Samara Lubelski… Songwriter, Singer, Multi-Instrumentalist, Improviser, and Engineer… With a voluminous musical pedigree, the list of artists (individually and collectively) that Lubelski has played, performed or recorded with, reads out like a best-of the who’s who of the art, noise, free, improv, experimental, or whatever we’re calling it these days scene(s). Hall of Fame, The Tower Recordings, MV and EE, and Thurston Moore are just the beginning of what can be mentioned here. Her first solo outing, 1997’s In the Valley, was a major installment in the recorded legacy of experimental string music, a dense exploration of drones and resonance. This was followed in 2004 with a full-band recording of lush psychedelic folk-rock for The Fleeting Skies. Since then, Lubelski has released a wonderfully colorful series of albums: Spectacular Of Passages (2005), Parallel Suns (2007), Future Slip (2009) and Wavelength (2012). Her most recent solo violin record, String Cycle, was released in 2014, and Augenmusik, a Metabolismus improvised collaboration, issued a cassette in 2015. Released in 2016 by Drawing Room Records, The Gilded Age represents Lubelski’s most current offering. The Gilded Raid…” Yes, Samara Lubelski knows how to make highly refined “pop” records, and her newest album, The Gilded Raid, is the best example yet of her baroque genius. Of course and completely understood, this statement may come as a surprise for those most familiar with Lubelski’s more “outer” sounds, but alas, it’s a wonderful thing indeed. With all of Lubelski’s lovely pastoral and ethereal understandings fully in place on The Gilded Raid, the album is a most splendid beauty that celebrates the forthcoming other-worldly new age. In other words, it’s nighttime music for the new time. For The Gilded Raid, Lubelski worked with her long-time collaborators, Metabolismus, and recorded it at their studio, Sumsilobatem, located in the village of Degenfeld near Stuttgart Germany. With her well-seasoned team in place, it was inevitable that only a tuneful garden of magical blessedness would be created. Closer to being psychic than psychedelic, The Gilded Age is more than just harmonious with the current world and the next. It’s the full-fledged portal we’ve been hoping for.