photos by Kylee Pardick
Triptych: Part Three, the final installment of the trio of records from HARVESTMAN – the psych/ambient project of Neurosis’ Steve Von Till – will be released through Neurot Recordings with the rising of the Hunter Moon on October 17th.
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 first single from Triptych: Part Three arrives with a new visualizer created by Von Till using videos and animations provided by artist Thomas Hooper for the album’s fourth track, “Clouds Are Relatives (The Bug – ‘Amtrak Dub Mix’),” a deep and earth-rumbling mix from the The Bug – master of monolithic sound.
Von till states, “With the original version of this track (the third piece of the series with Al’s bass) I wanted to replace my original percussion tracks with something better, so I called upon Wayne Adams of Petbrick since I had recently contributed vocals to one of their songs. He came up with a really heady combination of live drums and glitchy electronic drums. It added an alternative unique dimension, I wouldn’t have come up with on my own. When it came time to dub this track, my first attempt didn’t feel right, so I reached out to Kevin Martin aka The Bug to see if he would be into giving it a go. What you hear is the end result: a deep, dark dub by a master.”
HARVESTMAN’s “Clouds Are Relatives (The Bug – ‘Amtrak Dub Mix’)” visualizer is now playing RIGHT HERE, and the song is now streaming on all platforms HERE.
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 HERE.
Watch for additional visualizers to be released in the weeks ahead.
Triptych: Part Three Track Listing:
1. Clouds Are Relatives
2. Snow Spirits
3. Eye The Unconquered Flame
4. Clouds Are Relatives (The Bug – ‘Amtrak Dub Mix’)
5. The Absolute Nature Of Light
6. Herne’s Oak
7. Cumha Uisdein (Lament For Hugh)
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.
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