For almost a decade, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania-based musician Thom Wasluck has been releasing his signature gloomy dirges under the name Planning for Burial at a nearly relentless pace. He now has three full-length albums under his belt most notably 2017's monumental Below the House as well as countless EPs and splits. Wasluck has been recording music himself and touring extensively as a one-man band, playing hundreds of shows in DIY spaces and nightclubs, where he has shared the stage with acts like Deafheaven, King Woman and Chelsea Wolfe.

Formed in 2017 by songwriter Sam Marandola, Oldest Sea began as one woman’s personal exploration of the darker side of experimental folk music.   The enlarged sonic palette finds Oldest Sea deftly merging Marandola’s haunting solo musical passages with massive walls of grit and distortion. On their debut LP, A Birdsong, A Ghost, each composition seems to gently undulate its way into existence, all the while building inexorably toward a darkly atmospheric presence of immense proportions. The songs meander along paths adjacent to ambient folk music and the plaintive sounds of Americana, finding their way into the vast ominous territory occupied by doom and post-metal.   Inspired by dreams and distance and the sounds of nature, Marandola combines these influences into pieces that are intensely emotional and evocative, yet simultaneously illusory and diffuse. Listening to the songs on A Birdsong, A Ghost often feels like trying to recall a particularly intense dream just after waking - a sense of deep meaning and emotional connection is undeniable, though trying to bring to mind the detail of it somehow feels impossible.  In this, Oldest Sea represents a unique and welcome entry into the canon of atmospheric heavy music as they continue to expand upon and perfect their otherworldly mystique.