ABOUT
ØRyne Warner is an experimental country musician from the Appalachian foothills of southeastern Ohio, currently based in northern New Mexico.
He has collaborated with artists such as legendary pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn, trance-punk painter Arrington de Dionyso, Tara Jane O'Neil, Karl Blau, Jef Brown (Jackie-O Motherfucker), Mark Hosler (Negativland), Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie), Ray Raposa (Castanets), Alex McMahon (Handsome Family) and many others.
For over 10 years he led a fluid group called OHIOAN, whom developed a style called High Country that drew on free jazz, classic country, noise, drone, north African assouf, and Appalachian folk. The bands final recording, EMPTY/EVERY MT, was a concept album based on destructive mining in America, and brought together the influences of Tuareg blues and American banjo music to create a Desert Appalachia sound in order to represent the eventual barren wasteland of coal country.
Since icing the band, Warner has formed a new group named Natural Lite and shifted his High Country to a keener focus, incorporating outside influences from JPEGmafia to Jai Paul. The new approach explores subtle ways to twist, distort, and subvert traditions that hopefully confuse and unsettle the listener - especially in a live setting - while still presenting the patina of a regular-ass country songwriter.
Utilizing the sampler and other experimentations to force the music into direct dialog with racism, hiphop, and the culture of Country Music itself.
We must break down and fractalize the old, so that we can be something new. “Post-Country,” not just as music but as a perspective that could extricate our music from nationalism. Country Music's lyrics, themes, and tropes hit very different when forced to be in a modern context.
To be sure: Country Music, as it stands, is cosplay. A fucking LARP. The last atavistic refuge of whiteness.
"Americana" is just Liberal MAGA
Fuck that.
Let's get to work.