Posted in Whathaveyou on July 20th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
I had a friend tell me this week she was thinking about driving to Asheville to see Neurosis there with Acid Bath, Kylesa and the Melvins. Indeed, that’s a hell of a show, and probably worth the nine hours in the car or whatever it is from New Jersey. Before that, Neurosis feature this week at Fire in the Mountains, alongside the reunited SubRosa and an enviable slew of others, and they’ve also got two shows in October that one assumes will be joined by more. I don’t think Neurosis are going to spend a month on the road as they herald An Undying Love for a Burning World (review here), their decade-later, marquee-whether-they-like-it-or-not return with Aaron Turner on guitar/vocals alongside Steve Von Till, so when you can see them, consider doing so.
This news came in last week, so you’ll see I bracketed a couple changes in tense on when tickets are available. They’re available now, is the bottom line.
From the PR wire:
NEUROSIS Announces Upcoming Performances + Band To Play Fire In The Mountains Next Week; Celebrated First New Album In A Decade, An Undying Love For A Burning World, Out Now On Neurot Recordings
NEUROSIS has confirmed several new live performances for the months ahead, in support of their new album, An Undying Love For A Burning World.
The return of NEUROSIS and surprise release of their first new album in a decade, An Undying Love For A Burning World, tore a hole in the sky in March. The album immediately became fan favorite in the band’s groundbreaking discography, heralded as one of the year’s best immediately upon its release. With the album’s unexpected release, the band also declared their return to the stage, announcing their first show in seven years at Fire In The Mountains, which takes place next week on the traditional lands of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana by special invitation of Firekeeper Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to reducing youth suicide in Indian Country. And today, the next several performances have been announced.
NEUROSIS has been invited to play at Hellbender by The Orange Peel in Asheville, North Carolina on September 5th, joining Acid Bath, Melvins, and Kylesa that night.
And then, NEUROSIS will perform two very special homecoming shows at the historic Fillmore in San Francisco on October 16th and 17th, celebrating their return to the Bay Area where the band was formed. Tickets for these shows [went] on sale [last] Friday at 10am PDT.
NEUROSIS Live: 7/25/2026 Fire In The Mountains @ Red Eagle Campground – Blackfeet Nation, MT 9/05/2026 Hellbender by The Orange Peel – Asheville, NC w/ Acid Bath, Melvins, Kylesa 10/16/2026 The Fillmore – San Francisco, CA 10/17/2026 The Fillmore – San Francisco, CA
Expect to see additional NEUROSIS live announcements over the weeks ahead.
Posted in Reviews on March 27th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
Probably safe to assume that nobody even remotely aware of how it went down felt good about the way Neurosis ended, with 30-plus years of brutally shamanic musical healing undone in an afternoon by founding guitarist/vocalist Scott Kelly confessing that he’d been abusing his family for years. That was April 2022, and at the time, the band saidKelly had already been out of the lineup for three years and that they didn’t mention it out of respect to his family’s request.
They never said, “we’re done as a band,” but for four years, Neurosis basically went dark. Guitarist/vocalist Steve Von Till continued solo work, their label Neurot Recordings stayed open with new releases, but keyboardist/sampler Noah Landis, drummer Jason Roeder (now ex-Sleep, much to that band’s inevitable loss whenever they come back) and bassist/backing vocalist Dave Edwardson — the latter two also founding members of Neurosis — hadn’t been heard from in years, until An Undying Love for a Burning World.
Aaron Turner, formerly of post-metal innovators Isis, presently of Sumac and sundry other projects and collaborations, is arguably the best person on the planet for the guitarist/vocalist job, and through the eight songs and 63 minutes of An Undying Love for a Burning World, he adds to the songs not in the manner of doing a Scott Kelly impression, but in a way true to his own work, whether it’s the way his voice pairs with Von Till‘s in the quiet middle of closer “Last Light,” the low growl (more Edwardson than anyone, if we’re going by in-Neurosis comparisons) punctuating the lurch in post-intro leadoff “Mirror Deep,” both new and reminiscent of something the band might’ve done on 1992’s Souls at Zero (reissue review here), or any number of instrumental nuances that could be read as his contribution.
