by Robert Ham
![music-albronia-lp.jpg]()
Abronia makes music for the even-tempered, the patient, the stoic. This Portland outfit—made up of members of Ghost to Falco, Million Brazilians, and more—reveals the core of their songs with quiet exactitude on their debut album, Obsidian Visions/Shadowed Lands.
Opening track “The Great Divide” ambles along for a full minute and a half on a dusty trail of Benjamin Blake and Eric Crespo’s guitar lines before the rest of the sextet explodes into view like the first glimpse of sunrise. The song then settles into push-pull, quiet-loud dynamics that are the standard operating procedure for all woozy, Morricone-inspired instrumentals, but those first moments set a strong template for this humbly powerful collection.