I dig this quote from former Neurosis guitarist/vocalist and long-standing solo artist Steve Von Till — see also Harvestman, Tribes of Neurot, sundry collaborations and other projects; he had a book of poetry out as well, heads Neurot Recordings, and is also a full-time teacher in a grade school; clearly the type who likes to keep busy — where he says, “I often wonder where the psychological break was that caused the fatal delusion that we have dominion over the natural world, how it is reduced to existing solely for our benefit. Whenever that disconnect was – I believe it to be the root of most of our problems as a society, in relationships, and even within ourselves and our own minds.”

The answer is capitalism.

There’s a lot of this searching going on right now, broadly. You see it on social media. I hear it talking to parents at my kid’s school. People, especially but not exclusively, in this country wondering how exactly the fuck we got to the wretched (and somewhat earned) place we’re in, not just as one society, but a collection of smaller societies and groups living in the same place — how the ‘American experiment’ went off the cliff like a ’67 Buick in some grainy movie on channel 9. And for me to say “capitalism” is a simplification, admittedly, but it’s a place to start if we’re looking to change the world around us. Take one step further back from most else that you might cite, from racial division to sectarian violence, and capital is right there. If you want an example out of relatively recent US history, do a before and after on Citizens United.

Anyhow. Von Till last year released three exploratory EPs in a series appropriately dubbed Triptych and has been involved to some degree or other in the Fire in the Mountains festival, which looks way cooler than I’ll ever be, and will issue his new album, Alone in a World of Wounds, through Neurot on May 16, celebrating in advance at Roadburn in the Netherlands and after the fact at Toronto’s Prepare the Ground and the aforementioned Fire in the Mountains in May and July, respectively. Those are some well curated select live appearances.

In the PR wire below, Von Till discusses some of the experimentation that has continued to drive his solo work, and appears in the video for “Watch Them Fade,” the first track from the Alone in a World of Wounds. It’s pretty immersive stuff, so be ready to give attention:

Steve Von Till Announces New Album Alone in a World of Wounds Due May 16 via Neurot Recordings

Shares Lead Single / Video “Watch Them Fade”

Upcoming Festival Performances: Roadburn (Tilburg), Prepare the Ground (Toronto), Fire in the Mountains (Blackfeet Nation, MT)

Physically enveloping, forebodingly beautiful, and drawing on the animistic spirit of the natural world, Steve Von Till announces his latest solo album Alone in a World of Wounds, arriving May 16 via Neurot Recordings.

Ploughing a different furrow, Alone in a World of Wounds is a collection of sweeping gothic tinged Americana, tripped out drones, beautiful world weary vocal melodies and slowly unfurling cello arrangements. Initially inspired by the harmonic resonance of piano and synths and his long standing love of ambient music, Alone in a World of Wounds follows 2021’s No Wilderness Deep Enough in reflective ambience. Opening up his voice in ways he has never done before, the album’s genesis came via intuitive improvisations. “The complex overtones of upright piano and synthesisers really inspired me to sing out more, to seek out the implied harmonies, and to find unique approaches within the limitations of my voice.” says Von Till.

On “Watch Them Fade”, Von Till’s voice complex melodies with a rich, deep timbre. The lead single is available today alongside a stunning video by Bobby Cochran.

Aside from music, Von Till is a poet (he published his first collection – Harvestman – in 2021) and has a deep bank of poetry and wider writing that he draws on, frequently reflecting on our place within the universe while leaning into themes of loss and longing. Likewise, it is our place in nature and – crucially – our current disconnect from it that prove key to the sonic tapestry woven on Alone in a World of Wounds. The album title itself was inspired by a quote from forester and environmental philosopher Aldo Leopold from his 1949 book A Sand County Almanac, which called for a reimagining of the relationship between people and the natural world (‘one of the penalties of an ecological educations is that one lives alone in a world of wounds’), while – outside of music – Von Till remains equally committed to education (he has been an elementary school teacher for 24 years and also serves on the board of directors for the Firekeeper Alliance non-profit which is committed to reducing suicides among the youth of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana).

While Alone in a World of Wounds may be far removed from the caustic aggression of Neurosis, make no mistake – the life-giving energy of punk rock and DIY ethic continue to provide deep inspiration and grounding to him. The search for deeper connection, living with the sorrow of our separation from the natural world, and relying on gut level instinct to get closer to the primal creative state are all key to Von Till’s process.

“It is the transcendent nature of music, the cathartic healing process where I can leave everything behind and become one with sound. When you allow yourself to go beyond the ordinary you might be fortunate enough to find a moment where you are creating in alignment with the flow of the river of the universe.”

Recorded mostly at his barn studio at home in Idaho and mixed at Circular Ruin in Brooklyn, NY, with storied producer Randall Dunn (Jóhann Jóhannsson, Sunn O))), Earth, Jim Jarmusch), Alone in a World of Wounds also boasts cover artwork from Spokane, WA based alternative process photographer Brian Deemy – who works with colloidal wet plate ‘tintype’ aesthetics, which compliment Von Till’s uniquely ancient yet grounded aesthetic, and one that perfectly matches his desire to reimagine the connection between the human and the more than human world.

“I often wonder where the psychological break was that caused the fatal delusion that we have dominion over the natural world, how it is reduced to existing solely for our benefit. Whenever that disconnect was – I believe it to be the root of most of our problems as a society, in relationships, and even within ourselves and our own minds. It always comes back to the fact that we must have a conscious shift back to understanding that we’re all part of a living animate earth: and that we need to think of the rivers and the mountains and the weather as part of us and us as part of the world. We are wild things but we’ve forgotten. Without this shift in consciousness we’re screwed. That’s the overarching theme. And when I look back on my life it’s becoming more explicit and more clear that this is always what I’ve been singing about”

Pre-Save / Pre-Order Alone in a World of Wounds Here

Steve Von Till is set to perform at Roadburn 2025 (Tilburg) next month and at Prepare The Ground (Toronto) and Fire in the Mountains (Blackfeet Nation) festivals this summer. Tickets and more information are available here – stay tuned for additional North American dates: https://www.vontill.org/tour

Alone in a World of Wounds Tracklist:

1 – The Corpse Road
2 – Watch Them Fade
3 – Horizons Undone
4 – Distance
5 – Calling Down the Darkness
6 – The Dawning of the Day (Insomnia)
7 – Old Bent Pine
8 – River of No Return

Steve Von Till Live Dates:
Apr 17 – 20: Roadburn Festival – Tilburg, NL
May 30 – Jun 1: Prepare the Ground Festival – Toronto, CAN
Jul 25 – 27: Fire in the Mountains Festival – Blackfeet Nation, MT

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Steve Von Till, “Watch Them Fade” official video

Second week of the Fall 2024 Quarterly Review begins now. You stoked? Nah, probably not, but at least at the end of this week there will be another 50 records for you to check out, added to the 50 from last week to make 100 total releases covered. So, I mean, it’s not nothing. But I understand if it isn’t the make-or-break of your afternoon.

Last week was killer, and today gets us off to another good start. Crazy, it’s almost like I’m enjoying this. Who the hell ever heard of such a thing?

Quarterly Review #51-60:

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White Hills, Beyond This Fiction

New York’s own psychedelic heads on fire White Hills return with Beyond This Fiction, a collection of sounds so otherworldly and lysergic they can’t help but be real. Seven tracks range from the fluid “Throw it Up in the Air” to the bassy experimental new wave of “Clear as Day,” veering into gentle noise rock as it does before “Killing Crimson” issues its own marching orders, coming across like if you beamed Fu Manchu through the accretion disk of a black hole and the audio experienced gravitational lensing. “Fiend” brings the two sides together and dares to get a little dreamy while doing it, the interlude “Closer” is a wash of drone, and “The Awakening” is a good deal of drone itself, but topped with spoken word, and the closing title-track takes place light-years from here in a kind of time humans haven’t yet learned to measure. It’s okay. White Hills records will still be around decades from now, when humans finally catch up to them. I’m not holding my breath, though.

White Hills on Facebook

White Hills on Bandcamp

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Demon Head, Through Holes Shine the Stars

Five records deep into a tenure now more than a decade long, I feel like Demon Head are a band that are the answer to a lot of questions being asked. Oh, where’s the classic-style band doing something new? Who’s a band who can sound like The Cure playing black metal and be neither of those things? Where’s a band doing forward-thinking proto-doom, not at all hindered by the apparent temporal impossibility of looking ahead and back at the same time? Here they are. They’re called Demon Head. Their fifth album is called Through holes Shine the Stars, and its it’s-night-time-and-so-we-chug-different sax-afflicted ride in “Draw Down the Stars” is consuming as the band take the ’70s doomery of their beginnings to genuinely new and progressive places. The depth of vocal layering throughout — “The Chalice,” the atmo-doom sprawl of “Every Flatworm,” the rousing, swinging hook and ensuing gallop of “Frost,” and so on — adds drama and persona to the songs, and the songs aren’t wanting otherwise, with a dug-in intricacy of construction and malleable underlying groove. Seriously. Maybe Demon Head are the band you’re looking for.

