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BARDO POND - Ticket Crystals
| Static Multimedia | | Truth be told, I approached Ticket Crystals with lowered expectations. The concept of Bardo Pond outshone the band in practice far too often - their molehill-to-skankweed-mountain balls of noisy, flute-flecked and violin-slashed guitar feedback (sometimes obscuring tolling bells or vocals) worked when standing alone on Matador comps but the records themselves -- the ones I bothered to sample, anyway -- were either cruelly diluted with filler wank or chock-a-block with herb-head friendly, overstuffed longforms that inspired restlessness and ensured a remorseless return trip to the record store....full text |
| | Popmatters | | A quiet series of acoustic chords ushers in Bardo Pond’s sixth-full length, the first notes of “Destroying Angel” modestly melancholy and thoughtful. Half a second later comes the monstrous, vibrating drone, the scattershot drumfills, the pure volume-charged chaos of primal possibility. Above it all, Isobel Sollenberger keens and moans in some sort of ghost-raising tribal ceremony. ...full text |
| | DustedMagazine | | Ticket Crystals is the most diverse effort of Bardo Pond’s 15-year existence, and not coincidentally, their finest. Philadelphia’s most psychedelic small band (the Sun Ra Arkestra has the town’s big band niche all wrapped up for all time) has always traded in contrasts, particularly those between vocalist Isobel Sollenberger’s echo-soaked flute and vocals, and John and Michael Gibbons’ wall of guitars. Here they also vary in density and style. “Destroying Angel” opens with a reflective, solitary acoustic statement, then tumbles like a volcano’s collapsing walls into a staggering, massive full-band blast lit from within by the disconsolate keening of Sollenberger and guest singer Christina Carter....full text |
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BARDO POND lyrics |
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