Full Album Premiere & Review: Hijss, Stuck on Common Ground
Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on March 7th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
This Friday, March 8, marks the arrival of Hijss‘ debut album, Stuck on Common Ground, which is many things throughout its varied 10 tracks but pointedly not stuck and well removed from common ground in terms of style. Issued through Heavy Psych Sounds, the first offering from the Northern Italian three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Alexander “Lois Lane” Ebner, bassist/synthesist Heinrich Pan and drummer Maurice Bellotti (also Deadsmoke), is both strikingly ambitious and admirably low-key about it.
It’s an aural meld they call “cosmic grunge,” which is a tag I’ve used here as descriptor for acts like Hijss‘ labelmates Oreyeon, as well as Sun Voyager, Terry Gross, and a couple others over the years, but that doesn’t necessarily encapsulate the totality of what they do. Following the loose-swing-into-emergent-push of opener “Ingraved” — and mind you I’ve seen the band’s name, album and track titles in both all-caps and all-lowercase, so I’m writing it normal because perhaps the situation is fluid, which actually fits the record’s character well — the modern heavy space boogie of “1234me” solidifies around its bassline and dug-in drumming, guitar and vocals in their own place until the harder tone kicks in and is consuming. Like side B leadoff, “1234me” was a prior single, posted by the trio in 2021 — the tracks have been taken down, but I was assuming they’d re-recorded them for the LP, which was engineered, mixed and mastered by Toni Quiroga and co-produced by the band — and its rhythmic urgency serves as preface to the quirky, krauty bounce in “Train Tracks” supplemented with synth, as well as the motorik vibing in “Narcolepsy” or even the lighter post-punk resonance around the three-minute mark in “Black Disease.”
Drawing the material together is an organic-but-not-necessarily-low-fi production that sits Ebner‘s throaty vocals over Pan‘s blunt-object-impact low end, and that allows for “Headless Blues” to chug in its sneaky linear build like a ’90s downer before its payoff offers a brief moment of shimmering expanse. Hijss broaden the album’s atmospherics further with the drifting “Interlude #1” on side A, with a melancholy contemplation of standalone guitar, and “Interlude #2” on side B, on which Pan joins and some backing drone lingers behind before sweeping into the penultimate “Blow Out,” but they’re hardly so compartmentalized or otherwise rigid that the swaying “Ingraved” doesn’t also serve as a whole-album intro while establishing the punker undercurrent noted in the PR wire info below — consider the vocal delivery and some of the shove in the riffier sections, even coated in effects as they may be — and six-minute capper “Tilt Mode” doesn’t feel like a corresponding summary of the record’s scope at the finish. It doesn’t always sound like it, which is part of the appeal, 
but there’s a plan at work in each of these pieces and in the flow of their arrangement on the LP itself.
Modern in their point of view lyrically as well as in the transmogrification of space rock and terrestrial tonal heft — I don’t know if they’d get lumped in the post-King Gizzard, post-Slift spheres, but maybe; they strike me as mellower on the whole — Hijss offer the assessment, “Everyone is socializing but human contact is very rare,” in semi-spoken fashion on “Black Disease.” It’s a standout line cleverly marking one of the ironies of our age in the loneliness that can take hold when interpersonal communication becomes a mass broadcast instead of a conversation, the effect of social media on discourse, culture and mental health. “Black Disease” doesn’t linger or grow indulgently philosophical, instead hitting its mark and then drifting out, and is just one of the places Hijss go sonically, but gives timely relevance to correspond to a style drawing from decades’ worth of influences, including those from punk rock.
As “Blow Out” offers the tightest instance of songcraft and “Tilt Mode” the most spacious back-to-back at the record’s finish, I’m not ready to call Hijss settled really on any level, and in the context of the songs I mean it as a compliment. They’re exploring here, and accordingly Stuck on Common Ground is an adventure to undertake, manageable at 36 minutes, and I’m sure when they follow it up either in five years or five months from now (it really could go either way; time is fun pretend) one will be able to hear the foundations of their progression in hindsight with these songs, but I’m not about to hazard a guess as to where they’re headed or how the intention here will shake out subsequently. Which is exciting. It’s the beginning point of an excursion into the unknown, and Hijss bring immediate, stark individuality in a complex aesthetic that feels most traditional in its spirit of defying tradition. Maybe that doesn’t make sense now, but it might if you listen. Be ready to contradict your expectations.
And if you made it through reading the above, thanks. Looking back at it, I interrupted myself a lot there and kind of jumped around, but Hijss have that restless energy too, within and between its songs. Makes its own kind of sense. I’ll take the lesson and try to do the same.
If you’re up for it, Stuck on Common Ground premieres in full below, followed by more from the aforementioned PR wire.
Please enjoy:
Hijss, Stuck on Common Ground album premiere
HIJSS – Stuck on Common Ground
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Stuck on common ground is the debut album of the Italian Power Trio hijss.
With a mixture of heavy blues influenced riffs and synthesized Krautrock parts hijss tries to create a high dynamic range that will keep your attention at all time. On top of gritty basslines and ferocious drums lie cosmic guitars, tantalizing vocals and arpeggiated electronic drones. All three band members come from a vast musical background. Their common denominator is without a doubt a punkish attitude.
The album was produced by Toni Quiroga and hijss, drums were recorded at Nologo Recording Studio, Laives by “holy barbarian” Fabio Sforza. Engineered, mixed and mastered at accept productions by Toni Quiroga, album cover by Luca Guarino.
TRACKLIST
SIDE A
INGRAVED – 02:48
1234 ME – 04:37
HEADLESS BLUES – 03:12
INTERLUDE #1 – 02:30
TRAIN TRACKS – 04:08
SIDE B
NARCOLEPSY – 04:19
BLACK DISEASE – 04:14
INTERLUDE #2 – 00:56
BLOW OUT – 03:43
TILT MODE – 06:12
CREDITS
Composer Name: Alexander Ebner, Heinrich Pan, Maurice Bellotti
Songwriter: Alexander Ebner
Producer: accept productions, Toni Quiroga & hijss
Label: Heavy Psych Sounds Records
Recorded: drums at Nologo Recording Studio, Laives (BZ) by “holy barbarian” Fabio Sforza
Engineer: accept productions, Toni Quiroga
Mixed: accept productions, Toni Quiroga
Mastered: accept productions, Toni Quiroga
Cover Artwork: Luca Guarino
HIJSS is
Lois Lane – guitar/vocals
Maurice – drums
Pan – bass/synth
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