Outside the Museum - With Clouds

Ben Catt (Outside the Museum)
With Clouds
Self released / 2010

I was fortunate to grab this cassette from the Lost Sound Tapes cassette sale for $2 which arrived in a clear ziplok with photocopied insert. Mostly acoustic, pensive sonic meditations ranging from quiet to noisy drone - the overall effect is mesmerizing and lovely. All of these tracks are excellent; one that stands out for me is "The Longest Day" in which surreal moments morph into each other in a dreamlike mosaic. Melodically, "The Longest Day" borrows heavily from Bob Dylan's The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll but (dare I say it?) this is a better song. The times, they are a changing. Releases from Outside the Museum are way too hard to track down. I hope they will be reissued for those of us who missed them the first time around.