Demon Head on Facebook

Svart Records website

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Earth Ship, Soar

You can call Earth Ship sludge metal, and you’re not really wrong, but you’re not the most right either. The Berlin-based trio founded by guitarist/vocalist Jan Oberg and bassist Sabine Oberg, plus André Klein on drums, offer enough crush to hit that mark for sure, but the tight, almost Ministry-esque vocals on the title-track, the way “Radiant” dips subtly toward psychedelia as a side-A-capping preface to the languid clean-sung nod of “Daze and Delights,” giving symmetry to what can feel chaotic as “Ethereal Limbo” builds into its crescendo, fuzzed but threatening aggression soon to manifest in “Acrid Haze,” give even the nastiest moments throughout a sense of creative reach. That is to say, Soar — which Jan Oberg also recorded, mixed and mastered at Hidden Planet Studio and which sees release through the band’s The Lasting Dose Records — resides in more than one style, with opener “Shallow” dropping some hints of what’s to come and a special lumber seeming to be dedicated to the penultimate “Bereft,” which proves to be a peak in its own right. The Obergs seem to split their time these days between Earth Ship and the somewhat more ferocious Grin. In neither outfit do they misspend it.

Earth Ship on Facebook

The Lasting Dose Records on Bandcamp

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Tommy Stewart’s Dyerwulf, Fyrewulf One

Bassist/vocalist Tommy Stewart (ex-Hallows Eve, owner of Black Doomba Records) once more sits in the driver’s seat of the project that shares his name, and with four new tracks Tommy Stewart’s Dyerwulf on Fyrewulf One — which I swear sounds like the name of a military helicopter or somesuch — offer what will reportedly be half of their third long-player with an intention toward delivering Fyrewulf Two next year. Fair enough. “Kept Pain Busy” is the longest and grooviest fare on offer, bolstered by the quirk of shorter opener “Me ‘n’ My Meds” and the somewhat more madcap “Zoomagazoo,” which touches on heavy rockabilly in its swing, with a duly feedback-inclusive cover of Bloodrock‘s “Melvin Laid an Egg” for good measure. The feeling of saunter is palpable there for the organ, but prevalent throughout the original songs as well, as Stewart and drummer Dennis Reid (Patrick Salerno guests on the cover) know what they’re about, whether it’s garage-punk-psych trip of “Me ‘n’ My Meds” the swing that ensues.

Tommy Stewart’s Dyerwulf on Facebook

Black Doomba Records store

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Smote, A Grand Stream

The narrative — blessings and peace upon it — presents A Grand Stream as the result of Smote guitarist Daniel Foggin and drummer Rob Law absconding to a cabin in the woods by a stream to write and record. There’s certainly escapism in it, and one might argue Smote‘s folk-tinged drone and atmospheric heavy meditations have always had an aspect of leaving the ol’ consciousness at the flung-open doors of perception, etc., but the 10-minute undulating-but-mostly-stationary noise in “Chantry” is still a lot to take. That it follows the 16-miinute “Coming Out of a Hedge Backwards,” laced with sitar and synth and other backing currents filling out the ambience, should be indicative of the sprawl of the over-70-minute LP to begin with. Smote aren’t strangers at this point to the expanse or to longform expression, but there still seems to be a sense of plunging into the unknown throughout A Grand Stream as they make their way deeper into the 18-minute “The Opinion of the Lamb Pt. 2,” and the rolling realization of “Sitting Stone Pt. 1” at the beginning resounds over all of it.

Smote on Instagram

Rocket Recordings website

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Mammoth Caravan, Frostbitten Galaxy

Hard to argue with Mammoth Caravan‘s bruising metallism, not the least because by the time you’d open your mouth to do so the Little Rock, Arkansas, trio have already run you under their aural steamroller and you’re too flat to get the words out. The six-song/36-minute Frostbitten Galaxy is the second record from the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Robert Warner, bassist/vocalist Brandon Ringo and drummer Khetner Howton, and in the willful meander of “Cosmic Clairvoyance,” in many of their intros, in the tradeoffs of the penultimate “Prehistoric Spacefarer” and in the clean-sung finale “Sky Burial,” they not only back the outright crush of “Tusks of Orion” and “Siege in the Stars,” as well as opener/longest track (immediate points) “Absolute Zero,” with atmospheric intention, but with a bit of dared melody that feels like a foretell of things to come from the band. On Frostbitten Galaxy and its correspondingly chilly 2023 predecessor Ice Cold Oblivion (review here), Mammoth Caravan have proven they can pummel. Here they begin the process of expanding their sound around that.

Mammoth Caravan on Facebook

Blade Setter Records store

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Harvestman, Triptych Part Two

If you caught Harvestman‘s psychedelic dub and guitar experimentalism on Triptych Part One (review here) earlier this year, perhaps it won’t come as a shock to find former Neurosis guitarist/vocalist Steve Von Till, aka Harvestman, working in a similar vein on Triptych Part Two. There’s more to it than just heady chill, but to be sure that’s part of what’s on offer too in the immersive drone of “The Falconer” or the 10-minute “The Hag of Beara vs. the Poet (Forest Dub),” which reinterprets and plays with the makeup of opener “The Hag of Beara vs. the Poet.” “Damascus” has a more outward-facing take and active percussive base, while “Vapour Phase” answers “The Falconer” with some later foreboding synthesis — closer “The Unjust Incarceration” adds guitar that I’ve been saying for years sounds like bagpipes and still does to this mix — while the penultimate “Galvanized and Torn Open,” despite the visceral title, brings smoother textures and a steady, calm rhythm. The story’s not finished yet, but Von Till has already covered a significant swath of ground.

Steve Von Till website

Neurot Recordings store

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Kurokuma, Of Amber and Sand

Following up on 2022’s successful debut full-length, Born of Obsidian, the 11-song/37-minute Of Amber and Sand highlights the UK outfit’s flexibility of approach as regards metal, sludge, post-heavy impulses, intricate arrangements and fullness of sound as conveyed through the production. So yes, it’s quite a thing. They quietly and perhaps wisely moved on from the bit of amateur anthropology that defined the MesoAmerican thematic of the first record, and as Of Amber and Sand complements the thrown elbows in the midsection of “Death No More” and the proggy rhythmmaking of “Fenjaan” with shorter interludes of various stripes, eventually and satisfyingly getting to a point in “Bell Tower,” “Neheh” and “Timekeeper” where the ambience and the heft become one thing for a few minutes — and that’s kind of a separate journey from the rest of the record, which turns back to its purposes with “Crux Ansata,” but it works — but the surrounding interludes give each song a chance to make its own impact, and Kurokuma take advantage every time.

Kurokuma on Facebook

Kurokuma on Bandcamp

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SlugWeed, The Mind’s Ability to Think Abstract Thoughts

Do you think a band called SlugWeed would be heavy and slow? If so, you’d be right. Would it help if I told you the last single was called “Bongcloud?” The instrumental New England solo-project — which, like anything else these days, might be AI — has an ecosystem’s worth of releases up on Bandcamp dating back to an apparent birth as a pandemic project with the long-player The Power of the Leaf, and the 11-minute single “The Mind’s Ability to Think Abstract Thoughts” follows the pattern in holding to the central ethic of lumbering instrumental riffage, all dank and probably knowing about trichomes and such. The song itself is a massive chug-and-groover, and gradually opens to a more atmospheric texture as it goes, but the central idea is in the going itself, which is slow, plodding, and returns from its drift around a fervent chug that reminds of a (slower) take on some of what Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol had on offer earlier in the year. It probably won’t be long before SlugWeed return with anther single or EP, so “The Mind’s Ability to Think Abstract Thoughts” may just be a step on the way. Fine for the size of the footprint in question.

SlugWeed on Instagram

SlugWeed on Bandcamp

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Man and Robot Society, Asteroid Lost

Dug-in solo krautistry from Tempe, Arizona’s Jeff Hopp, Man and Robot Society‘s Asteroid Lost comes steeped in science-fiction lore and mellow space-prog vibes. It’s immersive, and not a story without struggle or conflict as represented in the music — which is instrumental and doesn’t really want, need or have a ton of room for vocals, though there are spots where shoehorning could be done if Hopp was desperate — but if you take the trip just as it is, either put your own story to it or just go with the music, the music is enough to go on itself, and there’s more than one applicable thread of plot to be woven in “Nomads of the Sand” or the later “Man of Chrome,” which resonates a classic feel in the guitar ahead of the more vibrant space funk of “The Nekropol,” which stages a righteous keyboard takeover as it comes out of its midsection and into the theremin-sounding second half. You never quite know what’s coming next, but since it all flows as a single work, that becomes part of the experience Man and Robot Society offer, and is a strength as the closing title-track loses the asteroid but finds a bit of fuzzy twist to finish.

