Across the last 15 years, Ryan Gustafson of The Dead Tongues has emerged as one of modern folk’s most distinct voices. As idiosyncratic and spectral as the songs have sometimes been, Gustafson has always tied his visions and verses to the kinds of hooks you tuck away like talismans, pulled out in case of emergency. Dust, Unsung Passage, Desert: The Dead Tongues’ albums remain some of the more compelling and curious works in their field on this side of a century. The latest edition to The Dead Tongues’ catalog, the song-centric and magnetic 'Body of Light' and the discursive and wonderfully elliptical 'I Am a Cloud', is 16 complete tunes split across interweaving and disparate albums.

Lou Hazel was born in the town of Olean, New York. He skirted the compulsive hunting and fishing tradition held close to his father’s heart - instead cultivating a sensitivity more suited to artists and vagabonds. His travels brought him across the country, and eventually through debilitating depression, before coming to rest with a sense of personal peace and positivity in Durham, NC.

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