Sun baked, psych-folk weirdo Mark Matos has a new album under the moniker Trans Van Santos. The San Francisco native and former frontman of the Family Folk Explosion, Os Beaches and Campo Bravo traveled into the desert near Joshua Tree and returned with the set of songs that comprise Moon Mirage.
Among those songs is “The Flight,” in which Trans Van Santos situates himself somewhere between the amiable, sunny psychedelia of Woods and the darker, apocalyptic ramblings of mysterious, 1960s-era hermit Jonathan Halper. With his Lee Hazlewood croon, Matos sings wearily over a haphazardly strummed guitar. Waves of psychedelic textures—including some warped slide guitar and what sounds like either a singing saw or a theremin—ebb and flow throughout the song, with the tempo shifting accordingly. The song evokes that era when the hippie party of the late 1960s had just turned into the long hangover of the 1970s.
Moon Mirage will be released by Royal Oakie Tapes & Records (home of the Blank Tapes and Sugar Candy Mountain) tomorrow (pre-order here). Catch Trans Van Santos live here and listen to “The Flight” below:
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