Album Review: Beyond the 4th Door by Eternal Tapestry

If Eternal Tapestry were the kind of violent thugs who flogs stolen toasters in dodgy pubs, they might well have something like 'psychedelic as fuck' or 'instrumental 4 eva' tattooed across one of their forearms. As it is, a name like Eternal Tapestry implies much less testosterone-fuelled considerations; "A much softer fist, a much weaker wrist" as Kurt Wagner) once said. If not the violent larceny, then at least the steely regard for trippiness symbolised by our fictional tattoos is there, however.

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Eternal Tapestry's first album for longtime, well-established indie imprint Thrill Jockey, Beyond the 4th Door, feels like the equivalent of a major-label debut. During the past six years, the Portland, Ore., psychedelic voyagers have released a handful of small-issue recordings on cassette and CD-R for labels like Not Not Fun, Digitalis, and their own Solar Commune. As their media of choice might suggest, those records were often rough and tumble, the sort of spontaneous, slipshod excellence that comes from putting a microphone into a room of players with good chemistry and letting the tape roll.

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Much of what takes place on Beyond the 4th Door, Eternal Tapestry's Thrill Jockey debut, is unhurried, sonic meandering with a single pointed focus: to alter the listener's consciousness. Over nearly 44 minutes and five selections, this is an album, in the best sense of the word. Eternal Tapestry have never attempted to disguise their primary influences, most of them from the Krautrock and Euro-psych scenes of the early 1970s.

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