A “music and art project” from 23-yearold Ben Asbury of Atlanta, Ga., Axxa/Abraxas is the product of the artist’s fascination with the evolution of psychedelia from the ‘60s on through to the Elephant 6 era and further enhanced by his outstanding silk-screen art. Asbury wrote many of the tracks on Axxa’s eponymous debut while he was in college. However, with the production help of Jarvis Taveniere of Woods, songs like “Going Forth,” “Beyond The Wind” and “Painted Blue” are fashioned into scrappy pop gems that come off like Alex Chilton if he had gone right from the Box Tops to working on The
Cramps’ Gravest Hits EP. From the sound of Axxa/Abraxas, this is only the tip of the iceberg for this bright new talent in the Captured Tracks family.