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Astral Sister - EP

by Joshua Powell

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  • Cassette + Digital Album

    Astral Sister EP on cassette tape in random trans green or clear/copper variants.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Astral Sister - EP via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Astral Sister EP on compact disc. Only 100 numbered units.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Astral Sister - EP via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 30 days
    edition of 100 

      $8 USD or more 

     

1.
Recorded at Postal Recording Studios with the help of Alex Kercheval and Tyler Watkins, thanks to a generous grant from brother Craig Helmreich and Fourth Sunday Music Co., all of whom make us proud to be Hoosier musicians. lyrics As stealthy as a stag, as careful as my dad in his garage I got you into bed-- you smelled like cigarettes and rosewater and in that post-connection climate, you go asking what my sign is and when I tell you that's not science, you get out of bed At a temple in the badlands, outside a city in the slabs, I felt every prayer that was ever prayed on my behalf and said my own: Don't give up on me! When I was out on tour, for forty years or more (is how it felt) my friends were better sports as I tried to cram the LORD into their throats Doing right by my employer? Or becoming the Destroyer? My mother sits embroidering her scriptures While at a temple in the badlands, outside a city in the slabs, I felt every prayer that was ever prayed on my behalf and said my own: Don't give up on me At a temple in the badlands, I prayed
2.
When Samuel's ghost sprung from the table, could have sworn it was a lucid dream She kept her fangs retracted, bartered with me for copper coin With all my thoughts dissolving, I found my ghost in portals Well I'd driven out all the mediums but her, in black habit in the spirit room He gave his admonition the gauntlet wouldn't be unthrown and oh my lord, my lord's kaleidoscopic phases and I split like wood from a hatchet in the hostile hands of my reckoning
3.
Furiosa 03:31
What's with the whitewashed witchcraft these constellations seem to cite? I'm sure you have more clarity than me: I'm a hawk caught in a drone strike I'm a vagrant by the preacher on his corner ceremonially stripped of all my guns with my hands out for the medicine I need to sleep everywhere at once I'm a hunter, baby I thought you'd better know I am camouflaged completely in the Indiana snow and I experiment with metamorphosis, babbling a pentecostal prayer, remembering the sandalwood and cardamom and the oils in your hair You noticed in my beard the first greying there as I noticed I was older in a flash and you're a voyeur, but I'm very accommodating when you look at me like that I'm a hunter, baby I thought you'd better know: there's a grizzly in my heart and an arrow in my bow There is no unknowing what I know the season's in so zero in and pull I'm a hunter, baby I thought you'd better know I am desecrating Muir and discrediting Thoreau I'm a hunter, baby I thought you'd better know I can see you in the dark Your eyes glow
4.
Sounds of the 1980s come back around to play off of the nostalgia in rotation for twenty-somethings It goes down It goes down easy It goes down It goes down We paw at each other like wolves in heat, but dressed and discrete in our pilgrimages to parents' dreams The smug self-satisfaction of film photography The soul's need for validation, commoditized and hosted in the cloud To me, it doesn't go down Go down easily Go down go down The jackpot of humiliation I scored: I don't need to be right about things anymore (or so I say) but I as a small bird in distant thicket forgot to let the moon come up
5.
Sylvia Plath 02:41
You were thin/white hanging at the Pale Horse trying hard to catch Thomas by his sleeve Whenever you encounter ghosts, you're honor bound to say, "I cannot tell you what your work means to me" No, I cannot tell you what your work means to me To watch a peacock sputter out hatching a menace in the intake of an Underwood, awash in anhedonia Improper opprobrium of your self-immolation-- It kind of makes you lose your train of thought Swallowing swords, holed up in the old bar, pulling your psyche back into a bun or follow furies into series of back rooms to debate the history of punk No, I do not feel like getting I trace the ramifications of the prevailing social tone of the age regarding chastity and thank God, in her infinite wisdom that the faint green of underwater complements my skin tone
6.
Sleeping Bag 03:33
When I hold your hand, magic slips from your eyes into my eyes and I feel again the sentiment I felt on hesitant tiptoe --the innocence-- I left through your bedroom window It wouldn't mean as much to me if we were to share a sleeping bag When I hold your hand, two awkward spiders embracing, I understand vulnerability and the anxiety of inevitable loss but I am still intent on letting these lines cross It wouldn't mean as much to me if we were to share a wedding bed It wouldn't mean as much to me if were were to share a sleeping bag

about

The lost tape of PSYCHO/TROPIC B-sides! After recording the LP in Anderson with Jonathan Class, Joshua visited the Maness Brothers in St Louis, MO, and recorded 5/6 of these cut songs in a marathon session with two guitars, a Korg Volcabeats, and some bourbon at Gaslight Studios with Zagk Gibbons.

It was originally conceived of as a limited run tape cassette, the sole reward offered to backers who contributed to the funding campaign we ran to obtain a tour van, right after Joshua's harrowing accident on a nighttime Kentucky highway. When the micro-label we were working with fizzled out, the tape machinery was lost to the haze. The pandemic descended, SKELETON PARTY got prioritized, and ASTRAL SISTER, pined in the guiltiest corners of our subconscious, nearly forgotten.

Almost three years later, our label-dad told us we needed to make the integrity move and do right by our van backers. He was right. Joshua found a cousin with a tape duplicator. Apologetic emails and Stamps.com helped tapes get mailed to backers. There was a balance in the force.

With a handful of leftover tapes on deck, we decided to make this sketchbook available to our fans as a sort of unofficial release. We have no idea when we might make music like this again, but ASTRAL SIS is a strange little relic of a past that seems further back than it is.

Peer into a neighboring dimension in which this half-dozen little orphan troupe almost incarnated on PSYCHO. Remember that you are only bound by time if you buy that shit. And we know you. You're smarter than that.

credits

released December 3, 2021

All songs written and performed by Joshua Powell

Tracking, mixing, and mastering by Zagk Gibbons
Recorded at Gaslight in St Louis, MO
Album art by Joshua Powell
Album design by Daniel Jeffrey

Special thanks to the Maness Brothers, Chris Banta, Chief Teak, and our van family.

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Joshua Powell Indianapolis, Indiana

Joshua Powell is the exhausted wizard at the helm of IN's most haunted rock band. From his hardcore roots in the Floridian swamps and beyond the fever dream of his folk era, his literary lyrics dig for enlightenment in a surrealist muck. “Four LP's and over 900 shows later, the midwestern road dog's ever- evolving, transcendent style embraces hallucinatory metal and grimy psychedelia.” -Audiotree ... more

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