The album sounds like he took part in the writing, and one would expect a veteran band like Neurosis to know that, if they were going to do this, the creative aspect needed to be there from everybody. It gives An Undying Love for a Burning World a forward-looking cast, and while Turner wouldn’t have been the only candidate for that job — YOB‘s Mike Schiedt, The Keening/SubRosa‘s Rebecca Vernon, and Jackie Perez-Gratz (Grayceon), the latter of whom has done a fair amount of recording with the band over the years, come to mind as others — his inclusion pushes Neurosis forward in ways they very much needed to move forward if they were going to release music again.
It was a surprise drop and the internet broke. “The hive lost its fucking mind,” as the swaying, four-minute cut “Untethered” might say. We all became that one mean tweet, or at least those who already weren’t. Having not been cool enough to be in on the secret for the last year or however long they were making the record — you probably were, and cheers to that — I was blindsided by it, and so I remain. The last Neurosis album was issued a 10 years ago, 2016’s Fires Within Fires (review here), and as big a change as bringing Turner is to the sound and dynamic of the band — more low growls, stark turns, and it’s 2026 and even Neurosis gotta harmonize — the 2024 passing of producer Steve Albini, who helmed six consecutive Neurosis full-lengths, from 1999’s Times of Grace through Fires Within Fires and just the fact that anyone else is sitting in that chair at the board, also lends An Undying Love for a Burning World a different feel, and one less directly stage-minded. That is not to take away from Scott Evans‘ work filling those shoes here. It’s just one more thing to be surprised by along the way.
“Untethered” lands as the jumping off point into the extended closing duo of “In the Waiting Hours” (10:16) and the multiple-movement “Last Light” (16:58), which feel complementary and continuing a thread through an imagined progression of time from the earlier “First Red Rays.” If that’s a theme, it’s largely unstated. The 53-second intro “We Are Torn Wide Open” is comprised of intertwining layers of voice, delay effects and such, and its lyrics are a treatise:
We Are Torn Wide Open
The separation that burns our hearts Is the root of all our disease We’ve forgotten how to live, so we suffer We’ve forgotten how to struggle, so we suffer We’ve forgotten how to die, so we suffer We’ve forgotten we are wild, so we suffer We exist in isolation, so we suffer
The dissonance is deafening
Does anyone, I wonder, feel right now like they’ve forgotten how to struggle? Everything costs four times as much as it did last time Neurosis put out an album. Civil liberties are trampled on daily if not hourly, human beings are being locked in warehouses, the US is at fucking war — again — and there is no sign of anything on any level getting better in my lifetime. But ‘we’ haven’t forgotten how to live, we’re just too busy at work. Or, you know, dying. This kind of self-agreeing dude-philosophy positing that if we all went out in the woods in camo and shot a deer we’d rediscover our humanity speaks from a position of privilege and discounts the actual oppression of the day, whether that’s in Gaza, or Kansas, or your own mind.
It makes great, podcast-ready oneliners, but do human beings shitting in the corners of the warehouses where they’re being indefinitely detained without legal due process feel like they’ve forgotten how to struggle? To die? Maybe it isn’t that ‘we’ have forgotten how to struggle, live wild, and perish somehow fulfilled, but that we’re blind to these things because everything is struggle. Unable to see the forest for the trees, if you’d like a woodsy cliché. The problem is capitalism. These things aren’t forgotten. They’ve been stolen. From you, ‘we,’ and everyone. If you feel isolated, that’s on purpose. The world burning is on purpose.
What ensues as “Mirror Deep” and “First Red Rays” pick up from that lead-in is both signature Neurosis and something new brought to that established pattern — which, by the way, is also part of the pattern itself; it’s not like Neurosis were putting out the same record every other year between 1986 and 2016; change has always been the order — and signature lurch. Both songs are intense on balance, both lead the listener deeper into the procession and flow, and the crush is cathartic as a sheer onslaught and coupled by intricate ambience between Turner‘s added synth to Landis‘, Von Till‘s various now-the-guitar-sounds-like-it’s-made-of-molten-metal effects and I won’t claim to know what else. The subsequent “Blind” feels more open, speaking more to releases like 2012’s Honor Found in Decay or 2004’s The Eye of Every Storm (discussed here), and finds Von Till and Turner singing together as a preface for “Last Light” to come.
