The Answer Is In The Beat

The Big Ship: Split tape (Hausu Mountain, 2012) + A Circle Is Forever (Hausu Mountain, 2013)

September 6, 2013 at 9:50 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

So way at the beginning of the year, Hausu Mountain sent me some tapes and I never got around to reviewing them, even though I was really into the Moth Cock tape (which I finally just reviewed). A few weeks ago I went to Chicago to see Negativland and surprisingly enough, there was a Hausu Mountain merch table. Good Willsmith was the opening band at the show, and they’re associated with this label. So I ended up buying some more tapes (which I hopefully won’t take 8 months to review) and listened to the older tapes to finally get around to reviewing them. The Big Ship tape that I got isn’t their proper album, but a tape containing a solo side each by the two members of the group. Doug Kaplan’s is “The Suboceanic Mantle”, an electrified drone with fiery waves gradually flaring up, creating some sort of ghastly effects chorus. Aeron Small’s “Bowshock At The Heliosphere” is much more calm and peaceful, building ethereal guitar loops cocooned in tape fuzz. There’s a few human imperfections that are kept in (knocking sounds, etc.) and it just sounds completely relaxing and warm.

The band’s proper album A Circle Is Forever isn’t solo improvisations, but group compositions, with other musicians contributing. The album combines gentle folk-pop, utilizing plucked acoustic instruments, to more experimental textures, with field recordings, backwards sounds and voices, and analog synths. “Goose & Abel” is grounded in a continuous acoustic guitar solo, but around this you hear city sounds, bird calls, typing, rushing water, and watery, fluttery, garbled synth textures. “The Silver Standard” is a slow, electrified comedown jam, and “Old Film Negative” is a bit reminiscent of the somewhat more emo-leaning side of ’90s post-rock. “A Circle Is Forever” ends the album with a bright, sunny Krautrock-inspired jam, with a steady rhythm, gauzy synths, and free jazz saxophone.