Old Saw – Dissection Maps

Anxious magazine Old Saw – Dissection Maps

Old Saw, the enigmatic New England collective led by Henry Birdsey (Tongue Depressor), return with their third long-playing record, Dissection Maps.

It is not enough to trace the fields.

The choreo-cartographic demands the casting of stone, a grassfire, a carnival; something with which to rupture the horizontality of existence and imagine the vertical.

Earth is the eighth morning, folded against the week’s work.
The field is a line drawing of oblivion.
The house is a forest in the shape of a womb.
America is a quarry in the image of god.

(Aidan Patrick Welby – 2024)


“The band captures the American stretch, the spaces in-between and the hollowness that haunts us along those routes…fades the radio to static to let the nothingness linger among the soul.” (Raven Sings the Blues)

“…evokes an ambience of prayer-like solemnity that celebrates something decidedly terrestrial, what the label describes…  more

releases June 21, 2024

J.M. Eagle: banjo, pedal steel, bagpipes, resonator guitar
Ryder Tarbox: tape loops (1, 6)
Ann Rowlis: organ, bells, rattles (1, 3, 4, 5)
Addison Starkweather-Price: harmonica (1, 2, 4, 5)
Grainger Farnsworth: lap steel, electric bass (1, 3, 4, 5)
Reana Doram: lyre, hammered dulcimer (3, 6)

Recorded on 1/4″ tape in 2021-2022 at different locations in New England

Mastering: Joe Caithness
Art Layout: Scott Duffey