| $13.44
back in stock as of
august 9th, 2011
first in stock on
april 3rd, 2008
threads:
guitar-themed
minimalism-drones
lo-fi
free-improvisation
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| | | open mouth (usa) #om #18 cd daniel a.i.u. higgs “plays the mirror of the apocalypse and other songs” compact disc - (5:33)
- (10:59)
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| ... kinda really excellent set of lo-fi soul-baring raga-guitar & found-sound / weirdness studies from the recently very prolific daniel arcus incus ululat higgs, recorded on what sounds like a 4-track cassette deck buried under hot, volcanic ash for a good decade/two ...
higgs’ playing here is confident, of the reckless-abandon variety &, frankly, quite exhilarating throughout, pausing only to flip the tape or talk to his friends (i imagine this was recorded, again, davey-graham-style, in someone’s bedroom / basement / attic, largely whilst mr. higgs was on tour ...)
possibly, to my own sensibilities at least, the best thing i’ve heard from higgs yet (been on the fence about a few of the recent ones - the “solo jew’s harp” record listed below most certainly being one of them ...) - if you’ve been feeling the woolier end of the recent “sir” richard bishop oeuvre - this meets the technical flair of that halfway with all of the chutzpah & a more pylonic sense of the eastern-guitar modus ...
highly recommended !!! |
| | open mouth press release... |
| daniel higgs, of lungfish and the pupils, is one of the very few contemporary artists who we would absolutely consider a sort of modern day shaman. a musical alchemist, an artistic cypher, an abstract philosopher, a strangely charismatic, yet disarmingly humble master of any artistic endeavor he puts his mind to. a legendary (but now retired) tattoo artist, an incredible painter, whose paintings are at once hallucinatory and gorgeous (one painting adorns the cover of leviathan's tentacles of whorror record) and of course an incredible musician, whose sonic experiments range from the mesmeric riffrock of his band lungfish, to an entire record of solo jew's harp.
but in addition to being an incredible lyricist, an amazing vocalist, and a master of the jew's harp, higgs is also a seriously mean guitar player, with a style and sound as familiar as it is totally alien. a gorgeous buzzing steel string drift through the cosmos. lengthy droning ragas, that drift hypnotically from deconstructed appalachia to john cale like slow-shifting skree (joined on those tracks by violin), to moody melancholy crawls, to thick serpentine swirls of snake charmer melody and reverberating steel string shimmer. raw and lo-fi for sure, but so darkly emotional, and dreamily hypnotic. we've been listening to this non stop since we got it and it continues to unfold more and more on each listen, we're thinking seriously about grabbing a boombox, taking a ton of peyote, blasting this tape and laying in the thick grass, sprawled naked on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere, beneath a sparkling moonlit sky. |
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