Here's the moody, massive return of Scott "Wino" Weinrich's state-of-the-art progressive stoner rock power trio, their third full-length. Wino's gnarled croon and distinctive, fat guitar tone is at this point a national treasure (of the Doomed Nation that is), and The Resurrection Of Whiskey Foote gives all of us fans another chance to bask in his dark glory. Bassist Bruce Falkinberg performs his share of vocal duties as well, belting out the lead on several songs with a sort of ragged Blackie Lawless rasp, sounding better than previous albums when we wondered why the heck Wino wasn't singing all the songs.
The Hidden Hand is sort of like an advanced version of Wino's previous outfit Spirit Caravan: more adventurous, more complex, more melodic. The songs here range from plodding psych to raging grunge, calling to mind Sabbath (of course), the Southern rock of Skynyrd, and (thus) Pepper-era Corrosion Of Conformity. The 46 year old Wino is definitely keeping one foot in the '70s here, as always... and the other in the 1700s, as apparently this album ("thinking man's" stoner rock for sure) has a semi-conceptual historical fiction storyline having to do with the made-up title character in post Revolutionary War America. It's all very cryptic of course, but we think perhaps reference is being made to the anti-tax Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s, that was squashed by President Washington. That would fit in with what we know to be Wino's suspicions about our Federal government today. Hmm, well while we take Wino's conspiratorial notions with a grain of salt, we are fully accepting of his powerful guitar riffs! And we never before thought that taking AP American History in high school would help us review a stoner rock record...
Ok, Wino/stoner rock fans. Time to decide how big a fan you really are. This split features two quite excellent new tracks from Wino's current outfit, The Hidden Hand. Like their debut album from last year, they have injected a greater dose of conspiracy theory and musical chops into the music of Wino's previous outfits Spirit Caravan and The Obsessed, resulting in what we might term "advanced stoner rock". Heavy in so many ways. Then there's also two tracks from newcomers Wooly Mammoth, another stoner rock outfit who play music that's kinda groovy and grungy and almost as heavy as The Hidden Hand. In addition, there's a bonus Meteor City label sampler disc, with unreleased/upcoming tracks from the likes of Atomic Bitchwax, Black Nasa, The Obsessed, Weedeater, Yob and others. So, here's the decision part. Are you into Wino enuff to pay $15 for two songs? And/or are you into stoner rock enough to pay $15 for the sampler and the two Wooly Mammoth tracks, along with the two Hidden Hand cuts? Time for some careful cost/benefit ratiocination. If it helps, remember that the sampler has an old Yob demo track on it from '99.
East Bay's Del tha Funkee Homosapien and crew return with some alternative hiphop.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another limited-edition, probably-already-gone, get-it-quick-we-can't-get-more slab of desirable and oh so psychedelic vinyl from the fine folks/freaks at Eclipse and Galactic Zoo Disk, who have here captured the guitar and synth wielding dancin' king of Acid Mothers Temple and Tsurabami fame in his full droned-out glory...A colorful sunburst of solo electronic lullabies for flying pigs and other Floydian frienz.
Earlier this year when we reviewed School Of The Flower, the latest from modern day acid folk hero Ben Chasny's Six Organs Of Admittance, we mentioned that Ben had become obsessed with the music of one Gary Higgins, an obscure '70s hippie singer/songwriter whose lone LP from 1973, Red Hash, had developed something of a cult following over the decades, not that all that many people had even ever heard OF it, let alone actually heard it. But those who had all spoke highly of its mystic beauty, mysterious aura, and so forth. Ben covered a Higgins song on School Of The Flower, and asked that if anyone knew of his whereabouts to let Drag City know. Apparently that paid off, 'cause now Drag City *has* managed to track down Mr. Higgins and properly reissue Red Hash on cd to enlighten all of us to its wonders. And we bet Ben is excited to now be labelmates with one of his heroes! (They've even performed together in recent months!)
Kicking off with the song that Six Organs' covered, "Thicker Than A Smokey", Red Hash immediately lives up to its reputation as a hidden treasure of psychedelic folk music, oft slow and sad and melancholically melodic. There's a lost and lonely vibe to a lot of this, with Gary's gentle singing and acoustic guitar backed by friends playing piano, cello, mandolin, flute and more. Together they weave eleven tracks of entrancing dope smoking folk music, drifting, sometimes dreary, but always oh so lovely. The freakiness is mainly in the lyrics, which can be quite interestingly cryptic and weird, often regarding the worried wandering and woes of a young man, while the music remains alluringly melodic and inwardly calm. Though, with a deeper voice and more urgent tone, the Beefheartian "Down On The Farm" stands out as more menacing (and humorous) than the rest.
This remastered Drag City reish is really nicely done, with a full-colour booklet of photos and lyrics. Two (lesser) bonus tracks are also included, "Last Great Sperm Whale" from 1975 and "Don't Ya Know" from sometime in the early '80s. But the album alone is a gem and shines just a bright now as it did briefly back in '73. By the way, one reason for its obscurity is that shortly after the LP's original release, Higgins was sent away to prison to do a two-year stretch on a pot bust... so it must be really nice for him to gain some belated recognition nowadays.
The return of Mr. Higgins after what, 40 years almost? He was cool when we saw him live at the Swedish American Hall a year or so ago, his voice definitely older, gruffer, but otherwise sounding like the Higgins of old.
Amazing, and ultra limited, made to order, hand carved lathe cut from our favorite modern day musical shaman Dan Higgs, he of Lungfish and assorted amazing solo recordings. Two tracks, each exclusive to this disc, an ultra thick black lathe cut, with printed / hand written labels, and housed in a thick, old school green paper sleeve stamped with the label info and the tracks hand written on the sleeve. So gorgeous.
And the music is appropriately gorgeous as well. The A side is a long droney chunk of twisted Eastern raga tinged neo-Appalachia as only Higgs can do it. Tangled melodies, gnarled arrangements, droney and buzzy, haunting and minor key, the track always shifting from dreamy finger picked bliss to pulsing blown out raga to spaced out psychedelia, all on an acoustic guitar. So good.
The flipside is a "Recitation" by Mr. Higgs, and is a total mind blower. Obviously recorded on a handheld microcassette recorder, complete with the 'thunk' of the stop and record buttons, as well as lots of sibilance and background hiss. But the voice is immediately recognizable, and the words... confusingly brilliant, surreal, so evocative and vivid, sometimes beautiful and tender, sometimes horrific, and other times completely baffling, somehow as dreamy and easy to listen to as the guitar on the other side. But to understand it all, that's another story. Too much for mere mortals we're afraid, but so goddamn fascinating.
These are custom made to order, and are thus SUPER EXPENSIVE and SUPER LIMITED. We got a handful, we probably can get more when we run out, but it might take a while, so if you miss this first batch, be prepared to be patient...
