HARVESTMAN: Decibel Magazine Premieres “Galvanized And Torn Open” From Psych Project Of Neurosis’ Steve Von Till
Photo Credit: Kylee Pardick
“The track is better described as an auditory exploration than a song with a traditional structure…” – Decibel Magazine
Watch HARVESTMAN’s “Galvanized And Torn Open” visualizer HERE.
Decibel Magazine is hosting an exclusive premiere of a psychedelic visualizer for “Galvanized And Torn Open,” the new single from HARVESTMAN – the psych/ambient project of Neurosis’ Steve Von Till. The song is the latest preview of Triptych: Part Two, the second installment of the three-album Triptych series, the album nearing release on Von Till’s own Neurot Recordings with the rising of the Buck Moon on July 21st.
HARVESTMAN’s most exploratory and ambitious works to date culminate in the three-album Triptych series titled with each installment coordinated for release on specifically chosen full moons this year. Triptych: Part Two was recorded and mixed at The Crow’s Nest in North Idaho by Steve Von Till who creates the movements with guitars, bass, synths, percussion, loops, filters, and more. The record features guest contributions from Dave French (Yob) who acts as frequency consultant and performs drums on “The Hag Of Beara vs The Poet” and stock tank percussion on “Galvanized And Torn Open,” bass from Al Cisneros (Sleep, OM) on “The Hag Of Beara vs The Poet” and the “Forest Dub” counterpart version of the song, and John Goff (Cascadia Bagpiper) who plays bagpipes on “The Unjust Incarceration.” Live assistance from Sanford Parker was implemented on “Damascus,” and the narration on “The Lake Of Innisfree” was read by W. B. Yeats. The album was mastered by James Plotkin (Khanate, KK Null, Earth) and completed with artwork and layout by Henry Hablak.
The new visualizer for “Galvanized And Torn Open” was created by Von Till, who writes with the song’s premiere, “This track was composed entirely around a very simple beat performed by Dave French and I on an old steel water tank that I had accidentally destroyed with my snow plow during the Winter of 2019/2020. The following Spring when rolling it to my truck to take the scrapyard, I heard its rolling thunder and knew it was a piece of percussion magic. Shortly after, Dave came out to Idaho to visit for a while, and we worked together to compose three pieces based on its various sounds. This second piece is centered around giving space to its thunderous low end. A few simple guitar and lines and synth harmonies help give it movement, accentuate its natural breath, and let it guide us on a sonic journey to a few different internal landscapes.”
Decibel writes, “Steve Von Till needs no introduction—his career has been spent pushing boundaries and exploring sounds, from Neurosis and Tribes Of Neurot to his various solo explorations including HARVESTMAN, his solo psych/ambient effort.” The magazine writes of the new song, “The track is better described as an auditory exploration than a song with a traditional structure, driven by pulsing synthesizers and percussion by Dave French, who performs with Yob since 2023 and is also a member of Von Till’s live band.”
Immerse yourself in HARVESTMAN’s “Galvanized And Torn Open” video first at Decibel Magazine RIGHT HERE.
Triptych: Part Two will be released on Transparent Ruby Red + Black Galaxy Effect vinyl as well as CD and all digital platforms on the Buck Moon, July 21st. There will be a limited edition 11” x 11” exclusive risograph art print of the original cover art by Henry Hablak. Preorders/bundles can are available at the Neurot webshop HERE. If you missed it, watch the visualizer for the lead single “Damascus” HERE.
HARVESTMAN has also confirmed a listening party for Triptych: Part Two for the day before the album’s release. The session will take place Saturday, July 20th at 11am Pacific/2pm Eastern. Save the date and RSVP HERE.
At its heart, music has always been a questioning of inheritance – a dialogue with predecessors and forebears, the forging of one’s own perspective in relation to what has come before, and for some, a plunge into the boundless realms between. For Steve Von Till, that process has always taken on an added dimension to become the most sacred of tasks. Whether through the apocalyptic uprising of Neurosis, the sonic deconstructions of their sister project, Tribes Of Neurot, the invocatory intimacy of his eponymous solo albums or his instrumental psychedelic reveries in the guise of HARVESTMAN, that dialogue has never just been with musical influences, but with what underpins them: the primordial, elemental forces now banished to the peripheries of our contemporary consciousness, yet still broadcasting a signal for all who will listen.
Released periodically on three of 2024’s full moons – April 23rd’s Pink Moon, July 21st’s Buck Moon, and October 17th’s Hunter Moon – the three-album cycle, Triptych, is HARVESTMAN’s most ambitious undertaking yet. But it’s also the distillation of a unique approach that finds a continuity amongst the fragmented, treating all its myriad musical sources and reference points not as building bricks, but as tuning forks for a collective ancestral resonance, residing in that liminal space between the fundamental and the imaginary, the intrinsic and the speculative.
Drawn to the megaliths, ruins, and ancient sites mapped out along the British and European mainland’s geographical and psychic landscapes, the folklore and apocrypha forever resurfacing as portals from a rational world, Triptych is a meditation forged from traces and residues, and a hallucinatory recollection of artists who have tapped into that enduring otherworldliness embedded within us all. It’s a dream diary narrating a passage through Summer Isle where Flying Saucer Attack are wafting out of a window, a distant Fairport Convention are being remixed by dub master Adrian Sherwood, celestial scanners Tangerine Dream are trying to drown out Bert Jansch and Hawkwind are playing Steeleye Span covers, all prised out of time yet bound to its singularity.
Woven together from home studio recordings that span two decades, this latest outing as HARVESTMAN finds parallels with nature’s cycles not just in its release dates but in the repeated structure that binds each album, like an imprint refracted through three separate strata. As with April’s Part One and the forthcoming Part Three, Part Two starts on a collaboration with Om bassist and long-term friend of Steve’s, Al Cisneros, with a dub take opening the B-Side. Here, the opening track, “The Hag Of Beara Vs The Poet,” the languid, tribal groove expands into a chromatic wash, like an endless drip of oil spreading out under a midsummer haze.
A filtering of the alpha-state travelogues of its predecessor, Part Two reaches even deeper into primal yet pristine states. It journeys from the undulating drone and slow-thawing wonder of “The Falconer,” as if the Myst soundtrack were being broadcast from outer space, through the perpetual-motion of “Damascus,” dreamtime bazaar and the “Vapour Phase” seismograph frequencies measuring supernatural tremors to “The Unjust Incarceration” and its distorted bagpipes, sounding a noise-frayed lament.
If Triptych is a multi- and extra-sensory experience, it extends to the remarkable glyph-style artwork of Henry Hablak, a map of correspondences from a long-forgotten ancient and advanced civilization. As with Triptych itself, it’s an echo from another time, an act of binding, a guide to be endlessly reinterpreted, and a signpost to the sacred that might not indicate where to look, but how.
For review copies of Triptych: Part Two and coverage of HARVESTMAN contact dave@earsplitcompound.com, and in the UK/EU contact lauren@rarelyunable.com.
