Disaster Amnesiac has been aware of Jackie and Matt McDowells' individual musical projects, Inez Lightfoot and Sagas, respectively, for a while now, but this is the first I've heard from their duo, Sun Cycles. Woods Creek Demos features an Appalachian trance/drone sound, conjured up from the interlocked guitar playing of Matt and Jackie's mountain dulcimer and raw fiddle sawing. The former gets deeply, darkly emotional and expressive on Seven Smokes (ably abetted by the fiddle), while the latter plays heavily percussive and rural on Black Dogs and Winslow Hill. Northern Latitudes strikes Disaster Amnesiac as having as much on an L.A. lope as that of Fairbanks, while Cat Litmus brings shruti to Allegheny County. Adding to the rural feel of the release are the down to earth vocal styles of the McDowells, Jackie's soprano on Pretty Saro's Old World waltz in particular.
These demos seem to have been cranked out all in a day, but the sound is pretty far from haphazard. These tunes' Appalachian Psych emerge from deep, ancient musical wells. I know that I've enjoyed hiking along their trails.
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