CRUCIAL BLAST
We've carried some of the other bands that Portland's James Woodhead has been involved with, like the ritualistic forest-doom of Blood Of The Black Owl, and the psychedelic drone folk duo The Elemental Chrysalis, both projects that he shares with Chet Scott from Ruhr Hunter. It's all great stuff, generally drawing from the same well of spacey, sylvan darkness and mystical heaviness even though each of these bands sounds distinctly different. It's like how you know you're listening to something on Glass Throat as soon as you hear it. And Woodhead's solo project At The Head Of The Woods fits right in to this dark, gorgeous sound with it's strange deep-woods psychedelia. Secrets Beyond Time & Space is the first album from this project and came out on Glass Throat a short while ago, packaged in another one of those fantastic-looking oversize gatefolds that all of the GT releases are packaged in now. This music evokes shadowy forests and mountain ranges burnished in a red sunset glow through soft, dark acoustic strum and distant wah-soaked electric guitar, the guitars drifting over simple, repetitious drums, field recordings and swirling kosmiche ambience. It's an amazing, tripped-out sound, dark and droned but not really drone music, more like a lugubrious LSD-glazed krautrock jam shrouded in shadows, each song stretching out for seventeen minutes or longer, the music mostly formed with guitar, vintage analogue synths and percussion but sometimes joined by cellos, violin, Farfisa organ, samples, gongs and other instruments, used more for texture and ambience than anything, creating slowly shifting raga-like acid-drones, eerie harmonized vocal arrangements, fragments of stoned twang, shimmering twilight synths, buried percussion, creepy piano melodies, woodwinds. Much of ATHOTW's music reminds me of the slow, hazy Americana of Earth's Hex, but filtered through deep shadows and dying light, and mixed with the cosmic drift and buzz of early 70's prog bands like Ash Ra Tempel or Tangerine Dream.
RAY HAWES
It is albums like this that makes being a reviewer very difficult. How does one decide what has more merit, my own personal opinion, or the necessary information for someone to form their own? It’s a difficult question to answer, but in the end you find that it’s a gentle mixture of both. When I first put on At the Head of the Wood’s album “Secrets Beyond Time and Space” I didn’t quite know what to think of it. The atmosphere was rich, all the tones were full-bodied, and the performance was very sharp. But as the tracks dragged on, I found myself limited in my entertainment. The spacey, wah-ing guitars over droning ambient tracks (keyboard, or organ?) and the occasional vocal gems all worked very well together, but it was something about it that put me off. Then I realized what it was! After recognizing the huge Pink Floyd influence in the music, I made the connection that had been escaping me. You see, my father used to run a touring Pink Floyd tribute group in Kanada, called “All in All.” To prepare for gigs, he’d listen to Pink Floyd on a twenty-four-seven schedule to drill every last note of every single song in to his head. After a couple months of this, I lost the ability to ever listen to Pink Floyd on my own time. I find this album to be very much the same. The composition is wonderful, the recording is flawlessly done, and the songs all follow the coherent thought, but it is not something I could put on for my own sake. And that is what makes reviewing this album so difficult.
So I suppose that all I can say in conclusion is that this is a good record that didn’t appeal to my taste. However, I’d have to say that the third movement was my favorite on the disc. If you’re a fan of very mellow, trance music with enough musical substance to keep you interested, then pick this up. Or maybe, if you’re a fan of early and 80’s era Pink Floyd, this would also be of interest to you. Great record, James Woodhead, but I am sad to say that it didn’t tickle my personal fancy.
EVENING OF LIGHT
A recent offering of the ever prolific Glass Throat Recordings is James Woodhead's solo project At the Head of the Woods. We know James from the two excellent The Elemental Chrysalis albums, also reviewed on Evening of Light. Comparing these albums, one can tell that James seems to be responsible for some of the more psychedelic and spacey influences in the music of The Elemental Chrysalis, for Secrets Beyond Time and Space dwells on precisely those musical elements, being a suite of four pieces combining ambient and moments of progressive rock.
These four long pieces move through calm parts with subtle ambient synth waves and typical flowing guitar melodies - the likes of which are also quite prominent on The Elemental Chrysalis' albums. At times however, as in the middle of the first movement, the music is joined by some sparse drums and chanted vocals. The tracks flow into each other seamlessly, and the second one starts with some thunder, rain and bird sounds, and a new guitar melody overlaid on the calm waves that ended the previous movement. The second track also introduces the lyrics for the album, sung by James in a high-pitched, reverberating voice, drifting over the rest of the music like clouds moving across the night sky. The third movement picks up the pace a bit, with a heavy, straightforward drum rhythm and continued recitation of the lyrics, all this in a somewhat darker atmosphere than the first half of the album. The end of the track is beautified by a string melody supplementing that of the guitar. The final movement consists of two separate parts. The first is a beautiful sorrowful ambient intro that fades into the final part where the final section of the lyrics is sung over a melody of piano and guitar.