Last list we reviewed an amazing art book, featuring a selection of made up and imagined 7" sleeves from Boredoms leader Yamantaka Eye, from the awesome Soundscreen Design publishing house. This time around, we have another book in the same series, this one from Daniel Higgs, who most folks might know as the frontman for Baltimore hypnorockers Lungfish, or for any of is amazing solo records, or for his guest spot on the new record from Swedish outfit Skull Defekts (one of this week's Records Of The Week), but in addition to all his musical endeavors, Higgs is also an incredible artists, paintings, drawings collages, much of his artwork adorns the various records he's made, but he was also a legendary tattoo artist, until giving it up a few years back, and his artwork, both tattoos and otherwise are super distinct, while being incredibly varied. This book is a small sampling of Higgs work from the last decade, and it features gorgeous reproductions of various paintings, drawings and collages, many of which will be immediately recognizable to fans of his artwork (or even his music, what with the various aforementioned album covers).
The cover features a typical Higgs piece, that is equal parts, drawing, diagram, diary page, with strange words, mysterious drawings, not to mention some credits for the book mixed in, while the back cover features a super striking ballpoint pen self portrait on a rich colored background.
Inside it's all over the place, from simple shapes, lots of words, and designs incorporating letters, references to God and Satan and the Bible, simple sketches, gorgeous full color paintings, striking drawings, strange shapes, all very psychedelic and abstract, culminating in a piece of lined paper on the final page, just a list of words, from vulva to cosmos, fountain to aether, temporal to blossom, headdress to phallus, aura to flux, crag to spider, cistern to torpedo, throng to crater, sphinx to echo, luminous to spectral and on and on and on. So simple, but so strangely mysterious and alluring and impossible to decipher, like all of Higgs' work. What mysterious messages lurk in the shapes and the colors and the arrangements of words, part of the magic. Needless to say, fantastic stuff. And like the Eye book, comes packaged in a 10" style record sleeve.
Back in stock, at long last. Lower price!
Daniel Higgs is the singer for the band Lungfish and is an absolute modern day shaman. (And solo artist, whose Ancestral Songs album was a recent AQ Record Of The Week.) His presence in person and on stage is absolutely mesmerizing. In another time he would have ruled the world, or been burned at the stake, or had his own cult. But instead, he has carved out a wholly unique musical niche. In Lungfish, his stream of consciousness vocals, add a distinctly spiritual quality to Lungfish's droning repetitive caveman krautrock jams. On this here solo record, Higgs weaves a buzzing melodic otherworld, all from the sounds of a single Jews Harp. Those of you not familiar with the instrument, it's a small loop of steel with a thin strip of metal in the middle. The player plucks the strip of steel making it vibrate, and uses the shape of their mouth and position of their lips to change the tone and timbre. Same sort of method for the the 'talk box'. The results here are divine, droning, alien buzzing rhythms, slowly shifting and stuttering, with strange overtones drifting and colliding, before slipping into vibrating harmony. Imagine a sitar run through a metal digeridoo, held up against your mouth so you could sort of 'vocalise' the notes. Weird and so wonderful.
Daniel Higgs, of Lungfish and the Pupils, is one of the very few contemporary artists who we would absolutely consider a sort of modern day shaman. A musical alchemist, an artistic cypher, an abstract philosopher, a strangely charismatic, yet disarmingly humble master of any artistic endeavor he puts his mind to. A legendary (but now retired) tattoo artist, an incredible painter, whose paintings are at once hallucinatory and gorgeous (one painting adorns the cover of Leviathan's Tentacles Of Whorror record) and of course an incredible musician, whose sonic experiments range from the mesmeric riffrock of his band Lungfish, to an entire record of solo Jew's harp. But in addition to being an incredible lyricist, an amazing vocalist, and a master of the Jew's harp, Higgs is also a seriously mean guitar player, with a style and sound as familiar as it is totally alien. A gorgeous buzzing steel string drift through the cosmos. Lengthy droning ragas, that drift hypnotically from deconstructed Appalachia to John Cale like slow-shifting skree (joined on those tracks by violin), to moody melancholy crawls, to thick serpentine swirls of snake charmer melody and reverberating steel string shimmer. Raw and lo-fi for sure, but so darkly emotional, and dreamily hypnotic. We've been listening to this non stop since we got it and it continues to unfold more and more on each listen, we're thinking seriously about grabbing a boombox, taking a ton of peyote, blasting this tape and laying in the thick grass, sprawled naked on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere, beneath a sparkling moonlit sky. In other words, WAY RECOMMENDED!
SUPER LIMITED of course. In spiffy, ultra cryptic packaging.
Modern day shaman Daniel Higgs returns with a two disc collection of songs and poems recorded (mostly) in LA last year with production wizard David Andrew Sitek of TV On The Radio. Higgs has been blowing minds here in the Bay Area since his temporary relocation to Oakland, and we were even fortunate enough to have him grace us with a wonderful in store performance not too long ago. The material on Say God perfectly captures what a Daniel Higgs performance is, with minimal but highly effective musical accompaniment to go along with Higgs' unique brand of poetry delivered in his amazing, rich voice, an instrument unto itself. Some people may be confused by the direction Higgs has followed in recent years, after all, this might initially seem to be the farthest thing from Lungfish's dense psychedelic songcraft. But throughout his musical journey, Higgs has maintained a completely singular creative approach, and his solo work reflects this as much as anything he's ever done. The interesting thing is how his albums blur the lines between what Daniel Higgs is: musician, artist, poet, singer, soundmaker, Interdimensional Song-Seamstress, etc. The end results are pretty much unlike anything else, and it's not surprising how many people are moved by this stuff, especially after seeing the man perform.
Disc 1 opens with current best song title of all time, "Hoofprints On The Ceiling Of Your Mind," which actually was recorded at a live performance in Germany, with Higgs announcing, "Holy Bible time" to what we can imagine was a stunned crowd. His vocals are accompanied by simple drone and a slight shaker rhythm. His voice carries the melody to new heights as he assures listeners that he intends to appeal to their (and our) standards of songcraft. Not surprisingly, he succeeds. "Song For Azariah" features a mournful folky Appalachian melody played on a banjo that also hints at some eastern influences. The lucky few who were able to snap up Higgs' super limited Hymnprovisations banjo freakout lp can certainly attest his ability on the instrument, and this only reaffirms that. "Say God" features some awesome trademark melodies from Higgs Lungfish/Pupils cohort and underrated guitar hero Asa Osborne, who some of you might also know from his Zomes project. Listening to this, you will wonder when and where this stuff is coming from. It possesses a strange timeless appeal, even though it may not be for everyone. Either way, it's something totally unique, and Osborne's guitar sweeps majestically beneath Higgs' vocals with some amazing results before ending with "A Message From The Beautiful", another piece with just harmonium and voice.