Man and Robot Society on Facebook

Sound Effect Records website

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It is a very Steve Von Till move to put out the remix before the root form of the song in question. Ever-experimental in just about any musical context, the former Neurosis guitarist/vocalist will complete the Triptych album series on Oct. 17, of course through Neurot Recordings. “Clouds Are Relatives” is the first track on the album, and “Clouds Are Relatives (The Bug ‘Amtrak Dub Mix’)” is the first single, for which a video is streaming at the bottom of this post. Explorations around dub have been a big part of Triptych more broadly, with Kevin Martin aka The Bug (who is now signed to Relapse; expect more remixes) and Al Cisneros (Om, Sleep) collaborating with Von Till here and on past installments. I don’t know how many surprises can be in store for Triptych Part Three after the first two earlier this year, but I do know enough to trust Von Till to come up with sounds that are as personal as they are adventurous, glancing inward and at the universe more broadly at once, through music. It’s kind of just how he does.

Note also Dave French (YOB, Brothers of the Sonic Cloth), Wayne Adams (Petbrick, Cower, producer for everyone in the UK not produced by Chris Fielding), Sanford Parker (Buried at Sea, Corrections House, etc.) and a slew of others guesting. There’s even an Echoplex, which is becoming increasingly rare, mostly I think because the remaining actual-machines are broken and there aren’t enough around anymore to use as spare parts. March of time and all that. I have no doubt Triptych Part Three will put it to good use.

Info from the PR wire:

HARVESTMAN ANNOUNCES TRIPTYCH PART THREE TO BE RELEASED VIA NEUROT RECORDINGS TO COINCIDE WITH THE HUNTER MOON ON 17TH OCTOBER

SHARES “CLOUDS ARE RELATIVES (THE BUG “AMTRAK DUB MIX”)”

PRE-ORDERS AVAILABLE ONLINE: https://music.neurotrecordings.com/triptych3

Throughout 2024, and marking three full moons, Harvestman (a.k.a. Steve Von Till) will be presenting his ambitious Triptych project, a three-part album cycle. This album trilogy is a distillation of a unique approach that finds a continuity amongst the fragmented, treating all its myriad musical sources and reference points not as building bricks, but as tuning forks for a collective ancestral resonance, residing in that liminal space between the fundamental and the imaginary, the intrinsic and the speculative.

Today, Harvestman announces the completion of the trilogy with the arrival of Triptych Part Three on 17th October via Neurot Recordings to coincide with the Hunter Moon. The album features very special guests, including The Bug, Wayne Adams, Sanford Parker and Al Cisneros – to name a few.

Alongside the announcement, Harvestman leads with the track, “Clouds Are Relative (The Bug – Amtrak Dub Mix)”, which sees The Bug, a master of monolithic sound, put his own deep and earth-rumbling take on the opening track. The music is brought to life with visuals and animations from Thomas Hooper.

About the lead track, “Clouds Are Relatives (The Bug “Amtrak Dub Mix”) Steve Von Till says; “with the original version of this track (the third piece of the series with Al’s bass) I wanted to replace my original percussion tracks with something better, so I called upon Wayne Adams of Petbrick since I had recently contributed vocals to one of their songs. He came up with a really heady combination of live drums and glitchy electronic drums. It added an alternative unique dimension, I wouldn’t have come up with on my own. When it came time to dub this track, my first attempt didn’t feel right, so I reached out to Kevin Martin aka The Bug to see if he would be into giving it a go. What you hear is the end result: a deep, dark dub by a master.”

Woven together from home studio recordings that span two decades, and with some notable guest appearances including; The Bug, Douglas Leal of Deafkids, Wayne Adams of Petbrick, Dave French of Yob and Sanford Parker, this final part of the Harvestman Triptych seeks once again for a lost world, with the voice of poet Ezra Pound extolling the virtues of “gather[ing] from the air a live tradition”. Elsewhere, “Herne’s Oak” provides seismic bass waves that physically halt the track in its steps – giant footfalls as Herne’s antlers themselves are dragged along a corridor. Another curious and mysterious piece of British folklore brought to life by Harvestman.

If Triptych is a multi- and extra-sensory experience, it extends to the remarkable glyph-style artwork of Henry Hablak, a map of correspondences from a long-forgotten ancient and advanced civilization. As with Triptych itself, it’s an echo from another time, an act of binding, a guide to be endlessly reinterpreted, and a signpost to the sacred that might not indicate where to look, but how.

TRIPTYCH PART THREE TRACK LISTING:
Side A
Clouds Are Relatives
Snow Spirits
Eye The Unconquered Flame

Side B
Clouds Are Relatives (The Bug – “Amtrak Dub Mix”) [visualiser]
The Absolute Nature of Light
Herne’s Oak
Cumha Uisdein (Lament for Hugh)

Triptych Part Three will be available as a standard weight vinyl, in one colour, Cloudy Clear + Black Galaxy effect vinyl, in dub style jacket (jacket sleeve with center hole cut out so label of LP shows through) a black paper inner sleeve and poly bag.

Part One was released on the Pink Moon on 23rd April and Part Two was released on 21st July’s Buck Moon.

Harvestman Triptych Part Three album credits:
Steve Von Till – guitars, bass, synths, percussion, stock tank, loops, filters and mutations
Kevin Richard Martin aka The Bug – dub mix of Clouds
Dave French – stock tank percussion on Herne’s Oak, frequency consult
Al Cisneros – bass on Clouds and Bug Dub
Wayne Adams – acoustic drums, electronic beats, and processing on Clouds
John Goff – bagpipes on Cumha Uisdean
Sanford Parker – synths, processing, mixing on Herne’s Oak
Ryan Van Blokland – organ, synth, found sounds and echoplex on Eye
Dovglas Leal – bouzouki on Eye and flutes on Absolute
Narration on Eye the Unconquered Flame – “Canto LXXXI” by Ezra Pound

Recorded and Mixed at The Crow’s Nest, North Idaho by SVT
Mastered by James Plotkin

Artwork and layout by Henry Hablak

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Harvestman, “Clouds Are Relatives (The Bug ‘Amtrak Dub Mix’)” visualizer

Steve Von Till‘s experimentalist project Harvestman will release Triptych Part Two on July 21 through, of course, Neurot Recordings. Like the preceding Triptych Part One (review here), which came out this Spring, also through Neurot, its release is tied to a specific full moon, in this case the Buck Moon. Significance of the Buck Moon? It is reportedly when male deer begin to grow antlers. We’ve got babies in my backyard now — little slice of suburban paradise that it is — so I’ll have to keep an eye out.

While in the spirit of Triptych Part One, the upcoming collection has a bit of dub and surely other ambient-textured whathaveyou throughout, the lead single arrives with the sinewy synth lines of “Damascus,” which somehow becomes a percussive delve by the time it’s done. At some point today, presumably once whatever cooler-than-I-am site has done its premiere, the visualizer for “Damascus” will be streamable below. Preorders are also available, as the PR wire makes clear.

Dig:

HARVESTMAN (STEVE VON TILL) TO RELEASE THE SECOND OF THREE RELEASES THROUGHOUT 2024

TRIPTYCH PART TWO WILL BE RELEASED VIA NEUROT RECORDINGS TO COINCIDE WITH THE BUCK MOON ON 21ST JULY

PRE-ORDERS AVAILABLE ONLINE: https://music.neurotrecordings.com/triptych2

Throughout 2024, and marking three full moons, Harvestman (a.k.a. Steve Von Till) will be presenting his ambitious Triptych project, a three-part album cycle. This album trilogy is a distillation of a unique approach that finds a continuity amongst the fragmented, treating all its myriad musical sources and reference points not as building bricks, but as tuning forks for a collective ancestral resonance, residing in that liminal space between the fundamental and the imaginary, the intrinsic and the speculative.

Today, Harvestman share “Damascus” from the upcoming Triptych Part Two, which will be released on 21st July via Neurot Recordings to coincide with the Buck Moon. Part One was released on 23rd April on the Pink Moon, and Part Three will be coming on 17th October’s Hunter Moon.

