Husk, a career-spanning double-LP retrospective marking Raglani’s “early period” (2004-2009), is both the artist’s “Best-of” collection, as well as a document of a personal orientation within the canon of electronic music. As a devoted student of E.M. history and synthesis techniques, Joseph Raglani has spent the past decade in his St. Louis studio consuming and refiguring. While highly-informed, these tracks avoid simple derivation, the traces of influence are not easily decipherable; the common descriptors fall away. The sonic legacies orbiting the INA GRM axis cross paths with pop sensibilities more akin to the sensuous pulse of New Order. Raglani mines the expressiveness of this fertile boundary space. The compositions on Husk are dense featuring a palette of analog and digital electronic instruments as well as guitar, voice, pedal steel, organ, melodica. Disparate elements find a way to resonate to maximum emotive effect. The sonic energies are not bound to their sources, but are rather utilized for their ability to express.
One fourth of the material is available here for the first time; the remainder from private-press and small run releases has been remixed by Raglani and re-mastered by Greg Davis for presentation in this collection. Husk is Raglani’s second mass-market release following his 2008 CD Of Sirens Born released on Kranky Records. Artwork by Robert Beatty (Three Legged Race / Hair Police / Resonant Hole). In an edition of 500 copies with printed inner-sleeves.
Available now from Arbor Records!