After haunting the outer-lands of San Francisco's music world for the better part of two decades, Seth Augustus has emerged, full-born, with a fully realized sound and perspective that seems to exist outside of time and the limits of geography. Coarse and primitive textures, pre-war blues, hypnagogic tales told over tangos by midnight buskers, Seth's own sinister-electrified guitar and a stripped down drum kit mingle with the rhythms of early American folk and jazz, the cadences of carnival sounds and more than a little 60s-era Captain Beefheart. And that voice, gravel rough yet melodic, capable of intricate subtleties, tonalities and harmonics, as if risen from some horse-trading minstrel wandering on the Tuvan Steppe. Perhaps the music of Seth Augustus was not meant to be recorded, but played into the night under giant tents, to congregations of the afflicted and those yearning for deliverance. Perhaps a pack of mules should be listening in from the outside. But for now, everyone will have to settle for his debut CD, To the Pouring Rain.