“This is Damascus.” says Steve Von Till. “Both a steel forged of different layers and a city of ancient origin. And it was the result of fortunate serendipity. The track was born of my first experiments with software utilizing loop based composition. After years of using the same linear process as analog recording, I wanted to branch out into being able to manipulate rhythms, analog phrases, delay and modulation effects to a set tempo. I invited my friend, Sanford Parker, over to coach me through my entry into that world. While this began as a tutorial of sampling, cutting and syncing percussion loops, it quickly led to him guiding me through looping my fuzzed out guitar improvisations with it. We moved on and walked away from it. It might have become a throwaway work sample had something in those beats and fuzz guitars not peaked my imagination later. After several months, out of curiosity, I opened the session and revisited the piece. I was immediately drawn into the vibe, put down a solid bass groove, synths, and found an organic sequence of the loops that gave it life and flow while still maintaining the loop based nature of the foundational tracks.”

At its heart, music has always been a questioning of inheritance – a dialogue with predecessors and forebears, the forging of one’s own perspective in relation to what has come before, and for some, a plunge into the boundless realms between. For Steve Von Till, that process has always taken on an added dimension to become the most sacred of tasks. Whether through the apocalyptic uprising of Neurosis, the sonic deconstructions of their sister project, Tribes of Neurot, the invocatory intimacy of his eponymous solo albums or his instrumental psychedelic reveries in the guise of Harvestman, that dialogue has never just been with musical influences, but with what underpins them: the primordial, elemental forces now banished to the peripheries of our contemporary consciousness, yet still broadcasting a signal for all who will listen.

Drawn to the megaliths, ruins and ancient sites mapped out along the British and European mainland’s geographical and psychic landscapes, the folklore and apocrypha forever resurfacing as portals from a rational world, Triptych is a meditation forged from traces and residues, and an hallucinatory recollection of artists who have tapped into that enduring otherworldliness embedded within us all. It’s a dream diary narrating a passage through Summer Isle where Flying Saucer Attack are wafting out of a window, a distant Fairport Convention are being remixed by dub master Adrian Sherwood, celestial scanners Tangerine Dream are trying to drown out Bert Jansch and Hawkwind are playing Steeleye Span covers, all prised out of time yet bound to its singularity.

Woven together from home studio recordings that span two decades, this latest outing as Harvestman finds parallels with nature’s cycles not just in its release dates but in the repeated structure that binds each album, like an imprint refracted though three separate strata. As with April’s Part One and the forthcoming Part Three, Part Two, starts on a collaboration with Om bassist and long-term friend of Steve’s, Al Cisneros, with a dub take opening the B-Side. Here, the opening track, “The Hag Of Beara Vs The Poet”’s languid, tribal groove expands into a chromatic wash, like an endless drip of oil spreading out under a midsummer haze.

If Triptych is a multi- and extra-sensory experience, it extends to the remarkable glyph-style artwork of Henry Hablak, a map of correspondences from a long-forgotten ancient and advanced civilization. As with Triptych itself, it’s an echo from another time, an act of binding, a guide to be endlessly reinterpreted, and a signpost to the sacred that might not indicate where to look, but how.

TRIPTYCH PART TWO TRACK LISTING:

Side A
The Hag of Beara vs the Poet
The Falconer
Damascus

Side B
The Hag of Beara vs the Poet (Forest Dub)
Vapour Phase
Galvanized and Torn Open
The Unjust Incarceration

Harvestman Triptych Part Two album credits:

Steve Von Till – guitars, bass, synths, percussion, loops, filters and mutations.
Dave French – drums on The Hag, stock tank percussion on Galvanized, frequency consult.
Al Cisneros – bass on The Hag and Dub
John Goff – bagpipes on The Unjust Incarceration
Sanford Parker – live assistance on Damascus
Narration on The Hag of Beara – “The Lake of Innisfree” by W.B. Yeats

Recorded and Mixed at The Crow’s Nest, North Idaho by SVT
Mastered by James Plotkin
Artwork and layout by Henry Hablak

https://www.facebook.com/SteveVonTill/
https://www.instagram.com/stevevontill/
https://www.vontill.org/

https://www.instagram.com/neurotrecordings
https://www.facebook.com/neurotrecordings
https://neurotrecordings.bandcamp.com
https://www.neurotrecordings.com

Harvestman, “Damascus” visualizer

This is the next-to-last day of this Quarterly Review, and while it’s been a lot, it’s been encouraging to dig into so much stuff in such intense fashion. I’ve added a few releases to my notes for year-end lists, but more importantly, I’ve gotten to hear and cover stuff that otherwise I might not, and that’s the value at a QR has for me at its core, so while we’re not through yet, I’ll just say thanks again for reading and that I hope you’ve also found something that speaks to you in these many blocks of text and embedded streaming players. If not, there’s still 20 records to go, so take comfort in that as needed.

Quarterly Review #81-90:

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Harvestman, Triptych: Part One

The weirdo-psych experimental project of Steve Von Till (now ex-Neurosis, which is still sad on a couple levels) begins a released-according-to-lunar-orbit trilogy of albums in Triptych: Part One, which is headlined by opening track “Psilosynth,” boasting a guest appearance from Al Cisneros (Sleep, Om) on bass. If those two want to start an outsider-art dub-drone band together, my middle-aged burnout self is here for it — “Psilosynth (Harvest Dub),” a title that could hardly be more Von Till and Cisneros, appears a little later, which suggests they might also be on board — but that’s only part of the world being created in Triptych: Part One as “Mare and Foal” manipulates bagpipes into ghostly melodies, “Give Your Heart to the Hawk” echoes poetry over ambient strum, “Coma” and “How to Purify Mercury” layer synthesized drone and/or effects-guitar to sci-fi affect and “Nocturnal Field Song” finds YOB‘s Dave French banging away on something metal in the background while the crickets chirp. The abiding spirit is subdued, exploratory as Von Till‘s solo works perpetually are, and even as the story is only a third told, the immersion on Triptych: Part One goes as deep as the listener is willing to let it. I look forward to being a couple moons late reviewing the next installment.

Harvestman on Facebook

Neurot Recordings website

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Kalgon, Kalgon

As they make their self-titled full-length debut, Asheville, North Carolina’s Kalgon lay claim to a deceptive wide swath of territory even separate from the thrashier departure “Apocalyptic Meiosis” as they lumber through “The Isolate” and the more melodic “Grade of the Slope,” stoner-doom leaning into psych and more cosmic vibing, with the mournful “Windigo” leading into “Eye of the Needle”‘s slo-mo-stoner-swing and gutted out vocals turning to Beatlesy melody — guitarist Brandon Davis and bassist Berten Lee Tanner share those duties while Marc Russo rounds out the trio on drums — in its still-marching second half and the post-Pallbearer reaches and acoustic finish of “Setting Sun.” An interlude serves as centerpiece between “Apocalyptic Meiosis” and “Windigo,” and that two-plus-minute excursion into wavy drone and amplifier hum works well to keep a sense of flow as the next track crashes in, but more, it speaks to longer term possibilities for how the band might grow, both in terms of what they do sonically and in their already-clear penchant for seeing their first LP as a whole, single work with its own progression and story to tell.

Kalgon on Facebook

Kalgon on Bandcamp

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Agriculture, Living is Easy

Surely there’s some element in Agriculture‘s self-applied aesthetic frame of “ecstatic black metal” in the power of suggestion, but as they follow-up their 2022 self-titled debut with the four-song Living is Easy EP and move from the major-key lightburst of the title-track into the endearingly, organically, folkishly strained harmonies of “Being Eaten by a Tiger,” renew the overwhelming blasts of tremolo and seared screams on “In the House of Angel Flesh” and round out with a minute of spoken word recitation in “When You Were Born,” guitarists Richard Chowenhill (also credited with co-engineering, mixing and mastering) and Dan Meyer (also vocals), bassist/vocalist Leah B. Levinson and drummer/percussionist Kern Haug present an innovative perspective on the genre that reminds of nothing so much as the manner in which earliest Wolves in the Throne Room showed that black metal could do something more than it had done previously. That’s not a sonic comparison, necessarily — though there are basic stylistic aspects shared between the two — but more about the way Agriculture are using black metal toward purposefully new expressive ends. I’m not Mr. Char by any means, but it’s been probably that long since the last time I heard something that was so definitively black metal and worked as much to refresh what that means.

Agriculture on Facebook

The Flenser website

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Saltpig, Saltpig

Apparently self-released by the intercontinental duo last Fall and picked up for issue through Heavy Psych Sounds, Saltpig‘s self-titled debut modernizes classic charge and swing in increasingly doomed fashion across the first four songs of its A-side, laces “Burn the Witch” with samples themed around the titular subject, and dedicates all of side B to the blown out mostly-instrumental roll of “1950,” which is in fact 19 minutes and 50 seconds long. The band, comprised of guitarist/vocalist/noisemaker Mitch Davis (also producer for a swath of more commercially viable fare) and drummer Fabio Alessandrini (ex-Annihilator), are based in New York and Italy, respectively, and whatever on earth might’ve brought them together, in both the heavy-garage strut of “Demon” and the willfully harsh manner in which they represent themselves in the record’s back half, they bask in the rougher edges of their tones and approach more generally. “When You Were Dead” is something of a preface in its thicker distortion to “1950,” but its cavernous shouted vocals retain a psychedelic presence amid the ensuing grit, whereas once the closer gets underway from its feedback-soaked first two minutes, they make it plain there’s no coming back.

