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Temple of the Roses

by Ash Brooks

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  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Limited to 200! Small hole black vinyl 33rpm 7" EP, with fold-over two-panel full color cover featuring watercolor art by Ash.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Temple of the Roses via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 7 days
    edition of 200 
    Purchasable with gift card

      $7 USD or more 

     

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Get both Flower Room 7" vinyl releases at once in this bundle deal! Includes the Ash Brooks - Temple of the Roses standard edition EP (black vinyl, 33 rpm, pro-printed foldover card sleeve, limited to 200 copies) and the Ash & Herb "Salt Lick" b/w "Tables of Grass Fields" jukebox style single (black vinyl, large-hole 45, Risograph-printed foldover sleeve, limited to 250). Includes digital download of both releases.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Temple of the Roses via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 7 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $10 USD or more 

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Limited to 100! Eco-friendly full-color gatefold digipak & professionally-duplicated CD-R that combines both the Temple of the Roses EP and the Woven in the Fabric bonus cassette tracks. Includes full lyrics sheet for both EPs in the gatefold.

    Note: disc is playable on all CD drives and players with CD-R playback capability, but may not be able to be read by older CD units.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Temple of the Roses via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 7 days
    edition of 100 
    Purchasable with gift card

      $10 USD or more 

     

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $4 USD  or more

     

  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 98 Flower Room releases available on Bandcamp and save 85%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Lilac of the Valley, On Garudan Wing, Flight Path, ML rootless, Crop Circle, Searching, Flowering, On the Crystal Seas, and 90 more. , and , .

    Excludes subscriber-only releases.

    Purchasable with gift card

      $54.53 USD or more (85% OFF)

     

  • Limited Art Edition 7" Vinyl with Exclusive Storybook Insert, Prismatic Sticker, and Bonus Cassette
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Hand-numbered and limited to 100! Small hole black vinyl 33rpm 7" EP in two panel fold-over full-color cover. Includes the exclusive full-length Woven In the Fabric bonus cassette, a mini storybook with lyrics and watercolor illustrations by Ash, and a 4" x 4" prismatic sticker of the cover art.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Temple of the Roses via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

  • Limited Edition Glitter Cassette + Rainbow Moonstone Package
    Cassette + Digital Album

    First edition, hand-numbered and limited to 50! Home-dubbed Type I music grade c15 with green-and-blue glitter shell, and hand-stamped A- and B-sides. Held in clear polybox with double-sided full-color tip-on wraparound cover. Includes small rainbow moonstone.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Temple of the Roses via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

  • 2nd Edition Glitter Cassette + Rainbow Moonstone package
    Cassette + Digital Album

    Hand-numbered 2nd cassette edition of 50! Home-dubbed Type I music grade c15 with green-and-blue glitter shell, and hand-stamped A- and B-sides. Held in clear polybox with double-sided full-color tip-on wraparound cover. Includes small rainbow moonstone.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Temple of the Roses via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

1.
Shasta 03:07
2.
Mage 04:31
3.
Rana Mu 03:00
4.

about

As a musician, songwriter, and visual artist, Ash Brooks' work has unfolded across dozens of releases in Flower Room's discography over the past three years. Whether through the wildly prolific ambient project Starbirthed or the experimental psych-folk duo Ash & Herb (both in collaboration with Matt LaJoie), her voice and vision has lighted a path to incorporating dream-wisdom and divine feminine Earth-and-cosmos worship within varied expressions of ultraconscious experience. Yet, this was a discography lacking its truest origin story: Ash's longtime DIY bedroom-recorded lo-fi dream-pop and psych folk solo songbook, incorporating both nocturnal fantasy and spiritual folktale into a more literary, narrative blend. After 2018's Crown of Thyme cassette introduced the most tantalizingly abstract edges of Ash's solo soundworld, her vinyl debut--for the most part written and recorded prior to Crown of Thyme--blows the door wide open on any expectations that may have arisen from this initial peek inside the Temple.