The second disc begins with "Root & Bough", with Higgs sounding a bit like a manlier Devendra Banhart (or maybe it should be Banhart we are comparing to Higgs?) as he recites a lengthy poem with a simple shruti box accompaniment. One of the best things about Higgs as a performer is his spontaneity, and these recordings represent the actual moment, with Higgs even coughing here and there to clear his throat. The power of his voice defines the song, and while definitely droney at times, unlike super blown out electric guitar drones, things here are much more intimate as Higgs weaves out his own mythology which will certainly keep you wondering for a while. At around the 6 minute mark, things take a dramatic shift as a heavy synth drone sweeps in, sounding like what you might expect from Expo '70 or Emeralds. Little whispy melodies begin to flutter about for a few minutes before returning to the drone that characterized the song earlier. About 12 minutes in (uh, did we mention that these are some long songs?), Higgs begins repeating the word "Sing" in a rhythmic pace. Make no mistake, this takes some patience to listen to, but the results are well worth the wait. It's not like you would expect little 3 minute pop songs with this guy, and you have to pay attention to even begin to understand what's going on in his world. However, the next song, "Jewel Of The East" is actually quite brief, a nice folky number performed on what might be a pump organ, it sounds like something you might find on the Wicker Man soundtrack. The song is repetitive and performed with the same loop like attention of Lungfish and Pupils. "Tumble Down" features Higgs' voice with no instrumentation save the sounds of crickets chirping outside. His natural vibrato is in good form as he goes from singing to speaking, all the while keeping things nice and tuneful. "Christ Among Us" finds Higgs breaking out his banjo again, always a joy to listen to. He also tells us, "This song possesses portal power", and one can tell he means it, as this is some transcendental stuff for sure.
We may be going out on a limb here, but some of us feel this is Higgs' strongest solo endeavor as of yet and a great place to start for the uninitiated. Say God is weird, mystical, and beyond comprehension (in a good way of course), but Higgs is the kind of artist with rabidly devoted fans who will no doubt agree with this album's absolute majesty.
Super limited tape from modern musical shaman Daniel Higgs, he formerly of the late great Lungfish as well as Lungfish offshoot the Pupils. By now, most readers of the aQ list are familiar with Higgs, post Lungfish, having carved out a truly unique niche for himself, creating distinctly personal, spiritual music, in all manner of sonic forms, whether it's solo jaw harp, banjo drones, or tranced out vocal mesmer.
All of those come into play here, a dizzying, tripped out, psychedelic melding of Higgs's peculiar hypno-poetry and his visionary modern minimalism, the opening track here a dense swirl of programmed primitive rhythms, some sort of drones, harmonium maybe? What sounds like banjo and jaw harp, all blurred and tangled into a churning backdrop for Higgs' entrancing vocals, which sort of sets the template for the rest of the tape, even tracks like the second one here, which begins all warm and warbly, just a wheezing chordal drone, soon blossoms into a dizzying soft chaos of layered rhythms, looped voices, and mysterious chants. Here and there, Higgs does break it down, at one point, a reverb drenched banjo (?) is wreathed in reverb and unfurls a fluttery bit of folky psychedelic mesmer, and there's bits that sound like some sort of alien Appalachia, but it all fits perfectly into Higgs' wonderfully warped sonic worldview.
EXTREMELY LIMITED! These are likely the last copies we'll be able to get!!
The latest in the ongoing Latitudes series comes from none other than the mighty Daniel Higgs, former world renowned tattoo artist, former vocalist for the late great Lungfish, sometime member of Skull Defekts, and current wandering sonic shaman, whose performances range from strange spoken word, solo jaw harp, cosmic banjo, and even maniacal musical laughter. We never know what to expect from a new Higgs record, but are rarely disappointed, and more often then not, super surprised. For this Latitudes session, it's mostly Higgs with just a banjo, playing his own distinctive brand of cosmic bluegrass, dense and melodic, tranced out and cyclical, loping and mesmeric but often building to frenzied melodic tangles, his vocals in the beginning almost conversational, until in swoops some droning harmonium, and Higgs switches to a fantastic alien glossolalia, that harmonium, droning meditatively, but laced with wild melodic squiggles, Higgs, his vocals getting more and more dramatic and operatic, until finally the harmonium fades out, never to return, leaving Higgs to weave an expansive sprawl of haunting, almost liturgical sounding banjo music, equal parts apocalyptic and reverential, a long stretch of intricate instrumental mesmer, droned out and psychedelic, heady and near transcendental, culminating in one final vocal, Higgs delivering the titular line, before one final burst of tangled psychedelic alien bluegrass finishing things off.
Like all Latitudes releases, both the cd and the vinyl are housed in that immediately recognizable brown and white packaging, the lp with a fancy die cut, the cd an origami style fold over sleeve, both with original Higgs artwork rendered on the front in pink embossed metallic reflective ink, and both with a full color printed insert. The cd limited to 500 copies, the lp to 1000 copies.
The second tape in as many weeks from our favorite modern day punk rock shaman, the venerable Daniel Higgs, former frontman for post punk hypnorockers Lungfish, Higgs has forged a truly idiosyncratic sonic path, and this latest missive is another gorgeous collection of abstract minimal ragas and strange spoken word mystery.
All three tracks here were recorded in a redwood room perched above a waterfall in Big Sur, captured on a handheld cassette recorder, so the sound is lo-fi, but raw and intimate, the opener, the 10+ minute "The Elemental Conflux at Big Sur", an extended banjo improvisation, one that flits from cyclical and mesmeric, to dense and percussive, to spaced out and droney, the banjo augmented here and there by wordless vocals, a gorgeously hypnotic epic that blossoms directly into "Return", which sounds like some classic folk song, Higgs' powerful vocals soaring over a skeletal melodic framework, equal parts abstract raga, and strange old timey shanty, the vibe intense and darkly personal, and like the track before it, hypnotic, and subtly cyclical.
The whole B side is taken up by an extended version of Higgs' haunting sermon "Say God", stretched out to over 100 VERSES, a truly fascinating and perplexing spiritual poem, that even sans music, manages to be utterly mesmerizing, and listening to Higgs verbalize his visions, and lay out his cosmic ideology, his tribute to his version of a God almighty, one seemingly of nature, and humanity and the universe (and most likely not -that- God), it's easy to imagine him as some Yahowha style cult leader, or the head of his own mysterious church, which really, in a way, he sort of already is!
As always, absolutely recommended. And gorgeously packaged in an origami style fold out cardboard cassette case, printed in reflective gold, and hand numbered, with a textured paper obi, a full color insert, with another insert with the liner notes AND a download coupon.
Latest collection of mysterious musical missives from this modern day musical shaman, Daniel Higgs, he of the late great Lungfish, who transformed that band's penchant for looped cyclical noise rock, into his own brand of haunting hymn-like spiritual ragas. The main instrument here is banjo, but not played like any banjo you've ever heard, plucked and strummed, Higgs coaxing from the instrument a gorgeous array of sounds both melodic and textural, the buzzing notes layered and woven into a droned out buzz, a gorgeously hypnotic Eastern tinged mesmer, laced with mysterious spoken word segments, strange vocalizations. All super low fidelity, the sound constantly shifting, the ker-chunk of the button on the tape machine as much a part of the sound as the jagged primitive edits, and the dreamily lovely melodies, the sound is intimate and urgent, hypnotic and dreamy, there's even some primitive drum machines, which transform the sound, however briefly, into a strange sort of lo-fi krautrock, reminiscent of German Oak's bunker explorations, but way more abstract and psychedelic.
We could go on and on, but by now, most readers of the aQ list are well familiar with Higgs, and won't need much coaxing to grab one of these, especially considering it's LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, which means once these are gone, it's not entirely clear if we'll be able to get more...
