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

photos by Niels Verwijk

“‘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

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.”

With “Herne’s Oak,” Everything Is Noise writes in part, “The first half of the track envelopes the listener in a growing sense of unease and tension as these elements intensify. Suddenly, they drop out into a slow synth arpeggio as new sounds begin to layer themselves over the track, relieving the tension for an otherworldly calm, the warmth of sun on an alien planet as its terrain of weird erosion patterns and the familiar clang of antler on steel returns as your mind drifts into the vastness of the natural world and your own fleeting insignificance in the passing shadows.”

The writeup continues, “‘Herne’s Oak’ plays Twister with your consciousness, warping dissonant, familiar, and pleasant sounds into a winding deer trail through the forest of synapses. The video reflects this, as we see a black and white buck braying soundlessly, the white snow of an old television and warping landscapes give way to deeper levels of surrealism and the LSD-tinged color palette of a western skyline.”

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.

HARVESTMAN has also confirmed a listening party for Triptych: Part Three, five days ahead of the album’s release, Join Steve Von Till to discuss the album and hear stories behind the inspiration for and creation of each track by the creator this Saturday, October 12th at 3:00pm Eastern/12:00pm Pacific. 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.

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 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.