In all, Secrets Beyond Time and Space is an impressive and atmospheric album with a very powerful mood. Like many The Elemental Chrysalis tracks - and indeed, many other artists from the Glass Throat roster - it relies heavily at times on hypnotic repetition. At times, this puts me off a bit, and I seem to be wavering between moments when I felt the album could have sufficed with half its duration, and other instances where I listened to the album in full, totally entranced in its extensive flow. On the whole, therefore, I found it to be slightly less interesting - since it contains less variation - than the work Woodhead does together with Chet Scott on The Elemental Chrysalis. All the same, I think this is an excellent debut release. If you are in the right mood for a spacey, yet dark and profound musical trip, Secrets Beyond Time and Space is a good bet.
THE SHADOWS COMMENCE
AT THE HEAD OF THE WOODS is the solo work of James, one out of two in the foggy folk blues band THE ELEMENTAL CHRYSALIS. Later, he’s also joined A MINORITY OF ONE. But now, let’s focus on AT THE HEAD OF THE WOODS, and the album ”Secrets Beyond Time and Space”, a very interesting but strange album if you ask me. It consists of a total of 4 tracks, and in classical Glass Throat Recordings tradition, the tracks are all very long. Very long. We get 70 minutes of music in the end. Usually, I can’t really cope with tracks lasting over 10 minutes, but there’s always things happening here, always something new to focus on, always something to keep you interested enough.
To express the tunes in words won’t be an easy task, but I’ll give it a go. Genre-wise, this stands beyond all borders. There are dreamy ambient atmospheres and improvised ragas together with post rock-esque parts, but most of the time, it’s an experimental approach to nostalgic psychedelic rock. It’s all very well-balanced though, so don’t worry about that. Some parts remind me very much of the works of THE ELEMENTAL CHRYSALIS while others tend to lean towards the typical (soft) ANATHEMA sound with a great dose of pathos and mystery.
The tracks seem to follow the same pattern; a long intro, usually giving a magical show and slowly building up a mood. After a while, you’ll find yourself surrounded by those cool and spacey guitars, chants, occasional nature sounds and percussion. To me, the whole product sounds pretty much the same all the way to the end, but the last track is kind of a stand-out and certainly a song that moves from success to victory as you listen.
This is a portrait of the woods, time and space like it’s never been portrayed before. Like it won’t ever be portrayed again. A mighty trip and for sure some really great musicianship. There are things to work on though but I can't say what at the moment, which makes me a bad journalist. However I sense that something's missing. Certain is that it's not in the artwork! 71% out of 100%
ABSOLUTE ZERO MEDIA
So as it comes with every season. Our fine friends at Glass Throat send me another elegantly designed, oversized Digipaked release to review for the world. With this we have one of the partners in crime with owner Chet W. Scott (Ruhr Hunter, Blood of the Black Owl). This gentle soul by the name of James Woodhead, is in The ELEMENTAL CHRYSALIS with Chet and now has gone into solo artist status with At the Head of the Woods. Which, is a wonderful collection of Guitar and Drone Ambient passages, all with a very Ethno or Tribal like feeling surrounding it. There is a very mellow Neurosis/ Steve Von Till to the magic that is created here, with a very great love of 70's prog music. Pink Floyd, Yes and Frank Zappa come to mind, especially in the guitar and synth arrangements that ebb and flow through out the tracks. At The Head of the Woods makes you feel one with mother earth and that his music can actually heal even the darkest and most illed of souls. I know some of you do not know where I'm coming from, but the Natural and Organic sounds that come from this release alone, if you give it the time and space to fill your senses will help heal your woes. This is ultimate personal headphone music. Sit in the dark with some scented candles, close your eyes & allow the music to do its magick. I can see why Glass Throat jumped on the chance to release this. I don't want to use the words like "Post", as its seems to be such a buzz word of the day, but clearly At the Head of the Woods is beyond most "Post Rock/ Post Experimental releases." The Production is stellar and you can crystal clear hear its warm tone, drift, guitar, string and soundscape like they were right next to you. This is essential listening... If you don't own this you are a fool!
MAELSTROM
In the realm of cold and machine-like ambient music, what makes the rare album like At the Head of the Woods’ Secrets Beyond Time and Space stand out is how all the music is performed with veritable instruments, all the way down to the drums. The tracks have movement and tangible arrangements, crescendoing with superb dynamics. The music can take on something of a Hippie trance vibe in that the tunings can evoke Indian ragas.
Another major feather in this group’s cap is how it avoids the all-too-common trap of the run-of-the-mill dark ambient creep fest. Rather, a relaxing, ghostlike quality (largely in how reverberant the instruments and voices are) provide an engaging yet lulling experience. In this way, the album often takes on an aura of chanted mantra.
