Biography
Formed in Seattle, Washington in 2006, Geist and the Sacred Ensemble began as a partnership between frontman Michael Sauder and percussionist Samuel Yoder. Their music fuses dark folk, Eastern mysticism-informed psych-rock, and doom-laden Americana that echoes Wooden Wand & the Vanishing Voice, Calexico, and Six Organs of Admittance. Ennio Morricone and George Crumb rank among the cited inspirations, alongside Sauder's time in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he worked as a grave digger. These elements shape the group's highly cinematic, largely acoustic, semi-apocalyptic doom folk approach. The first recording appeared in 2008 as a self-titled EP issued under the name Geist & Samuel Joseph. The following year the project grew from a duo into a small collective and took the official Geist and the Sacred Ensemble title. Their debut full-length album, In Search of Fabled Lands, arrived in 2011 on cassette through the Seattle independent Translinguistic Other. Several years afterward the cassette Beyond This Vessel surfaced on the Oakland, California-based Moon Glyph label.