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"COLD SPRING" BY FLETCHER TUCKER

"Don't have time to spend 7 years in Big Sur [California] staring into the void? Listen to 'Cold Spring'! Fletcher Tucker's deep immersion masterpiece... a powerful and haunting transmission of fire and earth." – Devendra Banhart

"In 'Cold Spring', Tucker sinks into the redwoods and roots out something ancient and always. [A] truly incredible record." – Lars Gotrich, NPR

"Calling it an album about nature feels limiting. It is, more so, a reflection of an artist's total immersion in the idea of 'place,' its spectral songs often swallowed up in the shadows of giant redwoods, the coos of owls, and the howls of far-off coyotes... While so often mystical and contemplative music focuses on ecstatic sounds, centering on buoyancy and uplift, 'Cold Spring' is unreservedly dark at times. Like nature itself, the record can feel spooky, inspiring an awe that comes close to dread...over and over again, the completed record bears [Fletcher Tucker] out, sounding thoroughly haunted, an arboraceous, psychedelic journey that reveals more with each listen." – Jason Woodbury, Aquarium Drunkard

"I was instantly transported. Whatever mojo [Fletcher Tucker] was working there amongst the redwoods really has made it to the wax. It is a haunted, and haunting record with the spirit of place." – Erik Davis, Expanding Mind podcast

“Tucker evokes Big Sur’s natural grandeur with echo-shrouded vocals, shimmering synthesizers, wildlife field recordings, booming drums… [yet] one suspects that he spent as much time paring back as he spent building up. Each note and line occupies its own space in a big, uncluttered sound field, and each song moves at a pace that reinforces the solemnity of the proceedings.” – The Wire Magazine

"VISIONS OF THE COUNTRY" BY ROBBIE BASHO

8.7 rating and named BEST NEW REISSUE – "...a blunderbuss of feeling, tied to unstoppable technique...Basho’s sound is dramatic and yearning and very personal, altogether unapologetic for the way he saw the world. What’s most remarkable about Basho is how busy and emphatic but absolutely effortless his songs could feel, especially when he touches the guitar. At once, Basho could appear to be laying it all on the line and simply breezing through the notes. After more than three decades out of print, ["Visions of the Country"] is finally back in circulation; on its 35th anniversary, it serves as an ecstatic testimonial for a guitarist in need of a popular resurrection." – Pitchfork

"Robbie Basho's essential LP" – The Fader

"'Visions of the Country' is one of the finest records from a guitar legend. Robbie Basho, the godfather of 12-string guitar playing, was always a man apart. While John Fahey tried to press new treads into the dusty ground, Basho had his eye on the astral plane. This album, now reissued on Gnome Life, is one of the finest odes to landscape ever recorded. Basho’s tribute to the American West is expansive and exploratory... This is an album of stunning performances. Throughout, we get the interplay of intricate guitars ringing out and around Basho’s booming, rolling voice. As Basho mines the land in these songs for some connection, for something spiritual, you too are bound to feel tied to these songs. They may reveal something nameless, some feeling you can’t quite pinpoint, but one you can’t ignore nonetheless. This is unabashed, open-hearted music, and a classic album worth re-evaluation." – Pop Matters

"EVER PRESENT CALM" BY SHAY ROSELIP

"The stars shine over Big Sur and the ocean has receded, but the night sky just begins to open up as cosmic waves beg for cosmic riders. With a gentle voice that glides on warm synths, California's Shay Roselip makes music for surfing the spaceways." – NPR

"MUSIC TODAY" BY FOUNTAINSUN

“...exploring a promise that has always been implicit in Daniel Higgs’ work: the psychedelic alchemy of mystic motifs. He’s never been a preacher, but rather a bard calling his audience to traverse these arenas with him. The album carries a sense of natural expanse – it was recorded in a glass-walled building in California’s big sur – and of effortless communion with the air surrounded by the sounds that move through it. As Higgs sings on ‘Garden Gate I’: ‘the borders become blurry/the divisions indistinct.’” – The Wire Magazine

"TRUE PRAYER" BY SANTIPARRO

“Pretty heavy stuff... but light and lovely enough not to collapse under the weight of Santiparro's spirituality. With an assist from folk great Will Oldham... Santiparro solutes the value of introspection." – Spin Magazine

