Garden of Fainting Stars

The Books of Knots, the Brooklyn-based quartet featuring members of Skeleton Key, Pere Ubu and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, return for the final chapter in their "By Sea, By Land, By Air" trilogy with Garden of Fainting Stars. The ten-track album was recorded in 2010 with core band members: Joel Hamilton (Sparklehorse), Matthias Bossi (Skeleton Key), Carla Kihlstedt (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum) and Tony Maimone (Pere Ubu). An impressive array of guest musicians took part including Blixa Bargeld, Mike Watt, Mike Patton, and Patton's former Mr. Bungle cohort/current Secret Chiefs 3 ringleader Trey Spruance. Where the previous release, Traineater, focused on the American rust belt and The Book of Knots' self-titled debut explored all things nautical, Garden of Fainting Stars tackles the final frontier: space. In the band's own words: "The imagined utopias that await doomed travelers and early astronauts at the other end of their fantastical journeys inevitably give way to the grim realization which mankind has faced again and again: At every hopeful turn, commonplace realities await us. A vast and empty universe stretching far beyond infinity, capable of containing the countless imaginary creatures, civilizations and otherwise terrestrial impossibilities that inhabit our dreams, dies in the fluorescent lighting of the laundry soap aisle at Walmart. Once again, we cast a wormless, rusty hook into the lifeless seas of the music industry, expecting to reap only sorrow."