“Seething and Scattered” (I think) brings Edwardson into a triad call-and-response across channels that adds to the urgency of the recaptured churn, and the keyboardy feel of the break distinguishes it, as well as the hard-toms as Roeder builds the tension back up to the noisy, all-in finish, slamming down and pausing only briefly before “Untethered” picks up the momentum. The aforementioned four-minute track is the shortest, aside from “We Are Torn Wide Open,” and like “Mirror Deep” could make a fitting introduction for listeners to discover how the shifts in Neurosis lineup have played out in their sound. It’s also the most satisfying rumble of bass on An Undying Love for a Burning World, and if you told me that was how it wound up on the record, I would absolutely believe you.
Across the span, the songs work together to create the broader reality of the whole album, and from “Mirror Deep” onward, the immersion is a plunge for those willing to take it. Perhaps nowhere more so than on “In the Waiting Hours” and “Last Light,” which despite having their own intentions stand together in my mind so that’s how I’m putting them. They’re a few minutes short of half the total runtime, but are significant portion of it just the same, and with “Untethered” on side C they make up the entirety of the 2LP edition’s second platter, the closer standing alone as it invariably would.
A speedy electronic pulse permeates “Last Light” at the beginning and returns at the end, but that does little to tell you the scope of the song itself. Turner growls, and howls, over the first couple minutes before at 2:27 the crush begins anew, and the nod grows more weighted until a long midsection break seems to be running multiple experiments at the same time. Fair enough as a setup for the last thrust, but Neurosis by then have done big finishes multiple times over, and while “Last Light” sees its tonal crux return, they eschew ‘grand finale’-type posturing or onslaught just for its own sake. It’s always been about something deeper, and so it still seems to be.
Like many who will take it on, I was surprised to have a new Neurosis album show up, and while I still have questions — for example, Scott Kelly was a founding member of this band and invariably had or has a stake in the LLC that almost surely legally binds them; does he get a cut from this or the back catalog at this point? — and I still feel like I’m getting to know the songs on An Undying Love for a Burning World, I recognize that feeling as being part and parcel to the experience of listening to Neurosis. They’ve never put out disposable records, or something to hear while the hype was hot and then put away and forget. In the best case, you live with their music, and it changes you and how you hear it changes over time. After four years of not having that and a decade on from their last release, four decades on from their outset, their return makes it clear how much it’s been missed.
Neurosis, An Undying Love for a Burning World (2026)
Posted in Reviews on October 6th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Day two. Normally this is time for hubristic gibberish about how easy the QR will be, the overconfidence of one whose trees rarely appear as forests. But we persist anyhow, and today looks pretty good from where I’m sitting now, so despite the ‘Day 2 on a Monday’ weirdness, which I’m pretty sure makes no one other than myself even raise an eyebrow, things are rolling and one hopes will continue to be fluid. I wouldn’t say Day 1 came together easily, since it took me like two and a half days to get done, but neither was out unpleasant. Hoping for more of the same here, plus efficiency.
Quarterly Review #11-20:
Queens of the Stone Age, Alive in the Catacombs
Something of an identity crisis in Queens of the Stone Age perhaps that sees the long-running highest commercial export of desert rock shift from the cloying pop of their last two albums to a comparatively stripped down live recording in — you guessed it — catacombs, where apparently the acoustics are pretty sweet. Anybody remember when Tenacious D went into ‘the cave’ on the Tribute EP? No? Didn’t think so. Frontman Josh Homme, who carries the minimal arrangements on vocals largely with ease, and his ever-ace band filmed the whole thing; it’s all sepia, all very artsy, and they do “Kalopsia” and dip back 20 years to finish with “I Never Came” after “Suture Up Your Future,” which is the second inclusion by then from 2007’s Era Vulgaris. All told it’s five songs and 27 minutes, and whether you hear it as a cringe hyperindulgence of unaware self-parody or as an expression of human artistry in organic form surrounded by memento mori probably depends on how deep you run with the band. But they’re not hurting anybody either way.
