This set contains all five volumes of the legendary We Can Fly series in an individually numbered limited edition of 1000. There are over 130 tracks here, which have been remastered for this release, sounding better than ever. Although a few pops and clicks remain, showing up the vinyl source of the material, the overall sound quality is very good.
This CD compiles 15 tracks by artists mixing the traditions of country and folk with the mind-expanding sounds of ambient and kosmische music – from the blown-out songforms of Steve Gunn and Sarah Louise to the pedal-steel transcendence of Chuck Johnson, SUSS and Luke Schneider, via the droning majesty of William Tyler, North Americans, Mary Lattimore and others.
On Mirror Eye, Psychic Ills go deeper into the drones that made Dins such a breakthrough for the band, making those elongated spaces the heart of the music rather than a setting for it. Significant portions of the album were improvised in the studio, and this might explain why the playing and ebb and flow from song to song feel as organic as they do. Mirror Eye is also remarkably understated, trading most of Psychic Ills' suffocating rock for less obvious ways of exploring their tribal, trippy leanings. That's not to say that the album doesn't have any bold moves – in fact, it opens with one of the band's longest tracks yet, the ten-minutes-and-change "Mantis," which sheds and adds layers of hand drums, sitar-like guitars, phased whispers, and chittering, insectoid electronics.