It?s not like we didn?t know. The Vanishing Voice, Wooden Wand?s most often used musical ensemble is a puddle of natural talent and even without their erratic front guy James Jackson Toth they know how to fill an album with thick groovin? magick.

Last year?s limited release ?Nordic Visions? already gave us a peak into their spacefolk universe and with ?Stone Tablet? they have their first widely available cd release on the increasingly impressive Important label. ?Stone Tablet? consists of two tracks from which the first comprises more than half an hour. And it?s a massive half hour I?ll tell ya.

The drunken swagger of a detuned guitar melody that introduces us to the track kind of throws up a smoke curtain and as the group slowly start digging a deep psychedelic groove you find yourself wondering why the hell they haven?t done this before. Hazy vocals float in and out, the electric guitar brims with lustful solo ambitions and the percussion leaves behind a hypnotic trail switching between quiet and restrained to joyous and arousing throughout the track.

?Peace Symbols? is the second and last track on this disc and starts out as a loveley backporch folksong, only with just enough reverb to make that porch sit in between some long distance stars. Later on the song enters in a strongly Lynchian dreamlike territory. Vocals get molded into short droning fragments until they get overshadowed by ghostly drones feeling more like Ash Ra Tempel then any contemporary drone wizards. So when the album ends and reality knocks on your door at an inconvenient time, just press play again. Good stuff. 7/10 -- Joris Heemskerk (17 April, 2007)