of “I See Her,” but Slow Draw is too satisfying a project to stick to one kind of weird. “Daily Jacuzzi Weekly” puts some old funk in the keys and some dub in the drums and is still sad — call that a Grails influence, no less for its intangibility — a fitting precursor to the later loopmaking in “Soggy Chips.” “Funeral Kabob” digs with heart into a Brant Bjork-style groove, while “Legitimate Wizard” and “Embroidered Waistcoasts” mark out more psychedelic pathways, the sample-laced “Milk Carton Complex” adding urgency in its guitar turnarounds that one could liken to King Buffalo as well as Sonic Youth (a comparison drawn below). 
There are far fewer wrong answers when the sound is encompassing.
Whether that’s coming through in the drums and synth of centerpiece “Sons of the Culinary Arts” or the swirling guitar effects of the subsequent “Invisible Entities Stealing Thunder,” Kitchens sets up his pieces as finished works but does not completely depart the impulsiveness that would seem to have sparked their creation in the first place. That might be a guitar line, a keyboard line. But it’s there and it’s usually something, some foundational sound Kitchens chases down until it becomes a song. It’s the guitar on both “I See Her” and “Milk Carton Complex,” but in two different ways. The vague Sgt. Pepper reference happening in the organ or whatever that is on “Embroidered Waistcoats.” Slow Draw‘s experiments are not unconsidered, or un-built — very pointedly, these are songs with identities derived from their respective sounds — but they have that underlying aspect just the same.
One might argue that makes Slow Draw less predictable, and I’d agree with that, but that extends outside this standalone release. What Kitchens might do next with the project is anyone’s best guess, but with a stated goal that seems to have been based on atmosphere, The Mystic Crib delivers on that promise in a big way and makes even its shorter cuts feel immersive.
Please enjoy “The Mystic Crib” premiering below, followed by more word from Kitchens and the PR wire:
Slow Draw, “The Mystic Crib” video premiere
For the videos I make, they are usually based on a spur of the moment idea similar to how the music is created. The use of the masks only came up because the Mrs had ordered these for one of her art projects, but she didn’t like the masks once they arrived in the mail. So I decided to paint them all instead of sending them back. I was only going to make a few, but ended up spending a few weeks painting them all. There are about 16 total, but I don’t think all of them made it into the video. I wore a full black-out bodysuit under them to hide behind so that the masks stood out and people wouldn’t get distracted by my beady, squinty eyes or any glare off my head. I hope the “mystic” part comes through in the video, as that was the main purpose.
As for the album The Mystic Crib, I wouldn’t say I had a theme in mind as much as I just wanted the album to set a consistent vibe. That’s also the reason the song, The Mystic Crib, is split into bookend tracks on the album. I want listeners to feel like they enter into the album and it carries them through and then it lets them know the journey has come to an end. Hopefully it is the kind of journey they want to embark on again, or at least use it as background music to a chill evening or something like that. All the songs on this album use titles I’ve been collecting over the years. I have a list of “band names” or album titles that I keep on my phone. So, I just went through the list as I listened back to the recordings and named them with titles that just seemed to fit. Not like I need 50 different bands just because I came up with a cool name. There are a couple that are not from that list, one of them being Daily Jacuzzi Weekly. I saw that on the bottom of one of those letter board signs at a motel and thought it was funny because it made no sense.
Slow Draw departs from the noisy ambient improvised pieces and journeys into The Mystic Crib with a structured vibe described as a mishmash of Sonic Youth with the psychedelic side of The Beatles. There is a distinct tonal setting for this work. It provides an ambient groove meant to for one to lose themselves to, or just to simply have floating in the background to calm the mind as one goes about their day.
Tracklisting:
1. Into the Mystic Crib
2. Funeral Kabob
3. Daily Jacuzzi Weekly
4. I See Her
5. Legitimate Wizard
6. Sons of the Culinary Arts
7. Invisible Entities Stealing Thunder
8. Embroidered Waistcoats
9. Milk Carton Complex
10. Soggy Chips
11. Return From The Mystic Crib
