I prefer the ladder is Umhoefer’s latest release. It follows his usual MO of containing few, longer than common, tracks which themselves contain multiple “songs” that meld and segue into one another. It that sounds odd then don’t worry, it works in ways that defy simple description.

‘1.’ may sound familiar if you’ve listened to our recent compilation album, Quiet, Constant Friends, as the first segment “Pretty Steep” featured as a track. And even if you haven’t (why not?!) the first two seconds should be enough to say “welcome to an Old Earth song”, so unique is Umhoefer’s brand of music. It’s all needly and direct guitars and clattered percussion and the trademark Old Earth lyrics, like cryptic incantations or possessed mutterings.

“And O! This one is elevated!
as it’s moving from the mattress to the floor
And O! Ventilated!
as it’s moving from the window to the door”

The second segment of ‘1.’ (subtitled ‘what happens when we’re not’) kind of creeps up on you, with probing guitars and more of those smashing drums, before scratchy guitar and gong-like atmospherics open ‘2.’, soon joined by percussion and faraway mumbled vocals. Eventually the vocals kick in properly “Have passed around, half past the wake, that kingdom’s come to stay/ and I couldn’t reach the ground now / and oh the weight”. The transition between segments around the four minute mark has a jarring dream logic, and soon we find ourselves in a completely different song, one with the repeated and vaguely defiant lyric,

“Same fight all day”

Nobody else even tries to make music like this. Its music like an out-of-body experience, like losing your mind in a secluded house full dust and cobwebs and ghosts. One thing I have a real hard time describing in words is the directness of it, the paradoxical sense of rushing headlong at some vague notion. The closest I can come is to use dream-like analogies a lot and hope people know what I mean. But if nothing else I’ve ever written about Old Earth makes sense then know one thing, the project is one of my very favourites out there right now.

You can get I prefer the ladder now via the Old Earth Bandcamp page.

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The track and its video take normality and invert it into something unsettling, using everyday sounds as a trojan horse for the weirdness to worm into your eyes ears. The song features gentle vocals which loop and overlap, mixing with the unnervingly simple instrumentation to create something almost sinister, like the sounds a malevolent entity might make to attract kids to its shadowy home. This segues into minimalist electronica around the halfway mark, switching with the imperfect logic of a half-remembered dream.

The video follows a similar method, with Lewtrakimou riding her bike through a world undeniably ours and yet obviously not, resulting in a viewing experience akin to watching the opening to Eerie, Indiana on some kind of medication. Not once is this careful arrangement broken by something outwardly extraordinary, the cycling and walking and note-taking done from beneath a veneer of indifference, as if things are exactly as they are meant to be. The result is something interestingly apt for the modern age, living out lives surrounded by the surprising and bizarre yet slogging through straight faced, as if we don’t have any other choice.  

Fascinating Everything will be released on the 4th August via Obsolete Media Objects. You can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

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Human Behavior are an experimental, genre-bending band from Tucson, Arizona, led by chief songwriter Andres Parada. Following 2013′s Golgotha, Bethphage is the second album in a trilogy which combines classical folk music with drone and spoken word and Bibilical imagery to explore dark themes like death and unhappiness. In an interview with Valley Hype Parada was asked how Bethphage differs from his previous work:

Long answer: This album was written in sequence, a technique we’ve never done. It is two long tracks, split up by chapters. We tried to make this album a cinematic experience. It is also our first studio album, which allowed us to experiment in ways we haven’t before.

Short answer: It’s weirder.

Weird is a good word to describe Bethphage, with each of the various ‘Chapters’ flitting between styles and genres at will. For example ‘Chapter 2′ begins as a traditional folk song before morphing into a spoken word poem that itself gradual changes into a hymn. ‘Chapter 3′ is a western soundtrack akin to Ry Cooder which is peppered with abstract samples, from a man yelling “hey!” to a strange droney conversation between an adult and an upset child. The use of white noise over a classic folk sound is unsettling, a weird modern confusion against the comfortable nostalgia that folk music offers, changing a romantic lonliness to a sharp a threat of isolation, a seething radio silence. ‘Chapter 5′ is minimal yet expansive, bringing to mind vast empty spaces with nothing but dust, and ‘Chapter 6′ grows out of this, beginning with gentle vocals before becoming a ramshackled punk-folk song with the repeated refrain: “The end is nigh.”

Bethphage does not sit comfortably but its purpose is not to comfort, at least not explicitly. That said, the use of folk music as a medium to explore things such as depression and suicide and Catholic guilt suggests that Human Behavior are not nihilists. If they wanted to convince us all that everything is worthless and stupid and fucked then there are plently of other more suitable genres. Instead they attempt something more constructive, something that pulls no punches while criticising traditions while also acknowledging that they can form part of the solution. Bethphage is too honest to take a distinct and definite view of anything.

You can buy Bethphage from the Human Behavior Bandcamp page, grab a CD through Diet Pop Records, or a vinyl from Folktale Records.

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