Between recording and then remixing/remastering their 2021 debut Primeval Transmissions (review here) and signing to Argonauta Records, Portland meditative duo Breath, comprised of Ian Caton and Steven O’Kelly, expanded the lineup with Lauren Hatch on keys and their second album, Brahman, brings Rob Wrong (Witch Mountain) into the fold on guitar as well as helming the recording. The sense across the eight songs/42 minutes is still of exploring the reaches of consciousness, very post-Om in the foundational basslines and dry vocals, but having Wrong rip out a solo in each break of “Awen” sure doesn’t hurt, and hearing the full band come together around the culmination of “Hy-Brasil,” keys, guitar, bass, drums all-in tonally, is emblematic of their expanding horizons. As for those, “Sages” pushes toward its own vision of psych rock in conversation with the opener, and “Cedars of Lebanon” demonstrates malleability and balance that one hopes portend more to come as the band continues to grow and gel.
Johan Langquist The Castle, Johan Langquist The Castle
Kind of an awkward moniker grammatically for the solo-band fronted by original/once-again/maybe-erstwhile Candlemass vocalist Johan Langquist. Is it possessive? Is he The Castle? I don’t quite understand, but from the operatic complement of Emelie Lindquist‘s backing vocals on opener “Eye of Death” through the litany of compiled singles Johan Langquist The Castle dropped over the course of 2024, there’s no mistaking the classic nature of the doom. “Castle of My Dreams” flows keyboardier on balance, while “Where Are the Heroes” gives riffers shelter in its chug, while “Raw Energy” and “Revolution” toy with the balance between the two sides, with “Freedom” as a classic-metal epic and “Bird of Sadness” as the comedown epilogue. Langquist, absent decades between fronting the first Candlemass LP in 1986 and rejoining the band circa 2011, would seem to be making up for lost time, and the ideas he’s exploring here warrant the investigation. I’m curious where this leads, which I think I’m supposed to be, so right on.
From Joshua Tree, California, Maliciouz is the solo-outfit of Michael Muckow, who handles guitar, bass and drums for the molasses-thick instrumentalist proceedings. Tortoise arrives beating you over the head with its tone and metaphor alike; eight songs and 58 minutes of lumbering density wrought with dug-in purpose, harnessing heaviness-of-place as riffs and often melancholic drone metal crash. It’s an art project, but without pretense of being anything other than it is, and Muckow — who makes a point of noting his age (67) in the press material — composes for flow and immersion as each slow march gives way to the next, culminating in the semi-acoustic “The End,” which is no less on-the-nose than calling the album Tortoise to start with. No grand reflections, no sweeping statement. Tortoise lets the riffs do the talking and they say plenty about the grit and expanse Muckow is trying to conjure. Be careful out there. He makes it easy to get lost.
The former co-guitarist/vocalist of Neurosis has come a long way since his guy-and-guitar beginnings as a solo artist, and Alone in a World of Wounds reaps the textural fruit of Steve Von Till‘s willful artistic progression in a piece like the leadoff “The Corpse Road” or “Distance,” which caps side A fluidly with the only use of drums on the record, reminiscent of The Keening‘s awareness of sonic weight and atmospheric sidestep. The cello, synth and field recordings build out what would be minimalist arrangements without them and remain early-morning quiet, the piano on the spoken-word-topped “The Dawning of the Day (Insomnia)” and flirtations with lushness on “Horizons Undone” softly shaping the album’s world with the electronics of “Old Bent Pine” ahead of the guitar-based “River of No Return,” which closes with what feels like an updated take on Von Till‘s earlier woodsfolk craft, reminding that ‘heavy’ is just as much existential as it is aural.
Solitude Over Control is as much a confrontation as an album, and that’s very clearly the intention behind Glasgow’s Mrs Frighthouse for their Lay Bare-issued debut LP, Solitude Over Control. Its 11 songs foster a bleak gamut of industrial sounds, portraying dark and inflicted sexual violence as part of the band’s expression. Slaying rapists, then, and fair enough. Intertwining layers of vocals and experimentalist pieces like “Seagulls (Part 1)” give an avant-garde air to the crush of “DIY Exorcism” and the lurching, abrasive finish of “White Plaster Roses,” soprano vocals and electronic noise externalizing the unsettled in a way that can only really be thought of as ‘extreme’ in a musical sense. “My body has never been mine,” confess the lyrics of “Our Culture Without Autonomy” with horror-style keyboard behind them; there’s a show being put on here, but it’s visceral just the same, and the later “My Body is a Crime Scene” turns the accusation direct: “My body is a crime scene/He did this to me/My body is a crime scene/You did this to me” in a moment that lands powerfully unless you’re a fucking sociopath.