Saltpig on Facebook

Heavy Psych Sounds website

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Druidess, Hermits and Mandrakes

Newcomer UK doomers Druidess nod forth on their debut EP, Hermits and Mandrakes, with a buzzing tonality in “Witches’ Sabbath” that’s distinctly more Monolord than Electric Wizard, and while that’s fascinating academically and in terms of the generational shift happening in the heavy underground over the last few years, the fuzz that accompanies the hook of “Mandragora,” which follows, brings a tempo boost that situates the two-piece of vocalist Shonagh Brown and multi-instrumentalist/producer Daniel Downing (guitar, bass, keys, drum programming; he even had a hand in the artwork, apparently) in a more rocking vein. It’s heavy either way you go, and “Knightingales” brings Green Lung-style organ into the mix along with another standout hook before “The Hermit of Druid’s Temple” signs over its soul to faster Sabbath worship and closer “The Forest Witches’ Daughter” underscores the commitment to same in combination with a more occult thematic. It’s familiar-enough terrain, ultimately, but the heft they conjure early on and the movement they bring to it later should be plenty to catch ears among the similarly converted, and in song and performance they display a self-awareness of craft that is no less a source of their potential.

Druidess on Facebook

Druidess on Bandcamp

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Astral Construct, Traveling a Higher Consciousness

One-man sans-vocals psych outfit Astral Construct — aka Denver-based multi-instrumentalist Drew Patricks — released Traveling a Higher Consciousness last year, and well, I guess I got lost in a temporal wormhole or some such because it’s not last year anymore. The record’s five-track journey is encompassing in its metal-rooted take on heavy psychedelia, however, and that’s fortunate as “Accessing the Mind’s Eye” solidifies from its languid first-half unfolding into more stately progressive riffage. Bookended by the dreamy manifestation of “Heart of the Nebula” (8:12) and “Interstellar” (9:26), which moves between marching declaration and expansive helium-guitar float, the album touches ground in centerpiece “The Traveler,” but even there could hardly be called terrestrial once the drums drop out and the keys sweep in near the quick-fade finish that brings about the more angular “Long View of Astral Consciousness,” that penultimate track daring a bit of double-kick in the drums heading toward its own culmination. Now, then or future, whether it’s looking inward or out, Traveling a Higher Consciousness is a revelry for the cosmos waiting to be engaged. You might just end up in a different year upon hearing it.

Astral Construct on Facebook

Astral Construct on Bandcamp

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Ainu, Ainu

Although their moniker comes from an indigenous group who lived on Hokkaido before that island became part of modern Japan, Ainu are based in Genoa, Italy, and their self-titled debut has little to do sound-wise with the people or their culture. Fair enough. Ainu‘s Ainu, which starts out in “Il Faro” with sparse atmospheric guitar and someone yelling at you in Italian presumably about the sea (around which the record is themed), uses speech and samples to hold most positions vocals would otherwise occupy, though the two-minute “D.E.V.S.” is almost entirely voice-based, so the rules aren’t so strictly applied one way or the other. Similarly, as the three-piece course between grounded sludgier progressions and drifting post-heavy, touching on more aggressive moods in the late reaches of “Aiutami A. Ricordare” and the nodding culmination of “Khrono” but letting the breadth of “Call of the Sea” unfold across divergent movements of crunchier riffs and operatic prog grandiosity. You would not call it predictable, however tidal the flow from one piece to the next might be.

Ainu on Facebook

Subsound Records website

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Grid, The World Before Us

Progressive sludge set to a backdrop of science-fiction and extrasolar range, The World Before Us marks a turn from heretofore instrumental New York trio Grid, who not only feature vocals throughout their 38-minute six-tracker third LP, but vary their approach in that regard such that as “Our History Hidden” takes hold following the keyboardy intro “Singularity” (in we go!), the first three of the song’s 12 minutes find them shifting from sub-soaring melodicism to hard-growled metallic crunch with the comfort of an act who’ve been pulling off such things for much longer. The subsequent “Traversing the Interstellar Gateway” (9:31) works toward similar ends, only with guitar instead of singing, and the standout galloping kickdrum of “Architects of Our World” leads to a deeper dig into the back and forth between melody and dissonance, led into by the threatening effects manipulations of the interlude “Contact” and eventually giving over to the capstone outro “Duality” that, if it needs to be said, mirrors “Singularity” at the start. There’s nuance and texture in this interplay between styles — POV: you dig Opeth and Hawkwind — and my suspicion is that if Grid keep to this methodology going forward, the vocal arrangements will continue to evolve along with the rest of the band’s expanding-in-all-directions stylizations.

Grid on Facebook

Grid on Bandcamp

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Dätcha Mandala, Koda

The stated intentions of Bordeaux, France’s Dätcha Mandala in bringing elements of ’90s British alternative rock into their heavier context with their Koda LP are audible in opener “She Said” and the title-track that follows it, but it’s the underlying thread of heavy rock that wins the day across the 11-song outing, however danceable “Wild Fire” makes it or however attitude-signaling the belly-belch that starts “Thousand Pieces” is in itself. That’s not to say Koda doesn’t succeed at what it’s doing, just that there’s more to the proceedings than playing toward that particular vision of cool. “It’s Not Only Rock and Roll (And We Don’t Like It)” has fuzzy charm and a hook to boot, while “Om Namah Shivaya” ignites with an energy that is proggy and urgent in kind — the kind of song that makes you a fan at the show even if you’ve never heard the band before — and closer “Homeland” dares some burl amid its harmonized chorus and flowing final guitar solo, answering back to the post-burp chug in “Thousand Pieces” and underscoring the multifaceted nature of the album as a whole. I suppose if you have prior experience with Dätcha Mandala, you know they’re not just about one thing, but for newcomers, expect happy surprises.

Dätcha Mandala on Facebook

Discos Macarras Records website

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Dr. Space Meets Mr. Mekon, The Bubbles Scopes

Given the principals involved — Scott “Dr. Space” Heller of Øresund Space Collective, Black Moon Circle, et al, and Chris Purdon of Hawklords and Nik Turner’s Space Ritual — it should come as no surprise that The Bubbles Scopes complements its grammatical counterintuitiveness with alien soundscape concoctions of synth-based potency; the adventure into the unknown-until-it’s-recorded palpable across two extended tracks suitably titled “Trip 1” (22:56) and “Trip 2” (15:45). Longform waveforms, both. The collaboration — one of at least two Heller has slated for release this Spring; stay tuned tomorrow — makes it clear from the very beginning that the far-out course The Bubbles Scopes follows is for those who dwell in rooms with melting walls, but in the various pulsations and throbs of “Trip 1,’ the transition from organ to more electronic-feeling keyboard, and so on, human presence is no more absent than they want it to be, and while the loops are dizzying and “Trip 2” seems to reach into different dimensions with its depth of mix, when the scope is so wide, the sounds almost can’t help but feel free. And so they do. They put 30 copies on tape, because even in space all things digitalia are ephemeral. If you want one, engage your FOMO and make it happen because the chance may or may not come again.

Dr. Space on Facebook

Dr. Space on Bandcamp

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Steve Von Till of Neurosis touring his solo material in the company of Chicago-based experimental cellist Helen Money is killer news. They’d be a great duo, and Helen Money (aka Allison Chesley) delivers solo too. But, that Von Till is also bringing a backing band that includes Dave French (Brothers of the Sonic Cloth, YOB) and Sanford Parker (Buried at Sea, Corrections House, produced probably 40 percent of your favorite records, etc.) and will indeed collaborate with Chesley as well, yeah, that’s a significant win and a significant lineup. I hope somebody out there, somewhere, records some of it from these shows.

Von Till goes supporting 2020’s No Wilderness Deep Enough (review here) and, inherently, its 2021 instrumental counterpart, A Deep Voiceless Wilderness (review here), and to mark the announcement, a video for “Indifferent Eyes” has been posted as taken from Von Till‘s Roadburn Redux performance, titled ‘A Remote Wilderness.’ You’ll note the video also includes French among its players, and if you didn’t see the full thing when it streamed last Spring, keep an eye out for other clips no doubt to follow. If you need to know why, watch the one at the bottom of this post.

Among the slew of dates on both coasts, note the inclusion of the Fire in the Mountains festival in Wyoming, which seems like a particularly idyllic setting for, well, almost anything, I guess. But certainly this too.

