Harvestman - Lashing the Rye
I had the good fortune of seeing Neurosis play a rare hometown show on New Year's Eve, alongside Earth and Saviours. The latter was the odd band out. Its hesher stylings rang thunderous and accurate, but failed to set things high on fire. Earth's slow, pastoral leanings, acquired of late, attracted some heckling. New Year's revelry is not about patience.The Burning of TaraOver Nine Waves
However, Earth perfectly complemented Neurosis. Scott Kelly and Steve Von Till were bearded shamans with six-strings; Von Till drew out his vocal lines, inhaling dramatically and exhaling sturm und drang. The crowd was distinctly urban - crust punks, record store types with thick-rimmed glasses, a smattering of metalheads. Yet the atmosphere was, um, earthy. In the dark, images of wolves, rivers, and forests projected onto a large circular screen behind the band. Signs all around strictly forbade flash photography.
Such visuals cemented themes Neurosis have implied lyrically and channeled sonically - themes of teeth, fur, sky, and soil. But Neurosis, ever-conscious of space, don't need amps for electricity; even their "quiet" record, The Eye of Every Storm, is feral.
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Harvestman, Von Till's solo project, taps this deeper energy. At its heart, Lashing the Rye (Neurot, 2005) is an English folk record. However, it severely warps Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span with fuzzed-out drones and electric guitars. "Scarborough Fair" becomes a dense storm of wah and tremolo; "Sheep Crook and Black Dog" runs ghostly singing through twisting filters, then drops into rippling, Edge-esque echoes. Bagpipes, cello, and female vocals (in "Surround Me," Erika Little suggests PJ Harvey minus cigarettes) enrich this stew. The result is psychedelic, almost bluesy - Charlie Sexton's Under the Wishing Tree comes to mind.
While not metal per se, Harvestman taps into the same dark veins that have run in music since its beginning. In this spirit, Invisible Oranges will expand its scope. Metal does not have a monopoly on depth and power - though it owns a controlling interest.
Lashing the Rye is available from Neurot and Relapse.
Labels: clee, post-metal, usa
3 Comments:
I've been on a Joe Boyd kick lately, so the mention of Ashley Hutchings' various goings-on caught my eye. If you go back and listen to "Unhalfbricking" or "Lief & Liege", I think you'll find that the vein that Fairport Convention were mining was a completely different thing than the isolationist sound Steve Von Till generally reaches for; if he's indebted to that period and coterie of English music at all, it's to the same Nick Drake-"Pink Moon" wellspring that everyone else (Michael Gira, Elliott Smith, even Opeth) seems to end up drawing upon.
The real tradition that Von Till draws from is the Current 93 / DURTRO axis, I think, with Von Till's masculinist paganism substituted for David Tibet's millenarian gnosticism (I'd say "patripassianism", but absolutely nobody except U of Chicago divinity school instructors and obsessive David Tibet fans know what that means). Von Till's gotten pretty talented at working with that sound, but for whatever reason I've always preferred Scott Kelly's solo work. Maybe I just really miss Swans.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Personally I was having a hard time hearing the particular English folk influences listed in the bio, and just concluded that all the effects/distortion/etc. were what obscured my view. I need to get more into David Tibet.
Now's a good time to get into Current 93, because both "Black Ships Ate the Sky" and "The Inmost Light" are readily available, and together show the breadth of Tibet's creative vision. The former features a more or less astonishing group of guest vocalists, as well as guitar work from California's resident folk guitar genius Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance, Comets on Fire), the latter features "Patripassian", possibly the most gorgeous attempt Tibet's ever made at combining vocals with recontextualized plainsong. Both are absolutely loaded with Tibet's recondite theology, which seems peculiar to him alone until you start researching some of the key phrases he uses, and then an astonishing lost world opens before you.
That said, I'm not always in the mood for it, and any engagement with Current 93 will force you to decide whether it's worth it; Tibet's reedy, declamatory vocal style serves his purposes but is not always easy on the ears.
And then there's Death In June, Sol Invictus, and modern followers like Der Blutharsch and Alethes, which seem to get lots of play in the black metal / dark ambient crossover crowd. Current 93 is merely apocalyptic, but some of the aforementioned flirt, sometimes actively, with fascist Holocaust imagery. Misanthropy is part and parcel of apocalyptic folk (and deep-rooted ambivalence towards humanity in the large is a significant theme of Neurosis and Von Till's work), but sometimes it comes awfully close to treading onto anti-Semitic ground.
Also, if anyone tries to convince you that Comus is an antecedent of the Neurot brand of brooding folk, ignore them. Comus are another bizarre outburst of misanthropic outsider "folk", but they also pretty much exist in a world unto themselves, and their influence on bands like Current 93 has been vastly overstated. If they influenced anybody, it's weirdo prog metal bands like In the Woods and Ved Buens Ende. Who are both, of course, fantastic. Just not very much like Neurosis.
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