We'd be happy if Daniel Higgs would put out a new album every month. Every week, even. His songs can be long (up to 14 minutes on this disc's "Love Abides") but eventually they do end and we always want more more more. Because they are totally entrancing, his raw "Appalachian raga" folk guitar picking style wending and winding while he chants his mystic lyrics repetitively, warbling with the outsider intensity of a Charles Manson... a dramatic delivery that eccentrically enhances the weird wisdom of his words, worth absorbing for their imagery even when their import is not immediately understandable. Well though he's not THAT prolific we're happy to have this new disc on Holy Mountain already, following Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot on Thrill Jockey earlier this year.
Metempsychotic Melodies (whatever that means, it seems like a good title for this!!) starts off with a stark and skillful instrumental, "Universal Salutation", which we're told was "recorded aboard the Starship Weep-For-Lucifer". Again, we believe it, that somehow makes sense. That leads into the aforementioned "Love Abides", an extended mantra for voice and guitar, wherein Higgs sings lines like "Love is the secret seam between waking and dream / love is a breath that bears a boundless scream" and offers up further thoughts from his personal gnosis of love, notions guaranteed to never be repeated in any other "love song" ever!! Such as: "Love, like a basilisk hatched in the nest of a dove / love's got a bible it hides in the folds of a cloud" and "Love is your name when your name has fallen away / love tends the last dawning of the last day"...
As if allowing an interlude to let all that sink in, the third track "Leontocephaline Rhapsody" is a loping, psychedelic instrumental, a gentle jam densely droning and alive with electricity. Then comes the fourth and final song, "All Cherished Things", another display of Higgs' druggy, fascinating poetry. "There's a pearl in your head / the head between your double-head / it's flashing blue and red - hear it sing". He goes on to touch upon some favored themes, Christ, Krishna, coitus, his own dead body, love... Lyrics like "The skull at the foot of the cross is my own" could be creepy, or pretentious, as could be Higgs' unique vocal stylings, but no, not as far as we're concerned. Ok, maybe it is a bit creepy. He's on a wavelength that works (for him -- maybe no one else could pull this off). If Higgs had a cult, we'd seriously consider joining it...truly a treasure of the US indie rock scene, and one of the realest deals in the "acid folk" underground. We'll be spinning this highly recommended album with ceremonial regularity as it takes its honored place in our collection of his music, and of course our anticipation of his next set of shamanic sermons remains high.
Daniel Higgs is a very strange man. Or maybe we should say, Daniel (Arcus Incus Ululat) Higgs, Interdimensional Song-Seamstress, is a very strange man. His artwork is amazing and bizarre, Spock ears and eye-balled Christmas trees, emaciated figures riding strange hellish beasts, an amazing personal mythology represented as a menagerie of impossible and impossibly beautiful figures and beasts. His music seems to somehow embody the same mystery, a world that Higgs inhabits simultaneously to his presence in our own. That must be the only thing that can truly explain the man and his music. That he walks around, one foot in our world, of people places and things, the other in some kaleidoscopic world where sounds are tasted and sights are smelled, a synesthetic wonderland, that when translated and brought over to our plain of existence, appears distorted, twisted, haunting and hard to fathom. But at the same time imbued with some otherworldly warmth and a beauty that while alien, represents a higher state, maybe unreachable here. That is Higgs' gift. He is a traveler and a troubadour. He allows us to see visions, to hear musical mysteries. Through paintings, drawings, tattoos and especially music. From the moment we first heard his 'rock' band Lungfish we were smitten. Actually, the very first time we heard Lungfish was in a record store in another town, years ago. Our first thought was "What the hell is this?" But after several more songs, we were compelled to sheepishly approach the counter and ask the clerk what was playing. We bought it, and loved it. And maybe that's the magic of Higgs' music. It's esoteric and not always approachable. It takes some trust, a leap of faith, some sonic daring. But that faith is always repaid many times over. Outside of Lungfish, Higgs also plays in the Pupils along with his Lungfish bandmate Asa, a more intimate stripped down version of his rock band. The same cyclical riffs and chant like vocals, but all acoustic, and sparsely arranged. There is also his amazing sort-of Appalachian solo guitar work, and his very very strange solo Jew's harp recordings.
This disc is Higgs' first proper solo release and manages to tie up all his disparate sonic threads into one big gorgeous Gordian knot.
Several tracks sound like they could have come straight off the Pupils record. Simple, haunting acoustic guitar riffs, repeated and repeated until they becomes totally hypnotic, mantra like, with Higgs' gorgeous vocals over the top, a mix of old timey sea shanty and folk standard. The rest drift dreamily from sound to sound, like a sonic journey through the soul of the man. Gorgeous tangles of banjo or some banjo-like instrument drift amidst field recordings of birds (knowing Higgs it may have been actually recorded right there in the woods, although he has been known to travel with a portable recorder to capture whatever strikes his fancy) a steel string buzz, that wanders from near traditional sounding Appalachian twang to some sort of jaunty Celtic melody to brief melodic flurries, impossibly buzzy and blurry. Thick swaths of buzzing guitar swirl and squirm, doomy, melancholy melodies spread out over a machine like whir, sounding like a guitar being played like a bagpipe. While over the top drifts tiny tangles of steel string picking all drenched in strange FX and allowed to twist and distort, sounding almost the way a Jew's harp does when you change the shape of your mouth. And as if pre-ordained (which it most likely was), out comes the Jew's harp, but it sounds like no Jew's harp you've ever heard. Super brittle and distorted, like some sort of metallic marimba, or a Konono outtake broadcast via shortwave and played through a crappy transistor radio. A gorgeous buzzy abstract hoedown. Finally, the record winds up (most definitely not down) with a thick swirl of super lo-fi psych guitar freakout, the chords and notes bent and twisted, pitches slipping back and forth, overtones subtly shifting, notes colliding and exploding into little bursts of jagged buzz before settling back into a droning hypnotic thrum. Like some alien jig, if aliens had a practice space full of strangely tuned guitars and really loud amps with blown speakers. And again, it sounds like somehow Higgs figured out a way to hold the guitar up to his mouth and play it like a Jew's harp, the sounds changing shape as much as tone, a warm and fuzzed out smear of distorted buzz that washes over you, as does this whole sonic scripture, like a shower of rich wet soil and sparkling uncut diamonds.
It's practically been raining super limited Daniel Higgs releases around here lately, first there were two different cassettes over the last few weeks, and now this live cd-r, recorded in Greece back in 2011, and released in an edition of 200 copies. And as always it's impossible to predict what exactly we're in for with a new Higgs record. Could be banjo, could be jaw harp, could be a strange spoken word sermon, could be some strange mix of all three. But for this particular performance, it's shruti box and vocals, a 34 minute excerpt from a sprawling two hour performance, the shruti box wheezing, unfurling a lush chordal whir, soon Higgs invites the audience to lay down, he introduces himself, and then proceeds to weave a magical sonic spell, his vocals soaring dramatically, chanting one second a wild trilling almost operatic howl the next, all over that droned out shimmery backdrop. The sound so mesmerizing and hypnotic, trancelike and very much like a psychedelic sonic sermon. As we've mentioned in the past, it's not hard to imagine Higgs as some sort of mysterious cult leader, and these recordings some strange series of rituals where the knowledge of the ancients is passed down to willing supplicants. So moving, emotional, and passionate, and yet another mysterious missive from our favorite modern day sonic shaman. Obviously, way recommended, but get one quick, cuz it's LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!! Each one hand numbered. We got about 25 and most likely will not be able to get more. Housed in nice thick textured paper sleeves, with super striking Higgs-as-skull artwork.
