Posts Tagged ‘Daniel Higgs’

Underwater Visitations Sunday Brunch Takeover #2/Episode 10: The Woodsman Episode

Thursday, June 24th, 2010


Heat can be pretty psychoactive. I have suffered through enough late summer DIY shows in this city to know that it can make you feel drunk when you are dry, induce dizziness, lightheadedness, blurred vision, tunnel vision — and, on rare occasions, even predator vision. It can dull your experience of the most bad-ass jam you’ve heard all year while heightening its impression in memory. I am actually pretty glad that I missed Woodsman’s set at Monster Island Basement in Brooklyn last Friday because it don’t think I would have survived to tell the story. When they swung by Newtown Radio last Sunday, the station was probably just as cramped, but the free-standing air-conditioner wheezing dutifully in the corner lowered the temperature to a level that was pleasantly hallucinogenic. Each color and each sound was more saturated than usual, each beat went straight to the temple. Maybe it’s just that Woodsman is so percussion-heavy, but I couldn’t help feeling like was trapped inside my favorite Can video — minus the long and stringy hair.

“Underwater Visitations Episode #10: The Woodsman Episode

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Download the entire episode here

Playlist after the jump.
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Sunday Brunch Takeover: The Nonhorse / Sun Araw Episode

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Last week, “Sunday Brunch with Chocolate Bobka” on Newtown Radio was home to a DJ coup d’état. I wish I could say that the Underwater Visitations team staged a veritable DJ hold-up (in the manner of Horsemouth in the film Rockers, Reggae patois and all), but the reality of the situation had nothing to do with musico-political resistance, and everything to do with scheduling conflicts. Though no omelets or mimosas went into making of this episode, Ari and I had a full plate indeed — so much so that we stretched our two-hour repast into three and a half.

Cameron Stallones of Sun Araw delivered an inspirational virtual DJ set from sunny Los Angeles, aptly entitled “Sunburn City: Heads Up High.” Over Gchat, Cameron described the mix to me as the soundtrack to a “lazer lazy day”: “it starts all dewy, and then it gets mad sunburnt.” I’m not so sure what Sunburn city is, but apparently the photo above — which Cameron provided in the way of visual accompaniment — shows all the people who are waiting in line to get there. I probably should have asked him to tell me a little more about the place when he called into the station from the side of the road — not to mention his thoughts on Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Soviet mystic mathematician PD Ouspensky, whom he seemed intent upon discussion before the show– but we did end up having a pretty fascinating discussion on triangles, hairless dogs, and Hubble 3D.

Just when we were about to pack up for the day, G. Lucas Crane of Silent Barn, Woods, and Nonhorse fame rolled up with his mobile tape-manipulation dashboard and spilled about a hundred hand-labeled tapes onto the floor. Shortly thereafter, he dove into a hour-long mash-up of sounds as widely varied as Indian Raga, a “How to Feel Good Without Drugs” self-hypnosis cassette, and a tape he recorded while watching at home and jamming along to it on a synthesizer. The resulting performance — which you can hear at the tail end of the episode below — was frenetic enough to provoke a small seizure. But like any instance of sensory overload – listening to every FM station on the dial at once, for example — if you let the whole thing wash over you in one long continuous wave, you’ll probably end up feeling pretty blissed-out.

“Sunday Brunch with Chocolate Bobka Takeover: The Nonhorse / Sun Araw Episode”

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Download the entire episode here.

Playlist after the jump.
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Sightings: Daniel Higgs, “Hoofprints on the Ceiling of Your Mind”

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

Back in 1966, Rob Williamson’s voice caught on a bit of Scottish breeze and arched up and down through the following wisdom in “October Song,” the first thing The Incredible String Band ever had in the way of a hit: “I used to search for happiness / And I used to follow pleasure / But I’ve found a door behind my mind / And that’s the greatest treasure.” I’ve often wondered about that door — what exactly it is, at what point exactly at the back of the head it can be found, and where it is supposed to take you — but I fear Lungfish frontman and paranormal balladeer Daniel Higgs has just taken me two steps closer and one step back. In “Hoofprints on the Ceiling of Your Mind,” the endlessly elongated opener on his new Say God double l.p., Higgs places a metaphorical horse inside the metaphorical cavern we humans tend to associate with the interior of the mind. Rather than let us marvel at its raven beauty, he makes it invisible and flips it upside-down, so that its hoofs just scratch the chamber’s sensitive upper surface.

Higgs sings and talks and coughs us through this image over the entirety of this 12-minute tangent, kneading it into our grey matter with the same relentlessness as the horse’s pattering legs. When he is not singing the song’s eternal refrain — “Hoofprints on the Ceiling of Your Mind / That Holy Bible Time” — he is grandstanding about it, chalking it up to a mantra, narrating the process by which it saved his life and even the process of the song’s narration. And it hurts. All the soothing drones in the world cannot make up for how psychologically — and almost physically — uncomfortable we feel when we imagine that little animal poking around up there, kicking up the earth, knocking on the door. But if we set aside some genuine “holy bible” time for Higgs and his phantom horse — in the wee hours of the morning, lying on the couch, perhaps a little tipsy or maybe just feeling a tiny bit lost — we might be able to catch the moment when it finally stumbles upon a weak spot.

Daniel Higgs, “Hoofprints on the Ceiling of Your Mind” [Say God, Thrill Jockey]

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