Some music rattles your bones; this one is the bones. Don Haugen's "Bass Bones + Cross Tones" is an artifact resurrected from limbo - recorded live in 2016 and shelved when the original label collapsed, it now sees the light of day thanks to No Part Of It. Like a message in a bottle sent across the ocean of time, this release feels both of its era and timeless, a peculiar séance of sound sources that hum with life and tension.

The piece unfolds across two sides (or two movements, if you prefer): "Bass Bones + Cross Tones 1-3" and "4-6". It’s all live, no overdubs, a feat as raw and immediate as the materials Haugen employs. The ingredients are spare but strangely magical: steel wires played with E-bows, test oscillators, and an antique Eico 488 Electronic Switcher. Together, they conjure a world where industrial grit meets ghostly whispers.

From the first hum of vibrating steel, you’re drawn into a soundscape that feels like it’s building its own architecture around you - cold, metallic walls and shimmering, oscillating ceilings. The test oscillators lend an almost alien precision, a clinical backdrop to the organic tension of the vibrating wires. It’s music that breathes with the uneasy cadence of machines dreaming.

Side A ("Parts 1-3") begins with what feels like a survey of sound textures, a slow exploration of what these odd instruments can do together. By Part 3, it’s as if the music has found its rhythm - not a beat, but a kind of pulse, a magnetic resonance that pulls you into its inner workings.

Side B ("Parts 4-6") is where the ghosts come out to play. The tones warp and fragment; the hums crackle and dissolve into eerie, fragmented echoes. There's a meditative quality here, but it’s the kind of meditation you might do in a haunted factory - your breath steady, but your skin prickling.

Haugen’s genius lies in his restraint. There’s no rush to impress, no clutter - just raw, carefully curated vibrations. The result is something like a sonic sculpture, each part existing to complement the other. At moments, you’re reminded of early experimental works by Alvin Lucier or Pauline Oliveros, but Haugen’s voice is distinctly his own, rooted in a minimalist ethos but unafraid to let the music’s imperfections shine through.

And if nothing else, it serves as a testament to the power of persistence: a lost album that has finally found its way into the world, vibrating with all the strange beauty of a wire stretched tight over time. Bravo, Don Haugen. Bravo.