The return of our favorite modern day shamen, Mr. Daniel�Arcus Incus Ululat Higgs, maybe better known to some of you as Dan Higgs, the vocalist for the mighty Lungfish, or perhaps Higgs, the world renowned tattoo artist (now retired). A man who wears many hats: vocalist, painter, tattoo artist, poet, guitarist, master of the Jew's Harp, and who knows what else. We made Higgs' last full length�Ancestral Songs record of the week last year, and since this one is just as good, if not better, we figured it deserved the same honor.�
Truly one of the few modern day troubadours, Higgs is a mysterious traveling man, he'll occasionally show up at the store, looking as dapper and disheveled as ever, with tales of various explorations or experiences. The last time he stopped by, he had a little hand held tape recorder, and he had just returned from India, where he spent the whole time recording street musicians and crowds and animals and anything else that struck his fancy.�
His music has the same quality, a sort of restless rootlessness, that is at once warm and familiar, but strangely alien and indescribable. On�Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot, Higgs manages to weave all of his disparate sonic interests together into one seamless whole. Buzzing raga guitars, strange lo-fi field recordings, Jew's harp, all in varying states of fidelity, but the recording, the sound quality, the location and the background noise are as much a part of the music as the music itself.�
Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot begins with a burst of static, like a strong wind on a microphone, before Higgs' guitar begins to buzz like some snake charming ritual, an Eastern tinged Appalachia, a rustic raga, the string buzzing, lots of distortion and shifting overtones creating all sorts of glorious tonal color. Ragged and ramshackle but completely mesmerizing. The second track is a dizzying seasick assemblage of wheezing harmonium and pounded chimes, atonal melodies and streaks of feedback, eventually fading out and leaving just Higgs' guitar to buzz and shimmer, a sprawling sun balked stretch of gorgeously pastoral Appalachia. "Spectral Hues" is a stuttering collage of manipulated tones, using just the record and stop buttons on a tape player, a primitive swirl of tones, transformed into a haunting melody, each note separated by the weird swoop and bbbzzzzt of the button being depressed. The title track is Higgs in full on electric guitar mode, or at least what sounds like an electric guitar, wailing and howling chaotically, unfurling some sort of old time jig, before again fading into a 'nother steel string workout, this one distinctly Indian sounding, a dense tangled raga, the notes overlapping and the strings' buzz smearing the sounds into thick swaths of sonic blur. "Creation Moan" is another tripped out psychguitar freakout. A buzzing overdriven squall of tangled upper register skree and low end rumble, what sounds like some traditional folk song transformed into snarling, squirming, grinding crumbling distorted buzz. And finally the nine minute final track, a swirling ambient� drift, running water, some finger picked guitar, that suddenly winks out, leaving a wavering buzzscape, above which Higgs' Jew's Harp weaves haunting alien melodies, sometimes buzzing and reverberating, other times, speaking in tongues as Higgs sings into it. So haunting and unlike anything we've ever heard. Yet at the same time so strangely soothing, meditative and dreamlike.
It's always such a joy to step into Higgs' world, like traveling through the looking glass, or falling down the rabbit hole, and on the other side, in the mysterious world Higgs calls home, a world which we can only visit, and even in visiting, only see what hovers on the surface, we wander wide eyed and open eared, trying to take in everything we can before the record ends and we are pulled back into home, where we wait patiently for our next visit...
As if that weren't enough, the cd version comes with a full color hardcover book of Higgs' paintings and 'poetry', a series of cryptic acrostics to be more accurate. The�Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot series of paintings are all, like most of Higgs' work, strange and wondrous, here the focus is on enigmatic amorphous shapes, vividly colored, with all manner of textures and designs, stripes, polka dots, some of the shapes look like whales or fish, others like mushrooms, eyeballs, amoebas, shapeless heads, each filled with symbols, colors and patterns. The accompanying acrostics are cryptic and it's difficult to determine if they are related to the paintings they are beside, MUSIC, BIRDS, MIND, EDEN, PEACE, EMBRYO, BELOVED, COITUS... all offering up mysterious pearls of wisdom like "Always braid your silver serpents" or "Existence manifests between ravenous yellow orbs".�
The perfect visual accompaniment to Higgs' raw and primitive musical rituals...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This new record from High Aura'd is our first exposure to this one man band's gorgeous understated minimal dronescapes, which we discovered via the man himself, who is in fact a long time aQ customer, and who we're proud to say, makes some seriously breathtaking music. Two epic side long sprawls, both born from near silence, a slow building A side that emerges as a deep rumbling and lush layered shimmer, a blurred ambience that drifts in soft focus billows, buried abstract melodies hover over slow shifting textures, all flecked with buzz and whir and distant streaks of sound, a serious slab of deep listening or which active listening is well rewarded, with a sound that is super active below the surface, the keen eared will hear strange voices, and mysterious melodies, and all manner of evidence regarding some secret sound world within High Aura'd's already gorgeously obfuscated music. The A side blossoms into a hiss drenched slo-mo creep, gradually fading out in a cloud of chiming bells and buried rhythms, the sound melancholy and sweetly sorrowful.
The flipside opens with some seriously Koner like low end minimalism, a cavernous drift much like that which opened the record, again building gradually to swath of black buzz crunch, a grinding landscape of hum and thrum and muted howl which quickly collapses into a soft cacophony of what sounds like orchestral samples, burred and smeared into an epic blissed out dreamlike coda before slipping back into the shadows, and a more wistful, hushed final passage.
Some 'supergroups' seem more likely than others, often made up of guys who already played together, or who had shared histories, maybe toured together, but then there's this one, called The High Confessions, which barring some secret connections (which probably do exist), seems pretty dang mysterious and unlikely, but then the unlikely ones are always the best ones.
One part Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth, one part Chris Connelly of Ministry and Revolting Cocks, one part Sanford Parker (Minsk, Nachtmystium and Twilight) and one final part, Jeremy Lemos of White/Light, who has also recorded Smog and Stereolab among others. Wow. A pretty motley crew for sure, but it definitely works. And like all good collaborations, it never obviously points to a single member. There's definitely an industrial vibe, especially on the opener "Mistaken For Cops", with its Teutonic pound, and sung/spoken vox, but then there's spidery swirls of psychedelic guitar, thick washed out production, deep low end pulses, there's even a little bit of a proggy vibe as well. The 17 minute "Along Came The Dogs" begins with a rumbling stretch of black drones, and martial drums, sampled voices and collaged vocals, thick warbly low end synth buzz, a skeletal motorik pulse, which gradually transforms into a sort of industrial / krautrock hybrid, all swooping muddied electronics, a little bit Can or Faust, more sung/spoken vocals, this time tangled and overlapping, a strange sort of round almost, the jam wreathed in swirling clouds of buzz, and peppered with thick stabs of reverbed bass synth crunch, growing more and more stripped down and skeletal before finally grinding to a halt. Only to have "The Listener" creep in, a brooding moody drift, all minimal percussive pulse, driven by lush piano chords, and woozy dramatic vocals, shot through with bits of feedback, the vibe still pretty krauty, and proggy, spaced out and psychedelic.
