Larman Clamor Stream “Bleak Heart’s Night Waltz” from Beetle Crown and Steel Wand

alexander von wieding

Next Monday, Sept. 29, marks the release of the fifth Larman Clamor album, Beetle Crown and Steel Wand. The one-man outfit of Hamburg-based artist Alexander von Wieding has been something of a fixture around these parts the last few years, and over that time, the project’s progression has only become more evident, von Wieding taking Larman Clamor from swampy surrealism to an intricate potion of blues, psychedelia, heavy rock and gritty Southern-style twang. It’s been a satisfying and primarily weird journey, and I doubt very much if von Wieding would have it any other way.

The last couple Larman Clamor outings have come out courtesy of Small Stone Records — von Wieding has also provided art to numerous Small Stone artists from Wo Fat to Lo-Pan and so on — but Beetle Crown and Steel Wand sidesteps the collaboration for a limited self-release, 500 CDs available direct. larman clamor beetle crown and steel wandOne doubts it’s the last the two entities will join forces, as von Wieding is reportedly already at work on the sixth Larman Clamor album, but his one-year-one-record clip has been rolling for the last three or four years at this point, and there’s no slowing down now.

What that rate has given those who’ve followed him for that stretch is basically a blow-by-blow account of the creative evolution at play, and Beetle Crown and Steel Wand is the latest step in that clearly ongoing process, branching further out from the project’s bluesed-out roots and into an earthy psychedelia that belongs solely to von Wieding. He’s still got an edge of Delta blues to the sound — as the banjo-plucking and slide guitar on “Bleak Heart’s Night Waltz” will attest — but his depth of arrangement, rhythmic stomp and melodic scope continue to flourish.

Check out “Bleak Heart’s Night Waltz” on the player below, followed by the bio I wrote for the album, and enjoy:

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Tales of brown-leafed mystery. Unseen threats lurking in high weeds. Something not quite human, not quite there, out of some other place. Feet stomping on wood porches. This is all familiar terrain for Larman Clamor’s blues, but with Beetle Crown and Steel Wand, it’s just another piece in an increasingly complicated puzzle of psychedelic experimentation.

It is the fourth Larman Clamor full-length in three years, the prolific heart of multi-instrumentalist/vocalist/artist Alexander Von Wieding proving relentless in its creativity, and while Beetle Crown and Steel Wand fits in line with 2013’s Alligator Heart, 2012’s Frogs, 2011’s Altars to Turn Blood and the preceding 2011 self-titled debut EP, no question it’s also the next step in an ongoing evolution of Von Wieding’s songwriting. Each Larman Clamor outing has developed from the last, and Beetle Crown and Steel Wand is no exception. It is Von Wieding’s most rhythmic, most expansive statement to date.

One can hear it in the familiar dirt boogie of “My Lil’ Ghost,” sure – how comfortable Von Wieding sounds in this form compared to just two years ago (he’s had plenty of practice) – but where Beetle Crown and Steel Wand really distinguishes itself is in the arrangements. In short movements like “Eggs in the Sand” and “Tangerine Nightfall” and the album’s apex, “Her Majesty, the Mountain,” Von Wieding pushes Larman Clamor into psychedelic spaces more than he ever has, and particularly in the case of the latter, into heavier tonal weight than he’s ever conjured before. Larman Clamor doesn’t just sound like a solo-project here, but a full band.

At the same time, the opening title-track offers layers of percussive sway, “We Shine Alright” ticks away on pots and pans jangling chains, and “Bleak Heart’s Night Waltz” taps into forgotten woodsman tribalisms. Von Wieding takes us far away from past minimalism on “Caravan of Ghouls,” with a full, ritualized sound, and could it be that he’s presenting us with a companion for Larman in “Aurora Snarling?” It seems too early to speculate, but if Aurora is another character in Larman’s dizzying tale, she’s bound to show up again.

What’s certain is that Beetle Crown and Steel Wand is Larman Clamor’s farthest-ranging album yet. Von Wieding is still loyal to the muddy waters from which the project first emerged, but in no way is he restrained by them, and if the last couple years have proved anything, it’s that this development is only going to keep moving forward. Now that Larman Clamor is out of the swamps, it seems more and more like it can go just about anywhere.

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