"A spiritual journey to understand the true meaning of pure, unbridled liberty of the spirit and being... So relax your mind, open the blinds, enjoy the great outdoors, tune in, turn on, drop out of the world's superficial systems and seek the determination to discover the real worth of life's own inherent, perpetual consciousness." – Impose Magazine

"ART OF THE ACOUSTIC STEEL STRING GUITAR 6 & 12" BY ROBBIE BASHO

"All the highlights of Basho’s work are found here: eccentric tunings, modal playing and a keen ear for Eastern music (which he studied and incorporated into his music), and a spirituality that could neither be outshined by the technical flashiness nor the (unavoidable?) exotic undertones." – Tiny Mix Tapes

"The Range of Light Wilderness" BY The Range of Light Wilderness

"The Range of Light Wilderness' wondrous psych-folk/pop album – basked in coastal light and California mysticism befitting its Big Sur birth – explores a dozen-plus sides of psychedelic folk, from '60s-indebted jams to synth-assisted drifts." – SPIN Magazine

"OFFERING" BY BIRD BY SNOW

"It billows, it ebbs, it flows, it trickles, it floods, but most of all, it draws you in. Tucker has a knack for bottling sounds as vast as the Pacific into songs that convey both an intimate charm and a spacious ambiance; they're sprawling but no less direct." – Mixtape Muse

"Everything you need to know and ever felt about Big Sur in one restrained song." [referring to "Wide Open"] – Impose Magazine

"If anyone ever had a doubt about a one-man band creating beautiful music, their doubts can now be laid to rest." – Altsounds

"...utterly compelling tracks full of terrifyingly wide open introspection and communal mysticism rooted in ceremony. Offering is intense." – Tome to the Weather Machine

"COMMON WEALTH" BY BIRD BY SNOW

“Something really special... rich, moody songs with an astonishing depth.” – The Bay Bridged

“The vocals sound round and full, like being surrounded by a blanket and then the blanket turns out to actually be some dude’s voice. Which actually, if you really think about it hard, is kind of nightmarish… so maybe don’t think about it that hard. This voice paired with tip-toeing guitar lines and the soft hiss of empty space is basically what it feels like to hole up in a warm wood cabin for awhile.” – The Fader

"Bird By Snow was born in the air between beach fires, big skies, and long-shuttered winter cabins. Let the ‘good flow’ flow with two headily vocaled, woodsy folk tunes harvested from Common Wealth, the new mystical drifter LP available for frost-bitten sleepovers and long, winding walks now." – RCRD LBL

"This is music as natural as sunshine, rolling off his strings and keys like rain off a slick surface." 9 out of 10 – No Ripcord

"Soft and mystical, Bird By Snow have been making dreamy folk pop with psych-ish elements for the past few years... perfectly marrying strong songwriting with an elegant ambiance of needlepoint guitar work, spacious drumming and pretty female backing vocals. A perfect record to cozy up to a fire in the dark winter months." – Aquarius Records

"Common Wealth's strongest quality lies in its inability to be pinned down; Tucker's work is now something that resists easy summary -- one can hear everything from understated folk antecedents to fraught metal extremes to shadowed goth touches throughout its seven songs, but at no point is it simply one of those approaches, or any other one, for that matter." – AllMusic

"SKY" BY BIRD BY SNOW

"...more real desolate charm than ever before, this is a record of great intrinsic worth, and manages to do something new and consistent within a genre largely held together by image and one-trick skills. Incredible and very worthwhile." - Dusted Magazine

"...creating an ache in the heart, proving once again the emotional quality of this album, brimming with gently persuasive songs that will remain with you long after the needle has lifted." - Terrascope

"Gentle and true pop here, not to be missed, but almost feels like an animal in danger of extinction. Enjoy the blend of banjo, melodica, autoharp before they pave an overpass across it all. Hell, the two truest “songs” on here are actually open-mic hikes. Tromping through the underbrush, the other lyrical flora bloom fine besides them. There’s even some low-voltage electricity accompanying the two man blended band here." - KFJC Los Altos Public Radio

MISCELLANEOUS RECENT PRAISE

Aquarium Drunkard (US) – "Cold Spring" by Fletcher Tucker included in "best of 2017"

SodaPop (IT) – article about "forest music" including the work of Fletcher Tucker