"Dead Tenements" begins with a thick corrosive churn of synthdrone, which is soon joined by some smoldering guitar growl, some muted feedback, and an I-am-Iron-Man kick drum throb, before the vocals come in, a snarled croon, a gorgeously bleak sonic death march, that about halfway through explodes into something much more fierce, dense tribal drumming, the various strands of drones growing more incendiary, the vocals more intense, before dropping out completely and leaving the drums to drive an awesomely hypnotic heavy krautdrone coda, trancelike and divine. Finally, "Chlorine And Crystal" finishes things off, another brooding dirge, the bassline thick and distorted, wreathed in fuzz, the guitars crystalline and lysergic, a pop song slowed way down and transformed into a sort of depressive Wipers style ballad, albeit with a bit more crunch, a lumbering chunk of hypnorock dirgery, that seems to crumble as the track progresses, eventually leaving a strangely distorted rhythm, pounding it's way through a cloud of glistening harmonics, held aloft by some low slung bass fuzz, and a slowly fading industrial kraut groove.
As much as we've been flipping out over the recent spate of retrospective compilations coming from the newly re-activated Flying Nun label, it's not all just 'the good ol' days', as the label continues to push newer bands, although to be fair, High Dependency Unit are hardly a new band, having been kicking up a glorious noise rock racket for close to two decades now, and having recently reformed to perform as part of Flying Nun's 30th anniversary (!!), but this record is in fact, fairly new, or at least new-ish, released back in 2003, and now getting re-released on FN where it belongs, as it carries on the tradition of big gloomy psychedelic noise rock, as practiced most notably by the mighty Bailter Space, who might be the closest reference for HDU. Just give a listen to the first track, a barreling juggernaut of blown out, crunchy, heavy guitars, Sonic Youth-like soft noise, pummeling drums, buried vox, churning indie rock that explodes in dense surges of psych noise bliss. It's all we could do to make it past the first track. But these guys definitely have a soft side too. Check out the woozy bliss-pop of "Grace", that again looks to SY with its warped outsider avant pop, boy/girl vox, soaring synths and twisted guitar figures, it's sort of a slow jam, or a ballad maybe, but still it manages to be dense and layered and noisy, and actually now that we think of it reminds us a bit of the Swirlies too!
From there on out, it's a dizzying drift through pounding shoegaze noisepop blissouts, gorgeous sprawls of feedback drenched dreamdrone dirgery, stripped down gloom pop crush, dense guitar heavy churn, and finally, the record closes with a delicately atonal stretch of piano and acoustic guitar driven slowcore, still wreathed in swaths of soft noise and blurred effects, the result darkly lovely and subtly psychedelic.
Whoa! We always knew the High Llamas could craft soothing, dulcet sounds in fine fashion, but on Beet, Maize & Corn their pleasantly mellow stylings have mutated into Lawrence Welk-esque choral arrangements. Really! You can almost see the gents and ladies swaying in time to these candlelit orchestral numbers. The glorious horns and strings seem genuinely from another era. Quite remarkable and very very different from all that has come before in the High Llamas body of work. Not sure yet if it's our cup of Earl Grey... perhaps you might wish to take a sip for yourself.
The newest High Llamas album brings a bushel of musical pleasantries. Delving into a little different, more electronic territory from where they've ventured in the past, but sounding very very familiar at the same time. Perhaps, very much along the lines of Laetitia Sadier's (of Stereolab) lulling lalala's, or slow tinges of tiki cocktail-drenched exotica? Chiming vibes, reverb-y vibrato-y guitar and a scattering of blippy bleeps. Turn that bubble machine on, and float away.
Ladies and gentlemen, may we decant a new High Llamas album for your listening enjoyment? Ah yes, you can almost hear the tinkling of silverware on fine bone china as the dinner plates are cleared away at the supper club, and the elegant guests settle in for their after dinner mints, waltzing and musical performance. The follow-up to 2003's Beet, Maize & Corn, Can Cladders features more immaculately groomed, glorious orchestral pop from the golden quill of Sean O'Hagan that tiptoes delicately along the outskirts of Lawrence Welk's well manicured topiaried hedges (well, we don't know for sure that Mr. Welk had hedges let alone topiaried ones, but we can dream can't we?). We've always thought the High Llamas' presence on the Drag City label to be somewhat incongruous alongside the likes of Neil Michael Hagerty, Weird War, Brother JT, Neil Hamburger, U.S. Maple, and the Fucking Champs. But hey, don't we all need something a little soft'n'pretty every so often?! This is downright easy listening that's possibly just as palatable to the grannies as it is to the kids. Don't forget your doilies!
The band's new album Cold and Bouncy is even more full of blips and bleeps than the recent Hawaii. It's their most fully realized record and coincidentally the most Stereolabesque (but still delicate where Stereolab never are), bringing them closer to the final step in their eventual progression towards actually becoming Stereolab.
Excellent collection of remixes by Mouse on Mars, Cornelius, Kid Loco, Jim O'Rourke, Stock, Hausen and Walkman, Schneider TM (of Kreidler) and one they remixed themselves. This is really really good, simple, pleasant electronica that will please beginners and advanced folk alike.
The title is pretty self-explanatory... this is a super comprehensive double whammy of High Llamas splendor - ranging from the absolutely blissful Beach Boys-y harmonious tunes to that which teeters precariously on the border to your parents' finely executed, yet docile dinner music. The first disc compiles select tracks from their glistening pop albums Santa Barbara ('92), Gideon Gaye ('95), Hawaii ('96), Cold & Bouncy ('98), and Snowbug ('99). The second disc which contains the rare tracks is a particular delight for fans. Really, who doesn't like to discover some unheard gems of their favorite band? Many of the sweepingly beautiful instrumentals seem plucked straight out of the score of some '60s jetsetter flick. Heck, you might wanna make this your perfect soundtrack to a long evening spent sipping Shirley Temples and gently swaying with your sweetie.
Santa Barbara, billed as the High Llama's "lost" 1992 album, is closest to their debut Gideon Gaye in its overt Steely Dan worship. It's great.
Record number two from this mysterious drone-kraut styled duo. Their last disc was a huge hit around here, so we were pretty thrilled to get our hands on this one, a logical sonic extension of the first, delving deeper into some murky tripped out twilit soundworld.
The disc opens with shimmering clouds of gongs and cymbals, whirring and sizzling, suspended over a deep distant rumble, a delicate intro to a record at once hypnotic and lovely, dark and dense.
The record is arranged into three epic tracks, interspersed with short sonic interludes, ranging from field recordings of crickets, looped chants (Elizabeth Clare Prophet if we're not mistaken), spirituals and mysterious liturgical songs, whirring drones, and backwards percussion, but it's the long tracks where the duo get to spread out, let their dense soundscapes sprawl.
The three long tracks sounds like movements of a greater whole, clocking in at 15 minutes, 11 minutes and nearly 17 minutes respectively, each rife with creepy delayed vocals, churning guitars and smeared chords, roiling muddy whirls, which often dissipate leaving streaks of fragmented melody and haunting slowed down voices. Buried amidst the drones and whirs, are lullaby-like melodies, skittery percussion, streaks of grinding distortion, hidden voices, more field recordings, thick swaths of cavernous rumbles, little bits of electronic glitch and lots and lots of low end buzz.