The PR wire brought particulars:

STEVE VON TILL ANNOUNCES U.S. SUMMER TOUR

REVEALS FIRST EPISODE OF FORTHCOMING LIVE SERIES “A REMOTE WILDERNESS”

The Neurosis frontman hits the road for the first time since the release of his lauded 2020 album ‘No Wilderness Deep Enough’, last year’s ambient ‘A Deep Voiceless Wilderness’ and his debut book Harvestman: 23 Untitled Poems and Collected Lyrics.

Steve Von Till has announced a full North American Summer tour in support of his recent releases which include 2020’s No Wilderness Deep Enough, last year’s ambient A Deep Voiceless Wilderness and his debut book ‘Harvestman: 23 Untitled Poems and Collected Lyrics’. The tour starts in Minneapolis on July 1, covers both coasts, Chicago, Texas and includes a performance at Wyoming’s Fire in the Mountains festival. Tickets go on sale this Friday, March 4 at 10AM Local. For a full list of dates see below.

Tickets and updates are available here: https://www.vontill.org/tour

“It brings me great joy to announce that this summer I will be heading out to 27 cities across the country to perform my ‘No Wilderness Deep Enough’ album with a wonderful group of musicians including Helen Money on cello, Dave French on synths, guitar and percussion, and Sanford Parker on keys and synths. Helen Money will also be performing a full set of her own emotionally deep and heavy cello compositions. I cannot wait. It has been too long. Tickets go on sale this Friday, March 4th at 10:00am.”

Last year, Von Till joined forces with the highly esteemed Roadburn Festival to broadcast a performance for their 2021 online festival. He brought in filmmaker Bobby Cochran as the videographer and Chris Rahm as the audio engineer – together they captured an emotional performance in the legendary Robert Lang Studios outside of Seattle, WA.

Von Till explains, “’No Wilderness Deep Enough’ was new territory for me sonically, emotionally, and vocally, that I had been intently looking forward to the challenge of gathering a small group of musicians capable of interpreting it and putting myself out there in that uncomfortable but exciting realm of self-growth. It wasn’t to be. Our live musical universe had been put on pause. Not wanting to lose the moment, I dreamt of having the set filmed professionally in a beautiful location with a nice piano and great sound. The answer came in the form of Roadburn Festival from Holland and their commitment to having a high quality online festival in 2021. I recruited Dave French on synthesizers, percussion, and guitar, Lori Goldston on cello, David Lutz on synthesizers, Eric Padget on french horn, and Oli Eshlemen on pedal steel.”

“The end result, ‘A Remote Wilderness’ is something I am very proud to have been a part of and I am grateful to all the people and their hard work to make it happen.” Since its initial private viewing for those that attended Roadburn Redux online last year, this film has been awaiting a new audience.

Steve Von Till Live Dates:
Tickets On-sale March 4 at 10AM Local Here: https://www.vontill.org/tour
07/01: Minneapolis, MN – Turf Club
07/02: Milwaukee, WI – Back Room at Colectivo
07/03: Chicago, IL – Empty Bottle
07/05: Detroit, MI – The Sanctuary
07/06: Columbus, OH – Rumba Cafe
07/07: Rochester, NY – Bug Jar
07/08: Boston, MA – Sinclair
07/09: Queens, NY – TV Eye
07/11: Philadelphia, PA – Johnny Brenda’s
07/12: Washington, DC – DC9
07/13: Carrboro, NC – Cat’s Cradle – Back Room
07/15: Atlanta, GA – The Earl
07/16: New Orleans, LA – Gasa Gasa
07/17: Houston, TX – White Oak Music Hall
07/18: Austin, TX – The Ballroom
07/20: Denver, CO – Bluebird Theatre
07/22: Moran, WY – Fire in the Mountains
08/05: Spokane, WA – Lucky You Lounge
08/06: Seattle, WA – Neumos
08/07: Portland, OR – Mississippi Studios
08/09: Oakland, CA – Starline Social Club
08/10: San Jose, CA – The Ritz
08/11: Los Angeles, CA – Zebulon
08/12: San Diego, CA – Casbah
08/13: Tucson, AZ – Club Congress
08/15: Salt Lake City, UT – Urban Lounge
08/16: Boise, ID – Neurolux

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http://www.neurosis.com
http://www.neurotrecordings.com
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Steve Von Till, “Indifferent Eyes” from ‘A Remote Wilderness’

Day two already, huh? It’s a holiday week here in the States, which means people are on vacation or have at least enjoyed a long weekend hopefully without blowing any body parts off with fireworks or whatnot. For me, I prefer the day on rather than the day off, so we proceeded as normal yesterday in beginning the Quarterly Review. “We now return to our regularly scheduled,” and so on.

There’s a lot of good stuff here, as one would hope, and since we’re still basically at the start of this doublewide edition of the Quarterly Review — 10 down, 90 to go — I won’t delay further. Thanks for reading.

Quarterly Review #11-20:

Papir, Jams

Two sessions, three days apart, three pieces from each, resulting in six tracks running just about 80 minutes that Papir are only within their rights to have titled simply as Jams. With this outing, the Copenhagen-based psychedelic trio present their process at its most nakedly exploratory. I don’t know if they had any parts pre-planned when they went into the studio, but the record brims with spontaneity, drums jazzing out behind shimmering guitar and steadily grooving basslines. Effects are prevalent and add to the spaciousness, and the sessions from whence these songs came, whether it’s the key-led four-minute “20.01.2020 #2” or the 20-minute opener “17.01.2020 #1” — all tracks sharing the same date-and-number format as regards titles — feel vibrant and fluid in a way that goes beyond even the hazy hypnotics of “20.01.2020 #3.” Papir‘s instrumental dynamic is of course a huge part of what they do anyway, but to hear their chemistry come through in freer fashion as it does here can only be refreshing. I hope they do more like this.

Papir on Facebook

Stickman Records website

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Kosmodemonic, Liminal Light

Brooklyn outfit Kosmodemonic exist almost exclusively within genre border regions. Their second album, Liminal Light, fosters an approach that’s too considered not to be called progressive, but that owes as much to the cosmic doom of YOB as to black metal as to noise rock as to Voivod as to any number of other various ores in the metallic sphere. In their sprinting moments or in the consuming dark grandeur of centerpiece “Ipomoea,” they are pointedly individual, and cuts like “Drown in Drone” and the later slammer “Brown Crown” owe much to sheer impact as to the cerebral underpinnings of their angularity. Liminal Light is vicious but methodical, and feels executed with a firm desire to catch the audience sleeping and then blindside them with a change, be it in moving from one song to another or within one song itself, like when the penultimate “Chains of Goddess Grove” rears back from its lurching movement and spews thrashier fire in its final minute. Put these moments together and you get a record that challenges on multiple levels and is unflinchingly worth the effort of close engagement.

Kosmodemonic on Facebook

Transylvanian Tapes on Bandcamp

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Steve Von Till, A Deep Voiceless Wilderness

The sixth solo offering from Neurosis guitarist/vocalist Steve Von Till is a first for being completely instrumental. The narrative — blessings and peace upon it — goes that Von Till wrote the music for 2020’s No Wilderness Deep Enough (review here) late during jetlagged nights alone on his wife’s family’s property in Germany, where her family has lived for 500 years, only to later be convinced by producer Randall Dunn to write lyrics and record vocals for the songs. A Deep Voiceless Wilderness, as the title hints, pulls those vocals back out of these re-named pieces, allowing elements like the quiet textures of keyboard and piano, horns and mellotrons to shine through in atmospheric fashion, layers of drone intertwining in mostly peaceful fashion. It is the least guitar-based record Von Till has ever done, and allows for a new kind of minimalism to surface along with an immersive melodic hum. Subdued, meditative, exploratory, kind of wonderful.

Steve Von Till website

Neurot Recordings store

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Sex Blender, Studio Session I

Based in Lviv, Ukraine, instrumentalist krautrock bizarros Sex Blender have two full-lengths behind them, and Studio Session I takes the consumingly fuzzed “Diver” from 2018’s Hormonizer and three cuts from 2020’s The Second Coming and turns them into a stirring 44-minute set captured on video for a livestream. Reportedly some of the arrangements are different, as will certainly happen, but as someone being introduced to the band through this material, it’s easy to be struck by the palpable sense of glee with which Sex Blender present their songs. “Crimson Master” is the shortest of the bunch at just over six minutes — it’s the only one under 11 — but even there, the manipulated keyboard sounds, drum fluidity and undercurrent of rumbling distortion push Sex Blender into a place that’s neither doom nor prog but draws from both, crawling where the subsequent “Rave Spritz” can’t help but bounce with its motorik drums and intertwined synth lines. May just be a live session, but they shine all the same.

