Alternative Press (11/99, p.88) - 3 out of 5 - "...continues their long trawl through swampy jams....It's a nearly 50-minute brotherly slugfest of sludge....more often an implosion than an explosion."
The Wire (10/99, p.46) - "...they've finally arrived, touching down deep in alien territory....Few groups melt the lines between skyscraping melody and dark, grating Improv so majestically."
Bardo Pond: Isabel Sollenberger (vocals, violin); John Gibbons (guitar, synthesizer, percussion); Michael Gibbons (guitar, synthesizer); Clint Takeda (guitar, bass); Dan Wittels (harmonica); Joe Culver, Ed Farnsworth (drums).
Recorded at Lemur House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
It's not every disc that gives you the privilege of hearing the recording equipment that it was made with disintegrate into a pile of un-recyclable dust. Well, maybe that didn't happen during the making of SET AND SETTING but if it did, this record might not sound a whole lot different.
Kicking up a ferocious din that often dissolves into white noise, Bardo Pond induces an otherworldly state on the border of bliss and terror. Heavier than heavy metal, more "psycho" than psychedelic, it's not for everyone. But for some, it's exactly what they can't get enough of.