Ignatz’ music sounds like something unearthed in an archaeological excavation, a soil-encrusted artifact from some heretofore unknown civilization that once lurked the planet just under the surface of our agreed-upon reality. His unique take on something akin to but completely estranged from Delta blues and Alan Lomax-curated “lost” folk music is enhanced by musique concrète, free psych, and avant drone to create something never heard before, as hyperbolic as that may appear, and altogether difficult to describe in commonly used musical terminology. From meandering acoustic guitar excursions reminiscent of a less-Baroque John Fahey to bleak folkloric pastorals evocative of crumbling landscapes and long-extinct inhabitants (with titles to match: “Rebound from the Cliff,” “Echo All Acoustically Correct,” “The Sinister Snow Squaws”) he creates a unique world with the simplest of instrumentation — nonlinear guitar, garbled vocals, a primitive drum machine, and various and sundry accidental or unknown “sounds,” which are, either out of necessity or for effect, cheaply recorded — and his portraits are composed of multiple shades of melancholic gray and the sepia of age. “The Radiant Sheen” is a mantra for shut-ins who’ve never left their hidden valley to become tainted by society. Even stranger to think that something so in line with the New Weird Americana movement actually comes from…Belgium? For those listeners ready to experience something new that sounds ancient and simultaneously of this world and otherworldly, Ignatz’ work is singularly compelling. – Brian Way