Packaged in a fancy navy blue fold over sleeve, screenprinted in white ink, with a photocopied insert with liner notes and song credits.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES! Each one hand numbered.
It's been a while since we've heard from psych-kraut-drone duo High Mountain Tempel, but Gnosis quickly reminds us why we missed these guys. Tempel-ers Keith Boyd and Eric Nielsen unfurl a softly billowing psych folk raga, that's all softly swirling steel string strum, circular melodic shimmer, crooned, almost chant like vocals, the disc also featuring a bunch of guests, including some Acid Mothers Temple folks, as well as Charles Curtis and Isis Aquarian (!). Unlike the more purely ritualistic minimalism of the other records, the opening track here sound more like some Appalachian psych-folk, blurred into something a bit more abstract. But the group quickly returns to that ritualism, conjuring up strange fields of softly shimmering dronemusic, subtle bits of percussion, chiming harmonics, whispered incantations, those two sides of HMT's sound constantly in flux, delicate piano draped over processed whispered vocals, transformed into clouds of grey hissing sibilance, sounds pitched down to create ominous bellows, that become dubbed out drones, sampled voices also doused in FX drift over the top, churning industrial noise gives way to almost Native American sounding minimalism, fluttering flutes, shakers and bells, distant field recordings, swirling backwards melodies, swooshing ambience, and muted droning FX, occasionally blossoming into a sort of collaged soft noise-psych, and just as often expanding into a sort of free-rock campfire forest-folk. The long tracks laced with bits of psychedelic freakout, shards of feedback, buried voices, and constantly shifting layers and textures, all blurred into a heady, heavenly psych-drone ritual, that is mesmerizing and dreamily hypnotic.
It's a cd-r, but comes housed in a nice full color digipak, and yeah, probably pretty limited too...
This is our first exposure to the High Mountain Tempel duo, and everything, from the design, to the name, to the sound, is very ritualistic indeed, like the sounds of some dark ceremony performed in some ancient temple atop, well, some high mountain.
Strange and haunting monk-like chants recur throughout the record, usually, wrapped in deep resonant drones, moaning foghorn like rumbles everything drenched in reverb and delay, like hearing everything through the sacrificial smoke of the most recent sacrifice.
Elsewhere bird calls mirror disembodied guitar melodies, the various sound fragments allowed to drift and then settle on the ground, the proceedings all wrapped in a thick murky ambience, as if suddenly the treble knob was turned all the way down and the bass knob all the way up, the melodies muted and muddy, like some dark slow moving stream, flowing gently beneath a black sky, and trees alive with small and mysterious creatures. In fact this whole record is rife with the sounds (manufactured or sampled, not always easy to tell) of various beasts and fowl, a very 'lost in the jungle' vibe permeating the proceedings.
The last chunk of the record is a gloriously glistening, lugubrious crawl, thick swells of sparkling sound wrapped around twisted low end shapes, all drifting lazily into some mysterious dark wood...
Packaged in a swank black fold over sleeve, screenprinted in gold metallic ink, with a photocopied insert with liner notes and song credits.
Part three in the ongoing series of limited cd-r explorations from mysterious drone combo High Mountain Tempel, and like the two before it, the band continue to delve into some murky sonic underworld, again presenting loooong songs, each separated by brief sonic interludes, this disc seems feature more actual vocals, the opening track features a processed voice, that sounds a bit like throat singing, or a Speak And Spell, intoning some arcane message, interwoven with long drawn out tones, and a thick ropy buzz, super dark and intense and atmospheric. Elsewhere sampled voices surface, there are bits of chanting here and there, all peppered throughout the disc. But even with the extra voices, the focus here is still on dark, lugubrious, extended dronescapes.
The sound of High Mountain Tempel is probably closest to Expo '70, as their various permutations of dronemusic seem to have a definite krautrock vibe, that gives the sound a sort of spaced out quality, and a subtle propulsion, but unlike Expo '70, HMT seem to have a distinct Eastern influence, much of the music is meditative and subtly dramatic, a bit soundtracky, and some of it sounds like it could be Japanese. Especially the way field recordings are incorporated into the sounds. Giving everything a definite texture, some of it sounding like it was perhaps recorded live in some hilltop temple. Which we would imagine is the idea.
Not sure what else to say actually. This is indeed fantastic, brooding and malefic, but also shimmery and dreamy, sonically it has much in common with the first two installments, so definitely check out those reviews to read more about their 'sound'.
Needless to say, fans of the drone and folks into the current crop of cd-r soundscapers will for sure dig this, but like the other HTM discs, this is more than simple drone music, this is ritualistic alchemical soundwork, one can almost imagine stumbling across a group of cloaked figures huddled around a fire in a forest clearing, tossing various powders into the flames, causing the fire to change color and cast beastlike shadows on the branches above, and this is the sound filtering through the forest like a black moonlit fog...
SUPER LIMITED of course, packaged beautifully in a foldover silkscreened sleeve, gold metallic on red on the outside, black on red on the inside.
Stoner/doom heads, alert! The Man's Ruin-released cd of this album is now out of print (although, we stocked up right before the label went under, and still have a few copies). Now, however, there's vinyl! It comes complete with new (better) cover art courtesy of the Roger Dean of the stoner rock scene, Arik Moonhawk Roper, and a bonus 7" with two new tracks, including a cover of
The Bay Area's slowest, heaviest, potsmokin'est doom metal combo Sleep (RIP) lives on in the form of ex-Sleep guitarist/vocalist Matt Pike's new band High On Fire. Sleep's last album, the infamous "Jerusalem", consisted of but one, super-long super-slow track. High On Fire speeds things up a bit (only a bit) but maintains the heaviness and the trademark Sleep sound. Right on.
Flap flap flap. More like flwwaapp flwwaapp flwwaapphhgh. Blessed Black Wings cast a shadow across the land, blotting out the sun in their demonic leathern flight. It's the third album from the Bay Area's louder-than-thou High On Fire, the first to feature new bassist Joe Preston (Thrones, ex-Melvins, ex-Earth) and it's not going to disappoint any fans of their previous discs, that's for sure. On this Steve Albini recorded effort, the sheer volume and pummel is cranked to full force, ex-Sleep guitarist Matt Pike's Lemmy-vs-Cronos styled vox doing damage atop a fast-marching mountain of riffery. It really sounds like these guys are beating the bejesus out of their instruments, and not just the drums. It's like an angry, aggro version of Sleep, really. And more than ever, this is somehow sludgily reminiscent of the underground metal thrash of a decade or 15 years ago...I'm hearing Nuclear Assault, Laaz Rockit, Exodus, and oh yeah, Slayer!! Includes (while supplies last, we assume) a bonus dvd disc with five live tracks. So, "Cometh Down Hessian" (that's one of the song titles) and buy this!
FINAL VINYL, BACK IN STOCK.