Sex Blender on Facebook

Drone Rock Records website

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Déhà, Cruel Words

Déhà‘s third long-player Cruel Words was originally issued in 2019 and is seeing a first vinyl pressing on Burning World Records. The Brussels solo outfit has released no fewer than 17 other full-length outings — possibly more, depending on what counts as what — in the two years since these songs initially surfaced, but, well, one has to start someplace. The 2LP runs 75 minutes and includes bonus tracks — an acoustic version of opener “I Am Mine to Break,” a cover of The Gathering‘s “Saturnine” and the piano-into-post-metal “Comfort Me II” — but the highlights are on the album itself, such as the make-Amenra-blush 12-minute crux of “Dead Butterflies,” wherein a lung-crushing weight is given patient drama through its prominent keyboard layers, or the goth early going of “Pain is a Wasteland,” which seems to brood until it finally can’t take it anymore and bashes its head (and yours) into the wall. Surprisingly methodical for the manic pace at which Déhà (né Olmo Lipani) works, it makes artistry of its arrangement as well as performance and is willfully overwhelming, but engaging in that.

Déhà on Facebook

Burning World Records website

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Thunder Horse, Chosen One

Big riffs, big grooves, big hooks, Thunder Horse‘s second long-player, Chosen One, sees the San Antonio, Texas, outfit inherit some aspects from the members’ past outfits, whether it’s the semi-industrial vocal style of Stephen Bishop on “Among the Dead” or the classically shredding solo work of Todd Connally. With Dave Crow on bass and Jason “Shakes” West on drums, Thunder Horse elbow their way into a nod quickly on Chosen One and hold their ground decisively, with Dehumanizer-esque tones and flourish of keys throughout that closes in lead position on the outro “Remembrance” in complement to the strumming, whistling “Texas” a short while earlier. Even when they shuffle, as on the second half of “Song for the Ferryman,” Thunder Horse do it heavy, and as they did with their 2018 self-titled debut (review here), they make it hard to argue, either with the atmosphere or the sheer lumber of their output. An easy record to dig for the converted.

Thunder Horse on Facebook

Ripple Music website

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Rebreather, Pets / Orange Crush

Heads up children of — or children of children of — the 1990s, as Youngstown, Ohio’s Rebreather effectively reinterpret and heavy up two of that decade’s catchiest hooks in Porno for Pyros‘ “Pets” and R.E.M.‘s “Orange Crush.” Taking songs that, if they ever left your head from rock radio, will certainly be right back in there now, and trying to put their own spin on them is ambitious, but Rebreather have no trouble slowing down the already kinda languid “Pets” or emphasizing the repetitive urgency of “Orange Crush,” and the tonal weight they bring to both honors the original versions as well as who Rebreather are as a band, while showcasing the band’s heretofore undervalued melodies, with call and response vocal lines in both cuts nodding to their sludge/noise rock roots while moving forward from there. They chose the songs well, if nothing else, and though it’s only about 10 minutes between the two cuts, as the first new Rebeather material since their 2018 self-titled EP (discussed here), I’ll take the two covers happily.

Rebreather on Facebook

Aqualamb Records website

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Melmak, Down the Underground

Spanish duo Melmak — guitarist/vocalist Jonan Etxebarria and drummer/vocalist Igor Etxebarria — offer an awaited follow-up to their 2016 long-player Prehistorical (review here) and demonstrate immediately that five years has not dulled their aggressive tendencies. Opener “Black Room” is a minute-long grindfest, and though “Scum” finds its way into a sludgy groove, it’s not far behind. “Poser” starts out as a piano ballad but turns to its own crushing roll, while “The Scene” rumbles out its lurch, “You Really Don’t Care” samples a crying baby over a sad piano line and “Ass Kisser” offers knee-to-the-face bruiser riffing topped with echoing gutturalism that carries the intensity into the seven-minute, more spacious “Jaundiced,” which gives itself over to extremity in its second half as well, and the closing noise wash of “The Crew.” What we learn from all this is it would seem Melmak find the heavy underground wanting in violent terms. They answer that call in bludgeoning fashion.

Melmak on Facebook

Melmak on Bandcamp

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Astral Magic, Visions of Infinity

Ostensibly a solo-project from Dark Sun bassist Santtu Laakso, Astral Magic‘s debut LP, Visions of Infinity, features contributions from guitarist Martin Weaver (Wicked Lady, Doctors of Space) and Scott “Dr. Space” Heller (Doctors of Space, Øresund Space Collective), as well as Samuli Sailo on ukulele, and has been mixed and mastered and released by Heller, so perhaps the plot thickens as regards just how much of band it is. Nonetheless, Astral Magic have all the cosmos to work with, so there’s plenty of room for everybody, as Visions of Infinity harnesses classic Hawkwindian space rock and is unafraid to add droning mysticism to the ever-outward procession on “Ancient Mysteries” or “Onboard the Spaceship,” to grow playful on “I Was Abducted” or bask in cosmic serenity on “Winds of Time” and “Wizards.” Off we go, into the greater reaches of “out there.” It’s a fun ride.

Astral Magic on Facebook

Space Rock Productions website

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Crypt Monarch, The Necronaut

Costa Rican trio Crypt Monarch offer their debut full-length in the form of the three-song/36-minute The Necronaut, the sound of which makes the claim on the part of the band — bassist/vocalist Christopher De Haan, guitarist Jose Rodriguez, drummer/vocalist J.C. Zuñiga — that it was made live in a cabin in the woods easy enough to believe. Though mixed and mastered, the 15-minute opener “Morning Star Through Skull” (15:41) and ensuing rollers “Rex Meridionalis” (10:12) and “Aglaphotis” (10:08) maintain a vigilant rawness, laced with noise even as De Haan and Zuñiga come together vocally on the latter, clean singing and gurgles alike. It is stoner metal taken to a logical and not entirely unfamiliar extreme, but the murk in which Crypt Monarch revel is dense and easy to get lost within. This, more than any single riff or lumbering groove, speaks to the success of the band’s intention in crafting the record. There is no clearly marked exit.

Crypt Monarch on Facebook

Electric Valley Records website

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Oh hi there. It’s Quarterly Review time again, and you know what that means. 50 records between now and Friday — and I may or may not extend it through next Monday as well; I think I have enough of a backlog at this point to do so. It’s really just a question of how destroyed I am by writing about 10 different records every day this week. If past is prologue, that’s fairly well destroyed. But I’ve yet to do a Quarterly Review and regret it when it’s over, and like the last one, this roundup of 50 albums is pretty well curated, so it might even be fun to go through. There’s a thought. In any case, as always, I hope you find something you enjoy, and thank you for reading if you do or as much as you do.

Quarterly Review #1-10:

Steve Von Till, No Wilderness Deep Enough

Neurosis guitarist/vocalist Steve Von Till seems to be bringing some of the experimentalism that drives his Harvestman project into the context of his solo work with No Wilderness Deep Enough, his fifth LP and first since 2015’s A Life unto Itself (review here). Drones and melodic synth backs the deceptively-titled “The Old Straight Track,” and where Von Till began his solo career 20 years ago with traditional folk guitar, if slower, on these six tracks, he uses that meditative approach as the foundation for an outward-reaching 37-minute run, incorporating ethereal strings among the swirls of “Shadows on the Run” and finishing with the foreboding hum of “Wild Iron.” Opener “Dreams of Trees” establishes the palette’s breadth with synthesized beats alongside piano and maybe-cello, but it’s Von Till‘s voice itself that ties the material together and provides the crucial human presence and intimacy that most distinguishes the offerings under his own name. Accompanied by Von Till‘s first published book of poetry, No Wilderness Deep Enough is a portrait of the unrelenting creative growth of its maker.

Steve Von Till on Thee Facebooks

Neurot Recordings on Bandcamp

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Cyttorak, Simultaneous Invocation of Apocalyptic Harbingers

Take a breath before you hit play only to have it punched right out from your solar plexus by the brutalist deathsludge Cyttorak cleverly call “slowerviolence.” Dominated by low end and growls, screams, and shouts, the lumbering onslaught is the second standalone EP for the three-piece who hail from scenic Pawtucket, Rhode Island (former home of the PawSox), and throughout its six-track run, the unit conjure an unyieldingly punishing tonal morass set to aggressive purpose. That they take their name from the Marvel Universe character who controls X-Men villain Juggernaut should not be taken as coincidence, since their sound indeed seems intended to put its head down and smash through walls and/or anything else that might be in its path in pursuit of its quarry. With Conan-esque lyrical minimalism, the songs nonetheless give clues to their origins — “Royal Shokan Dismemberment” refers to Goro from Mortal Kombat, and finale “Domination Lord of Coldharbour” to Skyrim (which I still regret not playing) — but if you consider comics or video games to be lighter fare, first off, you’re working with an outdated mentality, and second, Cyttorak would like a bit of your time to smother you with volume and ferocity. They have a new split out as well, both on tape.

