Harvestman — Music for Megaliths (May 19, 2017) N / Score: 7.9

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Harvestman

Music for Megaliths

Neurot Recordings

May 19, 2017

Harvestman — Music for Megaliths (May 19, 2017)

            ^{Harvestman — Music for Megaliths (May 19, 2017)}•→       700 copies made on black vinyl. Traditional folk songs distilled and distorted into abstract guitar psychedelica — features Steve Von Till from Neurosis. The Neurosis guitarist’s latest symphony of woodland drones. Fotka uživatele Ben Tais Amundssen. Location: Coeur D’Alene, Idaho
Styles: Avantgarde, Ethereal, Experimental, Alternative Metal, Alternative Singer~Songwriter, Alternative/Indie Rock, Heavy Metal, Americana
Album release: May 19, 2017
Record Label: Neurot Recordings
Duration:     41:01
Tracks:
1. The Forest Is Our Temple     7:15
2. Oak Drone     6:12
3. Ring of Sentinels     6:20
4. Cromlech     4:01
5. Levitation     6:19
6. Sundown     6:07
7. White Horse     4:47
Companies, etc.:
•→       Copyright: Neurot Recordings
•→       Recorded: The Crow’s Nest
•→       Mixed: The Crow’s Nest
Credits
•→       Thomas Hooper: Artwork [Art], Design
•→       Jason Roeder: Drums (tracks: 5)
•→       Steve Von Till: Electric Guitar, Effects [Fuzz], Hurdy Gurdy, Bass, Synthesizer, Other [Filters], Effects [Delays], Effects [Grendel Drone Commander], Effects [Mutron], Acoustic Guitar, Vocals
•→       James Plotkin: Mastered
•→       SVT: Recorded, Mixed
Notes
•→       Oversized gatefold slipcase
Credits:
•→       Steve Von Till — electric guitars, fuzz, hurdy gurdy, bass, synthesizers, filters, delays, grendel drone, commander, mutron, acoustic guitars, vocals.
Additional musicians:
•→       Jason Roeder — live drums on Levitation
•→       All songs recorded and mixed by SVT at The Crow’s Nest, North Idaho
•→       Mastered by James Plotkin — www.plotkinworks.com
•→       Art and Design by Thomas HooperDescription:
•→       Ruins, monuments, and ancient sites of worship are multi~sensory experiences — at once residues of the sacred, the parchment on which the passage of time has been inscribed and templates for imaginative reconstruction, spaces in which to invest and immerse, to trade your bearings for an inexhaustible state of transition.
•→       Over the course of three albums, Steve Von Till has, under the guise of Harvestman, provided the sonic analogue, casting his net for what might have been and yet still be. Both a personal meditation and a tuning fork for the most ancient and enduring of resonances, his latest album, Music For Megaliths, further expands his journeys along the sonic ley lines that run between folk, drone, psychedelia, the ‘kosmische’ outposts of krautrock and noise: not as an act of eclecticism, but of divination, giving voice to an underlying continuity that binds them all.
•→       Recorded over a period of several years in the dawn hours of creation, Music For Megaliths is an aggregation of moments and recordings that have allowed themselves to spell out a greater whole. Utilizing repetition, manipulation and modulation, it’s a hallowed frequency dial that ranges across the pulse~regulated drone of The Forest Is Our Temple, revving up like a generator powered by arcane currents, the blissful gaze of Ring Of Sentinels, Sundown’s ominous waves of interference and White Horse’s rite of dissolution and regeneration, nomadic and devout. Music For Megaliths is a crossing over, whose multiple routes are testament to a singular and sensuously dilated vision. — Jonathan Selzer
Review
Phil Witmer, May 12 2017, 5:17pm
•→       Megaliths are any old arrangement of stones that were assembled in ancient times, presumably for mystic rituals. Stonehenge is the most famous, but there are many other places in the world where big honking rocks are set up in weird ways that make crypto~scientists fidget with glee. Neurosis singer/guitarist Steve Von Till makes music with his main band that more or less sounds like one of these boulders slowly colliding with your head, but his solo work under his own name and as the drone project Harvestman provides a more placid kind of heaviness, as the new Harvestman album Music for Megaliths demonstrates.
•→       The album is a great example of the ever~bountiful intersection between heavy metal and experimental music, feeling like the former without ever exploding into pounding riffs and drums. “This Forest Is Our Temple” (word to Ocarina of Time) fades eerily into existence atop strings and reed instruments as a melancholy acoustic guitar figure anchors the piece together with something resembling folky warmth. “Ring of Sentinels” allows some programmed electronic drums to disturb the pagan party, and is probably the least ominous thing here, nearly counting as chillout music. •→       But wait until “White Horse” concludes the LP with bluesy, rough~hewn guitar leads and a dusted monologue from the man behind the music. Did we mention that Von Till is playing pretty much everything himself, even hurdy~gurdy? Who even plays hurdy~gurdies anymore?   •→       https://noisey.vice.com/
Artist Biography by Stewart Mason
•→       The addition of guitarist and singer Steve Von Till into the Bay Area hardcore act Neurosis in the early ‘90s coincided with the band’s shift from brutal thrash punk (the original cover of the group’s first album, 1987’s Pain of Mind, featured a news photo of Pennsylvania Attorney General Robert “Budd” Dwyer committing suicide during a live televised news conference earlier that year) into a more complex brew. Starting with 1992’s Souls at Zero, Neurosis brought together psychedelic stoner metal, doomy goth rock, and nearly medieval folk tunes. Von Till was equally instrumental in the development of the Neurosis offshoot Tribes of Neurot, in which the band collaborates with outside musicians to create a form of improvisational neo~tribal music. Along with albums like the conceptual mindbender Adaptation and Survival: The Insect Project (an entire album’s worth of electronically manipulated insect noises, originally released in 1998 as three vinyl records of varying sizes meant to be played at different speeds on multiple turntables at the same time), Tribes of Neurot also released a spate of EPs coinciding with the lunar equinoxes and solstices of the years 1999~2001.
•→       The one~off ambient noise supergroup the Culper Ring followed; the trio of Von Till, Amber Asylum’s Kris Force (whose own group features Von Till as an occasional adjunct member), and SubArachnoid Space’s Mason Jones released the Nurse with Wound~like 355 in 2001. This was followed by the solo project Harvestman; under that name, 2005’s Lashing the Rye fuses traditional British folk songs such as “Scarborough Fair” with 1970s~style European progressive rock. Along with his main group and these myriad side projects, Von Till began a proper solo career with 2000’s one~man acoustic effort As the Crow Flies. Released in 2002, If I Should Fall to the Field further developed the folk and country leanings of Von Till’s solo works, adding fiddle, pedal steel, and banjo to his quiet vocals and folkish strumming. A Grave Is a Grim Horse continued the trend in 2008, including covers of an obscure Nick Drake song and tunes by country stars Lyle Lovett, Mickey Newbury, and Townes Van Zandt.
Bandcamp: https://harvestman.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-megaliths_____________________________________________________________