With the death in 2020 of long-standing occasional third member Peter Stapleton (percussion/electronics), A Handful of Dust has regrouped as the core duo of Alastair Galbraith (violin, guitar, cello, piano, drums) and Bruce Russell (guitar, electronics).

The Drum Is the Shaman’s Horse, this new set of live-to-four-track recordings from January 2022, is the first album to be wholly recorded 'in the studio' since 1995's Towards a Soundtrack to the 'Anabase' of St-John Perse.

Committed to tape at the Rugby Hotel in Dunedin, the four-track recordings were played back in the room where they were made and recorded again, this time to Android telephone, to make a digital mono master which you hear on this record.

Unadorned, brutal and sonically austere, this new set captures the 'wild Mercury sound' for which this long-standing unit is rightly feted among cognoscenti of the Antipodean New Thing.

Three pieces that will pop your third eye in seconds flat. Astral travel for now people.

(For PS, who couldn’t make it with us)

Alastair Galbraith: guitar/organ (1), cello/drums (2), violin (3)
Bruce Russell: modular synthesiser (1), guitar (2) (3)
Engineering AG and BR
Rec. January 2022 at the Rugby, Dunedin, NZ
Mastering by James Plotkin

Released June 02, 2023. Pressed on 140g black vinyl.

Tracklist:
01 Duck and Sally Inside
02 Consider Phlebus...
03 Fighting In the Captain's Tower