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May 23, 1958: Mao Tse Tung initiates the “Great Leap Forward,” his second five-year plan for the People's Republic of China. In addition to imposing impossibly high quotas on mainland farmers (to produce both grain in their fields and shoddy steel in their backyard furnaces) the Chairman insists that the country’s “four greatest evils”—rats, mosquitoes, flies and sparrows—must be exterminated in order to maximize production. Villagers are instructed to scream and bang pots and pans to keep the sparrows in flight until the birds die of exhaustion. Soon, the sparrow population is drastically reduced, leaving no natural predator for the country’s locusts—which proceed to decimate China’s crops. The result is possibly the worst famine in human history. Between 1958 and 1961, as many as 43 million Chinese die of starvation. Meanwhile, local government authorities falsify agricultural reports in order to avoid Mao’s often senseless wrath. Soldiers are dispatched to villages to find grain that the peasants are accused of hiding. Thousands of villagers are tortured and murdered in the search for grain stores that never existed. When they run out of bark and grass to eat, peasants in some provinces resort to cannibalism.

The Chairman: Where is the grain? The people deceive their country. Relieve them of the ravages of the sparrow, and they welcome the havoc of the locust. What guidance will they accept, if not Mine? What punishment shall I mete out, if not everything at My disposal?

The Proletariat: How is it that our Leader cannot see us starving? Why do we continue to toil in vain? Is not revolution in the hearts and minds of the people? If political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, perhaps we are harvesting the wrong crops.

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Red Sparowes’ second full-length release, Every Red Heart Shines Toward the Red Sun, was inspired by the foregoing events. Recorded at Louder Studios in San Francisco with producer Tim Green (Comets On Fire, The Fucking Champs, The Melvins), the album features performances from drummer Dave Clifford (formerly of Pleasure Forever and the VSS) and guitarist Andy Arahood (formerly of Angel Hair), both of whom had yet to join Red Sparowes when the band recorded their 2005 debut, At the Soundless Dawn. Clifford and Arahood join original members Cliff Meyer (guitar, also of ISIS), Greg Burns (bass/pedal steel, formerly of Halifax Pier) and Josh Graham (guitar, also of Battle Of Mice and visual comptroller for Neurosis) in weaving a skillfully layered instrumental narrative that combines the expanse of the Sparowes’ compelling live demonstrations with the incomparable fidelity and precision of studio capture.

“I definitely don't want people to think that I used all of this communist-influenced imagery because we are in any way communists—or that I just thought it ‘looked cool,’” Graham explains. “It was very deliberate and fits into a paralleled theme. We identified immediately with the story itself, and with the obvious connections to our band's namesake. First of all, it's awe-inspiring that any government could convince its people to follow such clearly ridiculous orders. Secondly, the [cover] art is a reflection of the methodic qualities used in Chinese propaganda. Whether glorifying villainous leaders or disastrous events, the art the government commissioned was always very delicate and beautiful.”

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Propaganda: The interim between At the Soundless Dawn and Every Red Heart… saw Red Sparowes undertake various tours both foreign and domestic (including a US haul with Pelican, Big Business and Breather Resist), as well as the release of split LPs with Gregor Samsa and Grails (both on Robotic Empire) and, most recently, the Triad three-way split seven-inch/CD with labelmates Battle Of Mice and Made Out Of Babies.

Denouement (The Proletariat): …And so our labors bear fruit, divorced though they might be from the strictures of orthodoxy, and bereft of the voice that is used to spread untruths and subvert the will of the people. Songs tumble from the sky like supreme directives, instilled with the conviction of supernal instinct and navigated by the lodestar of imagination. Warmed by the heat of electric current, they find their receptors in the heart and mind of the collective subconscious, delivering a reminder of that which is both human and divine…

Track Listing

1. the great leap forward poured down upon us one day like a mighty storm, suddenly and furiously blinding our senses.
2. we stood transfixed in blank devotion as our leader spoke to us, looking down on our mute faces with a great, raging, and unseeing eye.
3. like the howling glory of the darkest winds, this voice was thunderous and the words holy, tangling their way around our hearts and clutching our innocent awe.
4. a message of avarice rained down and carried us away into false dreams of endless riches.
5. "annihilate the sparrow, that stealer of seed, and our harvests will abound; we will watch our wealth flood in."
6. and by our own hand did every last bird lie silent in their puddles, the air barren of song as the clouds drifted away.
7. for killing their greatest enemy, the locusts noisily thanked us and turned their jaws toward our crops, swallowing our greed whole.
8. millions starved and we became skinnier and skinnier, while our leaders became fatter and fatter.
9. finally, as that blazing sun shone down upon us, did we know that true enemy was the voice of blind idolatry; and only then did we begin to think for ourselves.