Work on Temple of the Roses predates all Flower Room material released to-date; beginning with Ash's self-recorded demos, she and Matt worked on a series of 4-track cassette recordings of her songs from 2014-2016, before deciding to begin anew with a digital multitrack recorder offering more tracks and higher fidelity. Their move in June 2016 to Mount Misery in rural New Hampshire proved to be the boost the project--then called Rana Mu--required to fully lift off the ground. Awash in gothic ghost stories, civil rights lore, and New England underground music legend, life among psych jammers Soft Eyes and John Andrews at the former orphanage seeped into the arrangement and production of Ash's new solo recordings instantly - even showing up verite-style in the form of distant birdsong and acoustic guitar noodles drifting through summer's open windows at the start of "Rana Mu".

The EP opens with the instrumental improvisation "Shasta", named after and evoking the magnetically mystical aura of that peak in California. Led by Ash's lightly buzzing synth leads and drone bed, the thick atmosphere is wind-swept by guest Rachel Neveu (Cruel Heaven, Mmoss, Soft Eyes, The Yawns)'s flute improvisation and funneled into rhythm by tablas, tambourine, and bouncing bass. The flute's unbroken breath leads into first single "Mage"; as the song materializes around the strum of Ash's guitar, sitar plucks, free-range bass, and a multitracked percussion drive, Ash's vocals emerge with a clarity, confidence, and melodic strength previously only hinted at in Crown of Thyme's title track and highlight "Sanctify". A psych-folk double-drummer groove falls into place as Ash's vocals set the mystic scene, joined by incandescent flute and eventually giving way to an extended instrumental bridge that tunnels further into the heart of the trip with each cycle.

"Rana Mu" leads off side B, Ash's gently-lilting dream-pop vocals shining atop a soft-focus arrangement and production that highlights both the experimentation (the tremolo'ed-to-ten electric fuzz guitar was recorded with amplifier at the bottom of a stairwell and the microphone recording it at the top) and pop aspirations at the core of her solo work. With each guitar, vocal, and synth line given space to reverberate and sink into the field, the track is lifted on the hazy strands of warm summer air - a mirage of radio signals commingling past and future. Temple of the Roses closes on its newest recording, "Realm of Sight". Recorded in Summer 2018--a full two years after the sessions that produced the bulk of the EP--the song adds an extra element of creeping mystery and shadow-lurk to the collection, tying connecting ribbons to both Crown of Thyme and the Woven in the Fabric outtakes. A minor key ballad that rises above the murk of dirge on the strength of levitating vocals and synth, the song's hallucinatory blasts of wooden flute and churchly chimes both deepen the mystery and light the road ahead. After hearing "Realm of Sight" close the book on Temple of the Roses, one is tempted to envision a parallel universe in which this is the folk music played at a sacred ritual, or the pop music danced to at a deep-woods ceremonial reception.

credits

released May 22, 2020

All music and lyrics by Ash Brooks.

Ash Brooks: voice, acoustic and electric guitars, synth, sitar ("Mage"), water tabla ("Shasta"), bells ("Realm of Sight")

with

Matt LaJoie: bass guitar, drums & percussion, 10-string acoustic guitar ("Mage"), electric guitar ("Rana Mu", "Realm of Sight"), wooden flute ("Realm of Sight"), backing vocal ("Rana Mu", "Realm of Sight")

and

Rachel Neveu: flute ("Shasta", "Mage")

Recorded and mixed Summer 2016-Spring 2018 in Maine and New Hampshire; remixed and mastered April 9, 2020 at The Den (Portland, ME).

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about

Flower Room Portland, Maine

Exploration & discoveries in improvisation & harmonization ☄ Tonal cosmology, virtual rurality, and hymns to the cosmos and the natural world, to heal and inspire a more harmonious You-We-All ☤ Welcome

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