HARVESTMAN: The Final Installment Of Three-LP Series From Psych Act Of Neurosis’ Steve Von Till, Triptych: Part Three, Is Out Today On Neurot Recordings With The Rising Of The Hunter Moon

photo by Dante Torrieri

Triptych: Part Three, the final installment of the trio of records from HARVESTMAN – the psych/ambient project of Neurosis’ Steve Von Till – is out today on Neurot Recordings. HARVESTMAN’s most exploratory and ambitious works to date culminate in the three-album Triptych series released on specifically chosen full moons.

As with the prior two releases, Triptych: Part Three was recorded and mixed at The Crow’s Nest in North Idaho by Steve Von Till who created 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), John Goff, Ryan Van Blockland, and producer/musician Sanford Parker.

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 today’s Hunter Moon.

HARVESTMAN’s Triptych: Part Three is out now digitally and on LP – Cloudy Clear/Black Galaxy Effect Vinyl in a dub style jacket – at Neurot Recordings where visualizers for “Clouds Are Relatives (The Bug – ‘Amtrak Dub Mix’)” and “Herne’s Oak” are 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.