A joint release between Majestic Mountain and Copper Feast Records, Eroded Forms/Inertia presents as a double-EP split release between Melbourne, Australia, melodic heavy post-metallic rockers Droid, who dare toward aggression on “Reverence” and the sludgier shouts of “Ruin” after leading off with “Khaki” without giving away the plot such that the blastbeats of “Resonance” still hit as a surprise, and Sweden’s I Am Low, who answer the fullness of tone with careening on “Sweet M16” before the grunge melody of “Greed” makes that song a highlight, “Waves” flows with less emotional baggage and a subtle hook, and “Inertia” wraps as a landing point with duly vibrant crash. Grunge and a hairy kind of fuzz are shared between the bands, but each has their own purpose. I don’t know if it’s a release of convenience to make it a split, but it makes for an engaging showcase, and if you’ve never come across either of them, the best arguments for digging in are right there in the songs.
Portland five-piece doomly flamekeepers Tar Pit begin their second full-length (on Transylvanian) with the 10-minute three-parter “Dagon, Dark Lord Dwelling Beneath,” the longest inclusion (immediate points) at 10:15 and bookended with the title-cut at the record’s end. Between, from the more rocking aspects of “Coven Vespers” to the downtrodden roll of “Blessed King of Longing,” the five-piece remind of doom at the turn of the century, when ‘traditionalism’ in doom metal was something of a defiance against modernity instead of an aesthetic unto itself. More than 20 years, The Gates of Slumber, Reverend Bizarre, and what was then the Church of True Doom would seem to have evolved into Tar Pit‘s Eldritch Doom Syndicate, and that’s nothing to complain about as “Blue Light Cemetery” accounts for Candlemass and Cathedral after the dim-blues of “Jubilee” secures the band’s place in the heavy morose. If you were just getting into doom, this kind of thing might make you want to start a band, and yes, that’s a compliment.
Dirt-coated riffing leads the way on GRGL‘s Horror-Bloated Ouroboros six-song EP, as Jake‘s guitar, Hal‘s bass and Nick‘s drumming in the first-names-only Salt Lake City trio align around a chug in the opening “Horror-Bloated Ouroboros (An Overview),” that, despite the dry-throated barks that top it, remains among the more accessible moments of the churning sludge-doom outfit’s 23-minute outing. To wit, “Born Again” and the even more gurgley (hey wait a minute!) “My Skeleton” takes roughly the same elemental formula and slows it the frick down, thereby becoming immediately more tortured. The overarching impression is unipolar — raw, heavy, miserable — and the vocals are part of that, but the dynamic between those first two songs is answered for in the uptick of pace that arrives with “My Pie Hole” and the angularity of the shorter instrumental “Absorption/Secretion,” while the plodding reprise “Born Again (Again)” closes so as to make sure everybody ultimately gets where they need to be, i.e., hammered into the ground. Eat dust shit sludge. Hard to get away from thinking of this as the true sound of our times. Maybe it’s the title.
It’s a clear and classic style across Grusom‘s aptly-titled third album, III, which arrives some seven years after they were last heard from with 2018’s II (review here), the band who’ve become a low-key staple of the Kozmik Artifactz roster demonstrating in no uncertain terms what’s gotten them there. Vintage-heavy heads will find plenty to dig in the organ-laced flow of “Shadow Crawler,” “Hell Maker,” the later “Fatal Romance” and the more open finale “Mortal Desire,” and while “Le Voyage” has many of the same aspects at work, it shows the Danish six-piece as flexible enough in their approach to convey a range of emotions, ditto the wistful Graveyard-y “Memories” and the interlude “Euphoria,” making sure that among the places III might take a given listener, there’s nothing to remove them from the procession carried along by the band.