Cyttorak on Thee Facebooks

Tor Johnson Records website

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Lambda, Heliopolis

Also signified by the Greek letter from which they take their moniker, Czech four-piece Lambda represent a new age of progressive heavy post-rock. Influences from Russian Circles aren’t necessarily surprising to find coursing through the instrumental debut full-length, Heliopolis, but there are shades of Elder as well behind the more driving riffs and underlying swing of “Space Express,” which also featured on the band’s 2015 EP of the same name. The seven-minute “El Sonido Nuevo” did likewise, but older material or newer, the album’s nine-song procession moves toward its culminating title-track through the grace of “Odysea” and the intertwining psychedelic guitars of “Milkyway Phaseshifter” with an overarching atmosphere of the journey to the city of the sun being undertaken. And when they get there, at the closer, there’s an initial sense of peace that gives way to some of the most directly heavy push Heliopolis has to offer. Payoff, then. So be it. Purposeful and somewhat cerebral in its execution, the DIY debut brings depth and space together to immersive effect.

Lambda on Thee Facebooks

Lambda on Bandcamp

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Dee Calhoun, Godless

Following his 2016 debut, Rotgut (review here) and 2018’s Go to the Devil (review here), Godless is the third full-length from former Iron Man and current Spiral Grave frontman Dee Calhoun, and its considerable 63-minute runtime finds him working in multiple directions while keeping his underlying roots in acoustic-based heavy metal. Certainly “To My Boy” — and Rob Calhoun has appeared on his father’s releases before as well — has its basis in familial expression, but its pairing with “Spite Fuck” is somewhat curious. Meanwhile, “Hornswoggled” cleverly samples George W. Bush with a laugh track, and “Here Under Protest,” “The Greater Evil,” “Ebenezer” and “No Justice” seem to take a worldly view as well. Meanwhile again, “Godless,” “The Day Salvation Went Away” and “Prudes, Puritanicals and Puddles of Piss” make their perspective nothing if not plain for the listener, and the album ends with the two-minute kazoo-laced gag track “Here Comes the Bride: A Tale From Backwater.” So perhaps scattershot, but Godless is nonetheless Calhoun‘s most effective outing yet in terms of arrangements and craft, and shows him digging further into the singer-songwriter form than he has up to now, sounding more comfortable and confident in the process.

Dee Calhoun on Thee Facebooks

Argonauta Records website

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Turtle Skull, Monoliths

Melodic vocal lines weave together and float over alternately weighted and likewise ethereal guitars on Turtle Skull‘s second album, Monoliths. The percussion-inclusive (tambourine, congas, rain stick, etc.) Sydney-based heavy psychedelic outfit create an immersive wash that makes the eight-song/55-minute long-player consuming for the duration, and while there are moments of clarity to be found throughout — the steady snare taps of “Why Do You Ask?” for example — but the vast bulk of the LP is given to the overarching flow, which finds progressive/space-rock footing in the 11-plus minutes of finale “The Clock Strikes Forever” and is irresistibly consuming on the drifting wash of “Rabbit” or the lysergic grunge blowout of “Who Cares What You Think?,” which gives way to the choral drone of “Halcyon” gorgeously en route through the record’s back half. It’s not the highest profile heavy psych release of 2020, but neither is it to be overlooked for the languid stretch of “Leaves” at the outset or the fuzz-drenched roll in the penultimate “Apple of Your Eye.”

Turtle Skull on Thee Facebooks

Art as Catharsis on Bandcamp

Kozmik Artifactz website

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Diuna, Golem

In some ways, the dichotomy of Diuna‘s 2019 sophomore full-length, Golem, is set by its first two tracks, the 24-second intro “Menu” and the seven-minute “Jarmark Cudów” that follows, each longer song throughout is prefaced by an introduction or interlude, varying in degrees of experimentation. That, however, doesn’t cover the outsider vibes the Polish trio bring to bear in those longer songs themselves, be it “Jarmark Cudów” devolving into a post-Life of Agony noise rock roll, or the thrust in “Frank Herbert” cut into starts and stops and shouting madness. Heavy rock, noise, sludge, post-this-or-that, it doesn’t matter by the end of the 12-track/44-minute release, because Diuna establish such firm control over the proceedings and make so clear the challenge to the listener to keep up that it’s only fun to try. It might take a couple listens to sink in, but the more attention one gives Golem, the more one is going to be rewarded in the end, and I don’t just mean in the off-kilter fuckery of closer “Pan Jezus Idzie Do Wojska.”

Diuna on Thee Facebooks

Diuna on Bandcamp

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Tomorrow’s Rain, Hollow

“Ambitious” doesn’t begin to cover it. With eight songs (plus a bonus track) and 11 listed guest musicians, the debut full-length, Hollow, from Tel Aviv-based death-doomers Tomorrow’s Rain seems to be setting its own standard in that regard. And quite a list it is, with the likes of Aaron Stainthorpe of My Dying Bride, Greg Mackintosh of Paradise Lost, Fernando Ribeiro of Moonspell, Mikko Kotamaki of Swallow the Sun, and so on, it is a who’s-who of melodic/gothic death-doom and the album lives up to the occasion in terms of the instrumental drama it presents. Some appear on one track, some on multiple tracks — Ribeiro and Kotamaki both feature on “Misery Rain” — and despite the constant shifts in personnel with only one of the eight tracks completely without an outside contributor, the core six-piece of Tomorrow’s Rain are still able to make an impression of their own that is bolstered and not necessarily overwhelmed by the extravagant company being kept throughout.

Tomorrow’s Rain on Thee Facebooks

AOP Records website

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Mother Eel, Svalbard

Mother Eel‘s take on sludge isn’t so much crushing as it is caustic. They’re plenty heavy, but their punishment isn’t just meted out through tonal weight being brought down on your head. It’s the noise. It’s the blown-out screams. It’s the harshness of the atmosphere in which the entirety of their debut album, Svalbard, resides. Five tracks, 33 minutes, zero forgiveness. One might be tempted to think of songs like “Erection of Pain” as nihilistic fuckall, but that seems incorrect. Nah, they mean it. Fuckall, yeah. But fuckall as ethos. Fuckall manifest. So it goes through “Alpha Woman” and “Listen to the Elderly for They Have Much to Teach,” which ends in a Primitive Man-ish static assault, and the lumbering finish “Not My Shade,” which assures that what began on “Sucking to Gain” half an hour earlier ends on the same anti-note: a disaffected malevolence writ into sheer sonic unkindness. There is little letup, even in the quiet introductions or transitions, so if you’re looking for mercy, don’t bother.

Mother Eel on Thee Facebooks

Mother Eel on Redbubble

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Umbilichaos, Filled by Empty Spaces

The four-song/39-minute atmospheric sludge long-player Filled by Empty Spaces is listed by Brazilian solo outfit Umbilichaos as being the third part of, “the Tetralogy of Loneliness.” If that’s the emotion being expressed in the noise-metal post-Godflesh chug-and-shout of “Filled by Empty Spaces Pt. 02,” then it is loneliness viscerally presented by founding principal and multi-instrumentalist Anna C. Chaos. The feel throughout the early going of the release is plodding and agonized in kind, but in “Filled by Empty Spaces Pt. 01” and “Filled by Empty Spaces Pt. 03” there is some element of grim, crusted-over psychedelia happening alongside the outright dirge-ism, though the latter ultimately wins out in the four-minute instrumental capper “Disintegration.” One way or the other, Chaos makes her point through raw tonality and overarching intensity of purpose, the compositions coming across simultaneously unhinged and dangerously under control. There are many kinds of heavy. Filled by Empty Spaces is a whole assortment of them.

Umbilichaos on Thee Facebooks

Sinewave website

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Radar Men From the Moon, The Bestial Light

Fueled by avant grunge/noise impulsion, Radar Men From the Moon‘s latest foray to Planet Whothefuckknows arrives in the eight-song/41-minute The Bestial Light, a record alternately engrossing and off-putting, that does active harm when the sounds-like-it’s-skipping intro to “Piss Christ” comes on and then subsequently mellows out with psych-sax like they didn’t just decide to call the song “Sacred Cunt of the Universe” or something. Riffs, electronics, the kind of weirdness that’s too self-aware not to be progressive, Radar Men From the Moon take the foundation of experimentation set by Astrosoniq and mutate it via Swans into something unrecognizable by genre and unwilling to compromise its own direction. And no, by the time “Levelling” comes on to round out, there is no peace to be found, though perhaps a twisted kind of joy at the sheer postmodernism. They should score ballets with this stuff. No one would go, but three centuries from now, they’d be worshiped as gods. Chance of that anyway, I suppose.

Radar Men From the Moon on Thee Facebooks

Fuzz Club Records on Bandcamp

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