HARVESTMAN: Everything Is Noise Premieres “Herne’s Oak” Visualizer From Psych Act Of Neurosis’ Steve Von Till; Triptych: Part Three LP To See Release October 17th On Neurot Recordings
Photo Credit: Dante Torrieri
“‘HeRNe’s Oak’ plays Twister with your consciousness, warping dissonant, familiar, and pleasant sounds into a winding deer trail through the forest of synapses.” – Everything Is Noise
Watch HARVESTMAN’s “Herne’s Oak” visualizer HERE.
Neurot Recordings will release Triptych: Part Three, the final installment of the trio of records from HARVESTMAN – the psych/ambient project of Neurosis’ Steve Von Till – with the rising of the Hunter Moon on October 17th. Everything Is Noise today unveils a visualizer for the LP’s new single, “Herne’s Oak.”
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.
As with the prior two installments, Triptych: Part Three 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, then mastered by James Plotkin (Khanate, KK Null, Earth), and completed with artwork and layout by Henry Hablak. Joining him on this chapter are guests Kevin Martin (The Bug), Douglas Leal (Deafkids), Wayne Adams (Petbrick), Dave French (Yob), and producer/musician Sanford Parker.
The second single from Triptych: Part Three, “Herne’s Oak” arrives through a new visualizer created by Steve Von Till, who reveals, “‘Herne’s Oak’ is the third track Dave French and I composed on the old torn open steel water tank I accidentally destroyed with my snow plow a few winters back. What began as a few simple beats accompanied by scraping the steel tank with deer antlers morphed into something entirely different and infinitely more atmospheric once we handed it over to our friend, Sanford Parker. He took the few elements we provided, recontextualized them, added his own and crafted an ultra-moody mix. The subsonic void moments get me every time I hear it.”
Watch HARVESTMAN’s “Herne’s Oak” visualizer exclusively at Everything Is Noise now at THIS LOCATION.
Triptych: Part Three will be released on October 17th, through all digital platforms and on LP pressed on Cloudy Clear/Black Galaxy Effect Vinyl in a dub style jacket. Find preorders where the “Clouds Are Relatives (The Bug - 'Amtrak Dub Mix')” visualizer is also playing 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.
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, and with some notable guest appearances including The Bug, Douglas Leal of Deafkids, Wayne Adams of Petbrick, Dave French of Yob, and Sanford Parker, this final part of the HARVESTMAN Triptych seeks once again for a lost world, with the voice of poet Ezra Pound extolling the virtues of "gather[ing] from the air a live tradition." Elsewhere, "Herne's Oak" provides seismic bass waves that physically halt the track in its steps – giant footfalls as Herne's antlers themselves are dragged along a corridor. Another curious and mysterious piece of British folklore brought to life by Harvestman.
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.
TRIPTYCH PART THREE
TRACK LISTING:
Side A
Clouds Are Relatives
Snow Spirits
Eye The Unconquered Flame
Side B
Clouds Are Relatives (The Bug - "Amtrak Dub Mix") [visualizer]
The Absolute Nature of Light
Herne's Oak
Cumha Uisdein (Lament for Hugh)
Harvestman Triptych Part Three album credits:
Steve Von Till - guitars, bass, synths, percussion, stock tank, loops, filters and mutations
Kevin Richard Martin aka The Bug - dub mix of Clouds
Dave French - stock tank percussion on Herne’s Oak, frequency consult
Al Cisneros - bass on Clouds and Bug Dub
Wayne Adams - acoustic drums, electronic beats, and processing on Clouds
John Goff - bagpipes on Cumha Uisdean
Sanford Parker - synths, processing, mixing on Herne’s Oak
Ryan Van Blokland - organ, synth, found sounds and echoplex on Eye
Dovglas Leal - bouzouki on Eye and flutes on Absolute
Narration on Eye the Unconquered Flame - “Canto LXXXI” by Ezra Pound
Recorded and Mixed at The Crow’s Nest, North Idaho by SVT
Mastered by James Plotkin
Artwork and layout by Henry Hablak
Triptych Part One was released on the Pink Moon on April 23rd, Part Two was released on the Buck Moon on July 21st, and now, the cycle closes with the release of Part Three on October 17th's Hunter Moon.
For review copies of Triptych: Part Three and coverage of HARVESTMAN contact dave@earsplitcompound.com, and in the UK/EU contact lauren@rarelyunable.com.