Haus Arafna - You (You Without Yourself)If I were a PR person who wanted to write a super-reductive tagline for Haus Arafna, I might say: Haus Arafna is something like Tennis if Tennis had gone on an eight-month sojourn to hell (old hell, the bad part) instead of sailing along the seaboard. Or like Tennis if Tennis decided to record using the same methods that Lightning Bolt uses. Or like Tennis if Kevin Drumm had produced their LP.Haus Arafna is actually only like Tennis in the fact that this band is made up of a husband and wife. The Lightning Bolt and Kevin Drumm descriptions are apt though--this music is hard and dark and rough (and seductive). I suspect that contact mics play a big part in everything Haus Arafna does (recording, shopping, decorating, landscaping). Mr. Arafna sings on "You (You Without Yourself)," and he fluctuates between a kind of oratorical mania and listless mumbling, doing so in a way that complements the instrumentation. This is the type of singing that matches up with this type of song: these styles are married to each other. (I love this album)[Buy "You"]Also the title of this post is taken from a line in Keston Sutherland's actually mind-blowing poem "The Stress Position".