A Roadburn-commissioned collaboration steeped in Pacific Northwest grief - heavy metal meets glacial drone in four long-form pieces.
For fans of: Have a Nice Life, Wolves in the Throne Room, Planning for Burial, Lingua Ignota, Midwife
In May of 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted and everyone in the Pacific Northwest was touched by its ash, its destructiveness, and its story - a shared experience that became an ash souvenir. Ash Souvenir is the collaborative album by Drowse (Kyle Bates) and Ragana (Maria and Noel), conceived in a shared sense of grief and collective memory rooted in the Pacific Northwest.
Originally commissioned by and premiered at the 2024 edition of Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, Netherlands, the trio then recorded the album at the legendary Unknown studio in Anacortes, Washington. During the writing process, Maria and Kyle were both in a painful, transitional period, moving back to the Pacific Northwest to be closer to struggling loved ones. This return home echoed in Noel's own inherited history - their grandmother escaped occupied Latvia in the 1940s and spent her final 25 years in a hand-built log cabin deep in the woods outside Shelton, Washington.
The album combines Ragana's heavy, emotionally charged metal with Drowse's textural approach to sound. Across four long-form pieces, the trio's voices and instruments move between stark intimacy and overwhelming intensity, culminating in a collective refrain: "there is nothing to lose."
