Old Saw - The Wringing Cloth (2025, Lobby Art Editions, 2LP)

full stream: https://lobbyartrecs.bandcamp.com/album/the-wringing-cloth

“It rained more days than it didn’t. The beds of silt turned up notched pieces of quartzite and flint. Water came up through the floorboards in the sixteen-sided candle room. The house was empty except for what the flood brought in. Miles on the river of salt and silver in first light.”

***

The final document from the New England collective Old Saw is available as a 2xLP via Lobby Art Editions, with photography by Dylan Hausthor. Many of the known personnel from the last records circle back here on The Wringing Cloth to close out the ride with their signature fog and low burning momentum.

Like the sharpshooting carnival contestant who knows that the winning practice isn’t to aim for the red star itself, but rather to shoot out a perimeter around the star and thus remove it, Old Saw have historically dealt with forms by tracing their boundaries rather than going for the target outright. If the first three records hinted at but never touched song-shaped forms, The Wringing Cloth makes at least glancing contact while retaining the layered haze and drawl that threads their sound together.

Contrary to the often-used ambient tag, Old Saw shows up here in a markedly active and sculpted form — manipulating, unwinding, and pivoting with a strange and warped precision. What has always been uncanny about this music is that it arrives in a state at once familiar and obscured, like a memory weighed down with sensory information but no identifying details to place it. The Wringing Cloth walks off further into that geographical dream without time or language until it’s just a speck of light.

- JS
credits
released October 17, 2025

Harper Reed - nylon string guitar, banjo
Ira Dorset - fiddle, bowed strings
Ann Rowlis - reed organ, harmonium
J.M. Eagle - pedal steel, lap steel, resonator
Jim Cutler - telecaster
Addison Starkweather-Price - bass
Peter Catchpole - metal objects, power hammer

recorded on 1/4" tape at locations in New England 2022-2024

Recording: Henry Birdsey
Mixing: Henry Birdsey + Ira Dorset
Mastering: Andrew Weathers
Front & Back Cover Images: Dylan Hausthor
Layout by Sam Wenc

dedicated to Baxter Koziol