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 10th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
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”
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
Posted in Reviews on October 14th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 6th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
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”)”
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
Their lineup expanded over the course of the seven years between their first EP, 2010’s The Disruption Writ, to their third and final-to-date full-length, 2017’s Women (discussed here), but the core of Ides of Gemini was always vocalist/bassist Sera Timms (later just vocals) and guitarist/backing vocalist Jason “J.” Bennett, and it was the band’s Neurot Recordings-delivered debut long-player, 2012’s Constantinople (review here) that set that pattern. Then a trio completed by drummer/backing vocalist Kelly Johnston, Ides of Gemini helped set a precedent in whose shadow much of modern ‘-gaze’-style heavy has unfolded, but kept themselves distinct in sound and exploratory purpose, and the individualism they continued to seek in their craft was evident from Constantinople onward.
It wasn’t that the band were minimalist, necessarily, but with the drums low in Chris Rakestraw‘s mix (Rakestraw also recorded; James Plotkin mastered), the band were able to give an impression of space in the mix as Timms — who carried her melodic, crooning vocal approach over from her prior outfit, Black Math Horseman; their 2009 LP, Wyllt (discussed here, also here), remains a landmark; the solo outfit Black Mare would also debut in 2013 with Field of the Host (review here) — and Bennett (who as I recall wrote for Decibel and was thereby in an echelon of cool I’d never attain) occupied the forward positions. Riff-and-voice remains a lot of the basis for what oozes out of the speakers on the nine-song/42-minute Constantinople, and the bass and drums are there in pieces like “The Vessel and the Stake,” “Slain in Spirit,” which announces its arrival with tight snaps of snare, and the cleaner-toned languid sway of the penultimate “Martyrium,” but the guitar and vocals are consistent focal points throughout.
That’s part of the challenge Constantinople seemed to be issuing, and at a time when a generation was taking shape in the heavy underground, Ides of Gemini were as brazen in their forward-looking and forward-thinking take as they were morose in tempo. Timms‘ presence and distinctive patterning, often weaving lines around Bennett‘s riffing, angular on the earlier “Starless Midnight” in a way that’s both folkish and somewhat disjointed feeling, was inevitably a major factor in the ethereal persona the album establishes, a smoky mystique wrought over the chug of “Resurrectionists,” which is stark in its first half and fuller in tone in the second, progressing on its own terms as much of the album does.
In 2012, Constantinople was decisively post-metallic as the definition of that microgenre had solidified in the mid and late aughts, but where like so much heavy-anything post-metal became a showcase for thinky-thinky-dude wankery and overly-cerebral, hyper-masculine aggro chestbeating, there’s something enticingly tentative about the way Constantinople sets forth that works against convention. It’s easy to read femininity as a piece of that, but it’s only a piece, and the lushness of melody throughout “One to Oneness,” which sets some of the album’s emptiest reaches against some of its most visceral impact and delights in the contrast, and the poetry-set-to-music vibe of the vocal delivery where sometimes it felt like an odd fit; that oddness was a part of it too. Something just a little elsewhere from the places you might expect it to go in a way that was somewhat intangible and inherently Ides of Gemini‘s own, making considerations of genre less relevant than the readily identifiable sounds the band were making around whatever tropes one might want to pick out.
And I guess their intentionality throughout Constantinople is part of what continues to stand it out as well. Even as they seemed to be plunging into a melancholic unknown, beneath that, they knew very clearly what they were about in terms of sound and style, the music backing Timms and sometimes seeming to rise up and swallow everything, as on the majestically heavy doom wrought by “Reaping Golden,” but while the tempos remained mostly on the slower end, they were nonetheless able to cast a malleable image through loud/quiet changes and a hypnotic nod-ism that emerged and spread over the album as a whole, carrying the entranced listener from one end to the other with more command than one might expect of a first LP, even if nearly half of its component tracks — “Resurrectionists,” “The Vessel and the Stake,” “Slain in Spirit” and “Martyrium” — had appeared on earlier short releases, through ground that was ready to be art-rock uneven without giving up either the heft of its tonality or the sweet severity resultant therefrom. At the time, there wasn’t a lot out there like it.