Secrets Beyond Time and Space abounds with rich depth. The mood conveyed is of being in a psychedelic trance forest. It’s a safe place of meditation and mysticism, with birds and distant storms cutting through warm layers of keyboards, warbling guitar, and ambient falsetto chanting. As essential an ambient record as they come. (9/10)
PS: Like the other two Glass Throat releases we got this month, Secrets Beyond Time and Space comes in an oversize, no-plastic digipak. While it is the best of the three records, we do recommend you check out all three, particularly if you are a CD collector and still value the care to detail of the art of visual presentation.
HEATHEN HARVEST
Portland, Oregon's At The Head Of The Woods has described itself as a “personal journey in its auditory form, self discovery at its most primal and spirituality at its peak of personal growth.” I think that is a rather nicely constructed sentence, and I quite appreciate the meanings behind it. When I hear about a band or project that considers itself on a journey to self discovery, I'm quite eager to listen to the result of that journey, and find out how those results transfer through musical expression.
Well, in the case of At The Head Of The Woods, a possible result of self discovery is a long, sorrowful, and lonely poem written with the wordless inks of guitars and atmosphere. This album, Secrets Beyond Time & Space, is essentially an ambient CD, with a mild neofolk influence and intense thought in the guitar work. It is composed of four untitled tracks, all lasting seventeen minutes or more, and all sharing the similar soundscapes and instrumentation.. The soundscapes come as ambient voices, sounding like faraway wails, whispers, and hums, ringing in the back of your head. The guitar work is generally manifested as a clean electric guitar, playing repeated sets of notes and licks. Drums do come around at some points, but are slow, funeral-like combos of cymbals and snares, and do not really push the songs any further rhythmically.
The one thing with Secrets Beyond Time & Space is that the tracks become extremely repetitive. For instance, the first track, which is, as said above, untitled, spends the first four or five minutes repeating the same exact guitar lick, who, although beautiful, becomes intensely irritating to the listener. The track does continue with other compositional segments later on, but the listener may have an unconscious bitterness surrounding the repetition involved. The third untitled track has a mild, single-drum beat running behind the voices and guitars, and is very reminiscent of a funeral march. The guitar melody is repeated over and over again, and you will be able to predict not without disappointment the notes as they come along.
Secrets Beyond Time & Space is not a bad album at all. It is an ambient album, which involves a certain degree of minimalism and atmosphere. The problem is that the tracks' density is very low, causing the content to be stretched out, with only a few composed segments repeated over and over throughout the tracks. If the tracks were shortened and the repetition diminished, it would sure be a less heavy album to listen to.
The album has many positive aspects as well. The melodies are beautiful, the guitar work is very well thought of, and the use of string instruments in certain points of the tracks is immaculate of faults. This last point is very true when it comes to the harmonies found in the third track, at about twelve minutes into the song. The voice of the project's brain and arms is charmingly emotional, which will cause one's heart to sympathize and empathize with the loneliness of the music's creator. Those points make the album a good one; one that will appeal to appreciators of neofolk, drone, or general downtempo.
MUSIQUE MACHINE
"Secrets Beyond Time & Space" is the debut solo release from guitarist and instrumental mood maker James Woodhead, who is best known as one half of the Pagan, psychedelic and folk project The Elemental Chrysalis, which he does with Chet W. Scott (Ruhr Hunter, Blood of the Black Owl & Glass Throat Recordings owner).
The c.d. comes in the now house style Glass Throat Recordings over sized fold out card case, that’s illustrated with a simple yet effective and very suited drawing of two trees over a beautiful yet barren sunset. The tracks here, like his work with Scott on The Elemental Chrysalis are very long and atmospheric, with each of the four tracks finishing around the 20 minute mark. With each track taking in Woodhead’s accomplished, atmospheric and passionate guitar playing and scaping that flirts with the blues, expansive rock, folk, classical tones and country tones. Over a background of sombre ambient dwells, Woodheads desolate harmonies and singing, the odd hint of piano/ organ tone and subtle touches of other instrumental color and moody Field recordings. But really it’s all about Woodheads drifting, expansive guitar work. Through out you can hear traces of Later Pink Floyd guitar expanse, doom country, Popol Vuh and general shimmering, moody and emotional guitar based instrumental music.
Though not as sonically and emotional varied as The Elemental Chrysalis material, this is a fine and involving collection of highly atmospheric and expansive, mainly instrumental guitar based tracks.
