Review: Ulaan Passerine (2013)
The name Ulaan Passerine didn’t immediately ring a bell, but once I found out that it’s a project by Steven R. Smith of Hala Strana (among others), things started falling into place. This is a man with a respected, if relatively obscure, musical history, who played a central role in establishing experimental folk sounds in the US since the late nineties.
Even without that context, though, this new double tape on Brave Mysteries would have blown me away. These four pieces — each occupying a tape side of sixteen to eighteen minutes — are best classified as freefolk, but Smith has such a strong voice (figuratively speaking) that comparisons with other artists are practically useless to draw.