Abronia is a six-piece from Portland, Oregon, built around two guitars, pedal steel, tenor saxophone, bass, and a 32-inch bass drum. Their music brings acid folk, kosmische music, spiritual jazz, doom, drone, post-punk, and Spaghetti Western soundtracks together into a language that belongs entirely to Abronia.

 

The distinctive, incantatory voice of Keelin Mayer sits at the center, while her tenor saxophone moves between melody, texture, and free improvisation. The pedal steel stretches toward some imaginary desert horizon, while the guitars can move from dusty melodies to sheets of psychedelic noise. Underneath it all, the big drum supplies the massive pulse.

 

Live, Abronia becomes something much more physical and ritualistic, with the big drum hitting you in the chest and tapping into the lizard brain, making your DNA remember a time before there was even such a thing as language, much less rock & roll.