The fire yet burns. Guitarist/vocalist Matt Pike's three-piece pissed-off stoner metal juggernaut presents their fourth album, and while we can't say we were disappointed or anything (you get what you've come to expect from HoF), neither were we super blown away either, really. Though we never would have predicted it a few years ago, to our minds it would seem that Pike's former bandmates from seminal stoned-on-Sabbath dopesmokers Sleep are up to something a little more interesting at this juncture, in their outfit Om. Or, we're just more in the mood for Om's brand of mystical, minimal weirdness rather than the more bloodyminded bludgeon being beaten into our skulls by High On Fire. But if that's what you want, look no further. Death Is The Communion delivers the goods: Wardrums pound. Lemmylike vocals gargle forth and froth. Clenched fist riffage rakes your flesh. Yeah!
And, as the album bulldozers along, some diversity is to be had, from majestic keyboard melancholia and somber guitar soloing to surprisingly introspective, un-metally acoustic guitar interludes. So, another fine HoF outing. And by the way, bassist Joe Preston is gone, High On Fire just another notch on his bedpost of one-night-stands-in-bands (as per his stints with Earth and the Melvins). His replacement, Jeff Matz of Zeke.
The fire yet burns. Guitarist/vocalist Matt Pike's three-piece pissed-off stoner metal juggernaut presents their fourth album, and while we can't say we were disappointed or anything (you get what you've come to expect from HoF), neither were we super blown away either, really. Though we never would have predicted it a few years ago, to our minds it would seem that Pike's former bandmates from seminal stoned-on-Sabbath dopesmokers Sleep are up to something a little more interesting at this juncture, in their outfit Om. Or, we're just more in the mood for Om's brand of mystical, minimal weirdness rather than the more bloodyminded bludgeon being beaten into our skulls by High On Fire. But if that's what you want, look no further. Death Is The Communion delivers the goods: Wardrums pound. Lemmylike vocals gargle forth and froth. Clenched fist riffage rakes your flesh. Yeah!
And, as the album bulldozers along, the mood gets more somber, and some diversity is to be had, from majestic, morose keyboard melancholia to surprisingly introspective, un-metally acoustic guitar interludes. So, another fine HoF outing. And by the way, bassist Joe Preston is gone, High On Fire just another notch on his bedpost of one-night-stands-in-bands (as per his stints with Earth and the Melvins). His replacement, Jeff Matz of Zeke.
And by the way, this edition comes with a bonus DVD disc featuring 40 minutes of in-the-studio footage n' stuff.
Now on vinyl!!
Limited Edition. Live. High On Fire. Those are the crucial concepts that need to be conveyed in this here review. Clearly, anyone who might possibly consider buying this doesn't need to be told who (ex-Sleep stoner metal masters) High On Fire are. You might be interested to know that it was recorded back in January 2003 at one of the band's last shows with now ex-bassist George Rice, that is, before Joe Preston joined the band, and before their latest Blessed Black Wings was recorded. Thus, their 34-minute set is mostly drawn from the then-current Surrounded By Thieves album (including "Razorhoof" and "Hung, Drawn, & Quartered") but they also dish out old favorite "Blood From Zion", introduce an early version of BBW's "To Cross The Bridge", and top things off with a cover of Venom's "Witching Hour"!
The sound is good, the band is raw n' raging, and High On Fire fans who would like to authentically recreate their live experience at home need only this disc and some way to amplify it a million times more than what a mere stereo system can do! But next to having them come and bring their amps into your living room it's the closest you can get!
Limited Edition. Live. High On Fire. Those are the crucial concepts that need to be conveyed in this here review. Clearly, anyone who might possibly consider buying this doesn't need to be told who (ex-Sleep stoner metal masters) High On Fire are. You might be interested to know that it was recorded back in January 2003 at one of the band's last shows with now ex-bassist George Rice, that is, before Joe Preston joined the band, and before their latest Blessed Black Wings was recorded. Thus, their 34-minute set is mostly drawn from the then-current Surrounded By Thieves album (including "Razorhoof" and "Hung, Drawn, & Quartered") but they also dish out old favorite "Blood From Zion", introduce an early version of BBW's "To Cross The Bridge", and top things off with a cover of Venom's "Witching Hour"!
The sound is good, the band is raw n' raging, and High On Fire fans who would like to authentically recreate their live experience at home need only this disc and some way to amplify it a million times more than what a mere stereo system can do! But next to having them come and bring their amps into your living room it's the closest you can get!
It's pretty much a given at this point: High On Fire can do no wrong. For over a decade now, they have been one of the most reliable and awesome metal bands on the planet... so reliable in fact, that it's easy to almost take them for granted. But every time a new album hits the streets, we have the same reaction, which includes foaming at the mouth, an increased heart rate, and the urge to destroy everything in sight. They're that good.
Snakes For The Divine is the band's first post-Relapse album, brought to us by E1 Entertainment, formerly Koch. Not sure what the deal is with this label, but the change has done the band some good for sure. The biggest surprise here is the slightly more polished production courtesy of hot shit producer Greg Fidelman, who you might remember from Slayer's recent World Painted Blood and, cough, Metallica's Death Magnetic. But fear not, because words like "polished" are really only used relative to the band's back catalog and do not in ANY WAY WHATSOEVER take away from the sonic beatdown Oakland's favorite sons have delivered since day one. They've just moved on, but there will be no mistaking who this is. Matt Pike's throatshredding vocals and guitar mastery (seriously, who else in metal today can rival this guy?) will tear you apart in the best way imaginable, and then you got the rhythm section, without question one of the best and most punishing in the biz. Des Kensel's intense whirlwind drumming and Jeff Matz's low end rumble are the perfect accompaniment for Pike's onslaught, making High On Fire sound like an uncontrollable force of nature, or maybe some ancient army storming across the mountains toward their ultimate victory. At the same time, this is the kind of metal that people who aren't really into heavier music can still dig, just because everything is done so perfectly. There's really nothing not to like here, and goddamn, this is some catchy stuff. Considering how brutal it is, that's definitely saying something. For a band that hasn't strayed too far from the sound they established early on, it's amazing that High On Fire can remain so vital and awesome. But they've once again delivered, in fact we'd go as far as to say that this is their best effort since 2002's Surrounded By Thieves, and we have no doubt Snakes For The Divine will have you raging into the next morning. Fuck yeah.
Eight new weighty sonic slabs from San Francisco's premier stoner metal outfit, High On Fire (fronted by Matt Pike, formerly of Bay Area doom legends Sleep). Yes, this is HoF's brand new second album, following hard on the heels of the Tee Pee reissue of their debut "The Art of Self Defense". We know that anticipation has been running high for this new disc -- and to our ears, it's no disappointment, full of bludgeoning guitar riffery, ragged vox and relentless drum-pound as per our expectations. As heavy as Matt's old band, but not so slow -- their black as pitch, tar pit dirges are cranked up faster into violent headbanging territory. Sludgey rock n' roll that's perfect bloody battle music for the axe-wielding barbaric warrior depicted on the album's front cover. Fed on juicy steaks of Black Sabbath, Celtic Frost, Melvins, and Eyehategod beef, "Surrounded By Thieves" is a ravening brute that means to trample you underfoot, but if you're a fan of all things heavy instead of running away, you'll let it give you a big senses-numbing, trance-inducing bear hug.
