release the bats #25 RACCOO-OO-OON - BEHOLD SECRET KINGDOM CD Behold Secret Kingdom is the first proper fullength release from Iowa City's Raccoo-oo-oon after several limited cd-r/tape/vinyl releases (including cd reissues on Time Lag and Release The Bats). The band spent the last year working with Behold Secret Kingdom, tremendous amounts of love and hard work has been put into this recording which now will be unleashed by Release The Bats! 8 new songs that takes the band's psychedelic and dynamic free-form punk from previous releases to new heights, this is definitely their most focused and perfected recording so far. Darker, denser and almost brutal at times, Behold Secret Kingdom is also the heaviest recording they have done. It only takes a few seconds into ‘Black Branches’ and the mood is set for the rest of the album immediately. The stunning closer ‘Tail At Prospect Peak’ could easiest be described as campfire-doom with it’s slow riffing, heavy use of percussion and chanted vocals (everything suddenly bursting out in a chaotic crescendo…). The trademark tribal-like drums is still present, as is the vocal drones and the furious saxophone swirls. Behold Secret Kingdom is a epic masterpiece, there is really no other way to describe it. Chaotic and all over the place, yet so beautiful. Puts earlier comparisons to bands like Excepter and Animal Collective to a shame! Recorded by Mike Dixon in Bloomington, IN. Full colour digipack with the bands now well-known amazing artwork. You know what they say: beautiful tribal spirit psych lies in the eyes of the beholder. So enter the kingdom and hold the secret in your hands. Iowa City’s prodigal sun-starers offer up the fruits of their deepest inquest yet into the heart of the heart of the country. Eight wilderness rituals of swirling percussion, mossy guitar noise, forest howls, and animal instincts that unfold and erupt with more focus, intensity, and complexity than anything else in Raccoo-oo-oon’s discography thus far. The songs were tracked in the studio with warmth and power by Mike Dixon and then given a heavy mastering job by Pete Swanson, so sonically the vinyl shines and burns and explodes in all the right places. A crushing statement of electric alchemy by one of our favorite bands in the world. - NNF The vinyl version is released by Night People (the bands own imprint) and Not Not Fun. A companion 7" is out now on Gilgongo Records, same recording session as Behold Secret Kingdom but with a much "lighter" content. Tracklist: 1. Black Branches, 2. Mirror Blanket, 3. Visage Of The Fox, 4. Antler Mask, 5. Diamonds In The Dunes, 6. Invisible Sun, 7. Fangs And Arrows, 8. Tail At Prospect Peak PRESSING INFO! 1000 made. REVIEWS! Akakakak Aquarius Boomkat Drowned In Sound Fake Jazz Foxy Digitalis Gothronic Groove.no Harmonium Music Heathen Harvest Hissig KindaMuzik Mashnote Musique Machine Nine Hertz Ondarock Outer Space Gamelan Paper Thin Walls Rock-A-Rolla #9 SF Weekly Stanford Daily The Wire #281 Vital Weekly #577 Washington City Paper BLOG STUFF: Danzies Mezwick 20 Jazz Funk Greatest Hits Mapsadaisical Raven Sings The Blues Sonic Troubadour These Rocks Pop http://www.raccoo-oo-oon.org