"We were first turned on to this Seattle collective by our pals in psychedelic kosmische krautdrone combo Magdalena Solis. As much as we love MS, we figured a band THEY found worthy of recommending, would in fact be well worth checking out, and we (and they) were right. Geist & The Sacred Ensemble are from Seattle, and traffic in a sort of Eastern tinged psychedelic folk ritualism, spidery guitar melodies, minimal percussion, tinkling chimes, chanted vocals. But unlike many of their sonic brethren, who stop just shy of actual songwriting, instead subsisting on creating sprawling soundscapes, Geist often transform whatever abstract drift they've just conjured up into what sounds like some twisted strain of swampy apocalyptic folk, or some twisted psychedelic sea shanty. Just check out the opener "Awaken / The Gut", which begins like some abstract forest folk ritual, all blurred melodies, hushed percussion, chanted vox, only to blossom into a proper song, all woozy strum, druggy atmosphere, echo drenched melody, hauntingly crooned vox, the song sounded strangely familiar, until we realized it sorta sounded like a super slowed down, ultra psychedelic, dirgey and druggy reworking of the Gorillaz' "Clint Eastwood". Weird. More often than not, it's songs proper that these guys offer up, sometimes slipping into a bit of ambience, or some psychedelic drift, but otherwise weaving lush expanses of drug folk shimmer, or woozy, swampy psychedelic blues, check out "Grave Coins", with it's drunken swagger, and sonic snarl, we're guessing fans of King Dude, Woven Hand, Kiss The Anus, Nick Cave and the like will flip for these guys. The whole record bursts with mysterious psychedelia, gypsy folk, brooding campfire dirges, tracks like "In Search Of Fabled Lands" wraps snake charmer guitar melodies, around shuffling percussion, with swooping backwards chordal wheezes, all building to a more percussive, tribal psych dirge freakout, or there's "Fertilize", which is all stripped down blues, or "Circles", which is a lo-fi sprawl of tribal, junkyard swagger, crooned vox, over murky shimmer, and pounding percussion, or even "These Embers Need A Blowin", which sounds like New Model Army by way of Cop Shoot Cop if that makes any sense.
A fantastic collection of dark, brooding, bluesy, psychedelia, that's haunting and hypnotic and harrowing in equal measure.Comes with a full color printed J-card and includes a download coupon as well." 