Kin by Fletcher Tucker

With a foundational palette comprised of “breathing" instruments (Swedish bagpipes, pump organ, elder and bamboo flutes, Mellotron saxophone and flute tapes), beneath chanted, animistic verse, Kin endeavors to exhale enchantment back into the living world.

Composed while hiking hundreds of miles through the remote Big Sur backcountry, Kin’s ritual text (lyrics) evokes and invokes Fletcher Tucker’s inner and outer journeys across uncanny trails of kinship with place. Tucker cultivates communion with mycelium and decaying stumps, blizzards and waterfalls, ancestral spirits and his own infant – and offers each one voice and tone, a chance for Mystery to speak for itself. Within Kin’s incantations you will find: a mythopoetic retelling of Tucker’s daughter’s birth as high ceremony; recollections of moments of radical clarity and aliveness in the wild; feral Zen philosophy; and an ornate description of Tucker’s own syncretic altar.

On this L.P. (Fletcher Tucker’s 3rd under his given name), the ancient, psychospiritual technology of chanting is favored over singing throughout the album, while close, uncanny harmonies serve to widen gateways into liminal realms. Voices float atop clear, deep pools of acoustic drones. The surface of this water shimmers and ripples with rhythmic and melodic disturbances: sonic offerings of bells, bowls, gongs, chimes, analog synthesizers, 12-string electric guitars, pedal steel, bass, hummel (bowed Swedish mountain zither), all manner of drums, clacking oak branches, and rattling leaves.

Potent collaborations with a few esteemed friends – Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie, The Microphones), Mariam Wallentin (Fire! Orchestra, Mariam the Believer), Chuck Johnson, Sean Smith (LFZ), and Spencer Owen – enrich “Kin’s” domain of animacy and enchantment.

Tracklist

1.	A Candle	3:35

2.	Great Flowering Mind
3.	Pregnant Emptiness
4.	Only Dancing
5.	To Light a Fire
6.	Born Back into the Earth
7.	The Breathing Night

Credits

releases August 15, 2025

– RECORDING NOTES –
Recorded between winter and summer 2024 at home, high on the western slope of the so-called Santa Lucia Mountains, on the unceded ancestral lands of the Esselen People in present-day Big Sur, California. Additional bass, drums and synthesis recordings made on Tongva land (Los Angeles, California) by Sean Smith. The Mellotron recordings were made at the Vintage Synthesizer Museum, also in so-called Los Angeles. Phil Elverum recorded his own drum parts at home on the Lummi lands of Swa'lax, also called Orcas Island, Washington. Mariam Wallentin recorded her vocal parts at home on the west coast of Sweden. And Chuck Johnson recorded his pedal steel in his studio in Ohlone territory (Oakland, California).

– PERFORMERS & INSTRUMENTS –
• Fletcher Tucker: Svensk säckpipa (Swedish bagpipes), melodeon (reeded pump organ), elder flute, bamboo flute, humla (Swedish mountain zither), leaves, oak branches, bells, bowls, chimes, gong, cymbals, cabasa rattle, hand-drum, bass drum, 12-string electric guitar, field recordings, treatments, voice. Words, melodies, and compositions. Recording and editing.
• Sean Smith: Electric bass guitar, Minimoog Model D synthesizer, Moog Matriarch synthesizer, drums.
• Spencer Owen: Drums, Mellotron.
• Chuck Johnson: Pedal steel. Mixing & mastering.
• Mariam Wallentin: Voice.
• Phil Elverum: Drums.

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