That’s less the case now, if it needs to be said, and as they haven’t done a record in seven years, Ides of Gemini are less noted for their contributions to post-heavy than they might otherwise be if they were hyper-active, touring and making records on the regular. I’m not sure that makes Constantinople any less substantial in that regard, or any less trailblazing in stylistic terms. Their 2014 follow-up, Old World/New Wave (review here), brought likewise self-awareness in songwriting and ambience, but expanded the scope of Constantinople while echoing its accomplishments, making it in some ways the band’s definitive offering, still with the trio configuration of Johnston, Bennett and Timms, before the latter would give up bass duties to Adam Murray and Johnston was replaced by drummer Scott Batiste, also known for his work in Saviours and, who like Murray, would go on to feature in the later incarnation of charred-fuckall outfit Persekutor.
The four-piece Ides of Gemini seemed primed to continue to move forward and continue evolving as Women set them forth, but it wasn’t to be. Black Math Horseman began teasing a reunion in 2019 and finally issued a return single-song EP, self-titled (review here) late in 2022, and the outward appearance was Ides of Gemini were in hiatus mode as attentions went elsewhere. That may or may not still be the case, as a couple of social media posts, including a photo of Timms, Johnston and Bennett on Instagram dated from July seemed to demonstrate proof-of-life, if not any kind of activity on the part of the band. Actually it kind of looks like they went out for a nice dinner at some point. Good for them.
Whether or not there’s ever a follow-up for Women, Constantinople occupies its own place in their catalog and in the broader sphere of atmospherically-minded heavy, and its resonance still feels as much its own as it did 12 years ago when it first arrived. I don’t know if I’d call it timeless, but it still pushes against genre convention, and it’s hard not to admire it for that as well as for the world created in the material itself.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
—
We’re home now. Trip of a lifetime, it turned out to be, full of the component ups and downs that, by the end of it, The Patient Mrs. and I were markedly better at anticipating than we had been before we left. Getting back to New Jersey from four weeks Budapest was a bit of culture-shock, and I’m not ready to declare us as out-of-the-woods in terms of jetlag — The Pecan woke up at 3AM yesterday, 5:45 today, so we’re getting there at least by that measure — but while traveling with a young child and an even younger little dog could be and most definitely was difficult at times, the experience was something that I think we all feel a bit richer for having, if not in actual fiscal terms. Though in that regard, I’ll note that buying like eight things at the grocery store yesterday and it costing over $100 was for sure a reminder of where I live. I’d gotten used to the idea of maybe being able to afford things, I guess, even if that too was largely an unsustainable illusion. But I drink seltzer now, so yes, my life is changed.
I think we’re pretty well resolved that, barring disaster, we’ll go back to Hungary at some point in the next few years. Maybe stay in some place where the furniture isn’t so nice. We’re hard on decor, man. We go through couches like nobody’s business. Feel a bit less guilty when they’re not new.
One of the last days we were there, last Sunday I guess it was, though it feels much longer ago already, we went to the working-class town of Miskolc — which even the prospect of seeing raised a couple eyebrows of people I spoke to about it in Budapest — and a village called Szirmabesenyő that is where my great-grandfather emigrated from in the early 20th century. We saw the old schoolhouse and houses that were probably newer, and after Ile 30 seconds of internet research in The Patient Mrs.’ part, we ended up in a catholic cemetery that had more people with last name in it than anywhere I’ve ever been in my life. They spelled it Koczán, with the accent on the ‘a’ that I guess got dropped at some point from the anglicized version. It was amazing to see, and some of the graves were maintained, kept up. Kind of a stunning revelation to think I still have family I’ve never known about in a place I’d never been. A couple of them are on Facebook, even, these mysterious Koczáns. I don’t know that I’ll reach out — “hi I’m some weirdo from far away with the same last name as you let’s be awkward!” — but finding out they exist was powerful. I hope to write more about it at some point.
Maybe next week, as I don’t have a ton planned beyond a Moonseeds review for Monday. I’ll try to get more reviews going — there’s so much to catch up on, and I’ve already got Quarterly Review stuff slated for at least seven days later this month or in September post-Desertfest NYC — and might actually be able to do it as The Pecan is in ice skating camp all week (I think), but either way, it’ll be as much as I can do when I can do it. Whatever you’re up to, I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Thanks again for reading and don’t forget to hydrate.
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 14th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
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
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
