Rawskulled by Ak'chamel

Stripped of the meaning typically associated with ancient esoteric rituals, the orphaned prayers of Rawskulled by Ak’chamel unsettle us in all the ways that religion ought to make us feel safe. This bizarre folk album pulls heavily from the psychedelic songwriting tradition and lo-fi production sensibilities to generate the illusion of archival audio, the sense that we’re hearing the sound of an ancient civilization preserved on tape for dispassionately academic future audiences. As we realize that this album actually originates from the creative minds of a Texan art collective written and recorded this year, this pretense of missed context falls away, leaving us with nothing but the wailing, circular sound of ritual folk music without any god to worship or any spirits to honor. However, since we never would have fully grasped the original meaning trapped within a genuine piece of archival audio anyway, we must ask ourselves what we feel robbed of here. Either way, we’re left with cryptic, passionate music directed somewhere beyond our horizon, inspiring us to pray for reasons we may never understand.