Ragana & Drowse: Ash Souvenir (Coloured Vinyl LP)

Ash Souvenir, the new collaborative album from Ragana (Maria and Noel) and Drowse (Kyle Bates), is haunted by the sounds and spirit of the Pacific Northwest. The three multi-instrumentalists share a bond with, and affinity and cursed love for the rainy, unforgiving region, and the interwoven history of the black metal (Wolves in the Throne Room, Skagos) and indie rock (Mirah, The Microphones) that has grown out of its dreary landscapes.

The trio spent a year working on the album, which involved intense writing sessions together in Olympia, WA, a performance at the Roadburn festival in the Netherlands, and culminated in a recording session at the legendary Unknown in Anacortes, WA.

During this period Maria and Kyle were in a slow transitional process of returning home to be closer to struggling loved ones. These difficult experiences helped shape the album’s lyrics. Initially inspired by familial stories surrounding the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, Ash Souvenir was collaged out into a scrapbook of family, reflection, grief, and place.

These themes are embedded into the sonic landscape through contemporary field recordings as well as old audio snippets of Noel’s grandmother, who fled occupied Latvia with her family in the 1940s, resettled in the US, and spent the last 25 years of her life living in a hand-built log cabin in the fir and aspen-filled woods outside Shelton, WA.

Ragana’s majestic, emotionally raw metal is interwoven with Drowse’s mastery of texture, dyed in a shared affinity for handmade folk and patient, sorrowful melody. The instrumentation is expansive, from cloudy beds of harmonium, mellotron, and synthesizer to towering walls of distorted bass, swelling cymbals, and flourishing guitars. This elevated palette is grounded by the voices of the three musicians, singing and screaming their stories separately and in harmony across the four extended pieces, ultimately uniting for a final refrain: “there is nothing to lose.”

Ash Souvenir is a sublime experience, conjuring both the power of a devastating eruption and the eerie stillness that lingers in its wake, ashen memories drifting through night air before rejoining the earth.

Seaweed green vinyl version.

1. In Eternal Woods Pts. 1-3
2. After Image
3. In Eternal Woods Pt. 4
4. Ash Souvenir