The Black Neck Band of the Common Loon is the recording project of UK sound-adventurers Blue Pin (Leopard Leg, Hamilton Yards) and Andy Pyne (Medicine and Duty, Puffinboy, Shrag, Passiondale). This seven-track CDR shows the two moving freely around a healthy, and at times horrifying, forest full of instruments and sounds, transitioning between various percussive racket-makers, piano, viola, flute, harmonium, recorder, violin, bugle, and shamanic voice-chants. The two whip up heady blasts of chaotic and reflective sounds that navigate a liminal space between sunlight-woods ritual meditation grooves and full-out growling blood-hungry nighttime rages.

The aleatoric clicks and splatters of percussive-joy swell into a magnificent tribal drum line, maintaining a celebratory mood for the duration of the album. The slippery, wall-slamming key waltz of “Oilslick Fettish Rub (For The Terminally Sleazy)” glistens alongside droplets of wind chimes and foundational rim-hits. The rumbling drum clangs and spiritual horn on “Drunk On Horsehead Pier” are gleefully Aylerian and primitive, setting the group apart from the Finnish free-folk terrain their aesthetic most plausibly falls within. The most exciting moments are those when Blue Pin and Pyne push the instruments to their limits, freaking out and creating a hail of thought-stimulating ruckus, and such moments occur frequently.

Listeners who are heavy into the sounds created by projects like Sylvester Anfang and Wooden Veil will definitely want to get their hands on this album. 7/10 -- Elliott Sharp (8 December, 2009)