Boy King Islands was first played on NTS on 13 June 2017. Songs played include Blue In Black.

Friends and musical collaborators for nearly 20 years, Zachary Mastoon (better known as Caural) and Jason Hunt saw the first hints of Boy King Islands emerge in the summer of 1995. Outside in a park together at twilight, their improvisation unfolded as the basis for “Feeling Nowhere” - an emotive and melancholy progression magically unforgotten years later.

Named after a painting by the hugely prolific outsider artist Henry Darger, the duo of Boy King Islands was resurrected in the winter of 2002 when - then roommates - they stretched microphone chords around doors and through thin walls of their north side Chicago apartment to capture the beginnings of what would become their debut: buzzing Fender guitars with the gnarl of tube distortion; the tines of a Rhodes or the warm hum of a Wurlitzer; an mbira plucked through a wah pedal or a wooden box with broken glass and beads shook as percussion; and Mastoon’s whispery and always doubled vocals swimming in a wash of crashing cymbals.

Their signature sound grew to encompass more psychedelic influences and diverse orchestration over the next two albums ("Sun Worship" and the Kickstarter-funded "White Mirror"), but they remained true to their experimental aesthetic, carving out a unique and noisy niche in the ever-evolving non-genre of "rock music".

Now based in the Bay Area, Boy King Islands continues as the solo project of Zachary Mastoon.