Just got the Aquaruis Records update email and this was in the midst of it:
WOVEN HAND "Consider The Birds" (Soundsfamilyre) cd/lp
So far, we've reviewed two Woven Hand records, and each time, we invariably slipped completely out of objectivity and giddily gushed about the sheer brilliance of this band, and we hate to break it to you, but this time is going to be no different. In fact, it's bound to be way worse (or better) because if you can believe it, this record is even better, and darker, and more suffocatingly apocalyptic, more biblically brutal, more overtly religious, more instrumentally obstuse, more sonically unpredictable, more soul-shearingly heart-breaking and quite possibly the best record of the year.
Woven Hand is David Eugene Edwards, who fronts the equally brilliant Sixteen Horsepower, a dark and doomy swamp folk outfit that peddles gorgeously dreary ballads of death and destruction. Woven Hand takes the sound of Sixteen Horsepower even further down that dark and seldom travelled path. Tales of an angry God, fire and brimstone, confusion and misery, the coming Rapture, lost souls, death and misery and the long hard road to salvation, all set inside mini epics of biblical proportions, acoustic guitars, mournful piano, throbbing upright bass, shuffling drums, weeping strings, creepy fuzzy ambience, and Edwards' gorgeous throaty moan of a wail. But it's not just pretty and sad and creepy, it's absolutely menacing, and intense and as heavy as a band like this can be. Imagine the Swans playing country ballads or a born again Nick Cave with a bayou pick up band forced to play the devil for their souls.
Not sure what else to say about this record. It's just so goddamn good. And so utterly soulful and important. It's everything music should be. You don't need to agree with his spiritual bent, or even understand what he's on about. This is passionate and pure and heartfelt and disturbingly personal and is thus more important than 90 percent of the music that gets made these days. Listening to the Woven Hand, you can't help but imagine them playing atop a crumbling mount, as the cities below them lay in ruin, flames and famine, death and pestilence ravaging the land, while the band, suffused with a heavenly glow, plays one last dirge, a skeletal ode to death, a bittersweet funereal lament, as the human race sinks into oblivion and the world prepares to begin anew.
Has anyone heard this or even heard of/i] the band??? From samples, they remind me of Swans but different.
WOVEN HAND "Consider The Birds" (Soundsfamilyre) cd/lp
So far, we've reviewed two Woven Hand records, and each time, we invariably slipped completely out of objectivity and giddily gushed about the sheer brilliance of this band, and we hate to break it to you, but this time is going to be no different. In fact, it's bound to be way worse (or better) because if you can believe it, this record is even better, and darker, and more suffocatingly apocalyptic, more biblically brutal, more overtly religious, more instrumentally obstuse, more sonically unpredictable, more soul-shearingly heart-breaking and quite possibly the best record of the year.
Woven Hand is David Eugene Edwards, who fronts the equally brilliant Sixteen Horsepower, a dark and doomy swamp folk outfit that peddles gorgeously dreary ballads of death and destruction. Woven Hand takes the sound of Sixteen Horsepower even further down that dark and seldom travelled path. Tales of an angry God, fire and brimstone, confusion and misery, the coming Rapture, lost souls, death and misery and the long hard road to salvation, all set inside mini epics of biblical proportions, acoustic guitars, mournful piano, throbbing upright bass, shuffling drums, weeping strings, creepy fuzzy ambience, and Edwards' gorgeous throaty moan of a wail. But it's not just pretty and sad and creepy, it's absolutely menacing, and intense and as heavy as a band like this can be. Imagine the Swans playing country ballads or a born again Nick Cave with a bayou pick up band forced to play the devil for their souls.
Not sure what else to say about this record. It's just so goddamn good. And so utterly soulful and important. It's everything music should be. You don't need to agree with his spiritual bent, or even understand what he's on about. This is passionate and pure and heartfelt and disturbingly personal and is thus more important than 90 percent of the music that gets made these days. Listening to the Woven Hand, you can't help but imagine them playing atop a crumbling mount, as the cities below them lay in ruin, flames and famine, death and pestilence ravaging the land, while the band, suffused with a heavenly glow, plays one last dirge, a skeletal ode to death, a bittersweet funereal lament, as the human race sinks into oblivion and the world prepares to begin anew.
Has anyone heard this or even heard of/i] the band??? From samples, they remind me of Swans but different.