AQUARIUS RECORDS
Lately, we just can't get seem to get enough of all the great mystical ambient music happening. Portland's At the Head of the Woods, a solo project of James Woodhead (Blood of the Black Owl, Elemental Chrysalis) is the perfect example of this super beautiful, dim and desolate sound that we love so much. Considering the band name and all, we thought it'd be a good idea to take this album along for a Sunday evening drive through the redwoods. And man, it turned out to be the perfect experience. Nothing like lush, woodsy dronescapes to accompany an evening drive. Striking acoustic and electric guitar melodies played over round, turning tones that move and crawl across the forest ground like dense fog. Awesome stuff. We know how easy it is for a drone album to become a bit one dimensional, but this one really takes the listener along for an epic journey through still meadows and onto seaside crags. The album builds momentum from hovering vocal and guitar drones to slow rural dirges lead by full on pummeling, sloooooow-paced drums. Reminds us a lot of the newer Earth albums, but slightly darker and more mystical, with less of the country twang. There's a great balance between colorful textures and engaging composition, really makes for an immersive listen that's sure to make you feel like you're watching sunlight fade behind the silhouettes of towering trees.
JUDAS KISS
At The Head Of The Woods (ATHOTW) is the solo project of James Woodhead, who is also a member of several other bands, including A Minority Of One, and (alongside Glass Throat's proprietor Chet W. Scott) Blood Of The Black Owl and The Elemental Chrysalis, whose epic last album The Dark Path To Spiritual Expansion was reviewed by Judas Kiss. The Seattle-based label Glass Throat Recordings has developed a definite house style, both musically and graphically – whether the particular release in question is by Ruhr Hunter, Blood Of The Black Owl, The Elemental Chrysalis, Beneath The Lake, Alethes or ATHOTW, songs tend to be lengthy, drone-inflected, and suffused with a deep nature mysticism and environmental awareness, often manifested in field recordings of sounds from the natural world. These various projects differ in levels of emphasis, of course, and in particular in their relative levels of "darkness", but they also have plenty in common, and looked at in this way, it's possible to formulate this equation:
Ruhr Hunter + At The Head Of The Woods = The Elemental Chrysalis
Or, if you prefer:
The Elemental Chrysalis - Ruhr Hunter = At The Head Of The Woods
Let’s unpack that a little and see where it takes us...
Secrets Beyond Time And Space contains four untitled tracks of roughly similar length, all around 17 to 18 minutes long, giving a total playing time of 70 minutes. Hmmm, can a double vinyl edition be in the offing, I wonder? Instrumentation used by James Woodhead on the album includes guitar cello and violin, alongside vintage Crumar synths and Farfisa organ, digital synths, samples and programming, percussion and vocals.
The first track opens amid a raga-like swirl of synth, guitar and muted swells of gong, out of which emerges slow, progressive guitar arpeggios and waves of high, wordless harmony vocals, which impart a sacral, ritual atmosphere. The composition circles around its origin point like this for some time, with no urgent forward dynamic, before really taking off at 6:32..., with the sudden introduction of slow drums and cymbal crashes, over which a howling tremolo guitar lead flies like an eagle. At this point, ATHOTW sound very much like Hex-period Earth – I was also reminded of the title track from The Dark Path To Spiritual Expansion, which has a similar soaring, prairie-Americana feel to it, a feeling both of mystic, existential longing and of fulfillment.
The second track begins with sound effects of rain, thunder and birdsong, before gentle guitar notes gently emerge like snowdrops in spring, reaching for the light, against a backdrop of softly shimmering synth drone. There is a feeling of expectancy, of time being put on hold in an eternal moment of becoming, as James Woodhead's high, clear voice makes its entrance, with abstract, mantric exhalations of bliss – there are words being voiced here, but they're very difficult to make out, and the voice effectively functions as another tonal instrument. This track doesn’t introduce drums and lead guitar, so it remains more serene and less rock-inflected than the first.
Track three has a muffled, thudding beat, possibly from a bodhran or similar frame drum, minimal and dry, buried deep in the mix, but nothing like the bright, insistent rock drums of the first track. The track is again dominated by introspective, resonating guitar and extended, open vocal notes, with subtle ambient synth backing.
The fourth and final track opens with a sombre passage of orchestral strings and piano, lending a neo-classical grandeur which is quite different from the rest of the album. Wonderfully low, brooding bass notes and woodwind instruments create an elegiac, doleful mood that's quite similar to Arcana or Elend. There's no guitar until around the six-minute point, but then the orchestral overture fades out, leaving the guitar as the sole instrument until it's joined by vocals and piano. The guitar and piano disappear at around 15 minutes, leaving the album to conclude with vocals and warm, swelling organ chords.
The album overall seems to divide into three parts, not the four tracks indicated. The middle two tracks are the most amorphous and ethereal, the first has that slight, dusty prairie rock feel to it, and the last tends more towards a neo-classical mode. My personal preference is for the first track, but they're all well worth listening to, and ideally you should try to listen to the whole album in a single session – this is the kind of music which rewards sustained attention by unwrapping itself layer by layer. Glass Throat specifically recommend listening to this on ear-covering headphones, and I can see why.
If the music of Ruhr Hunter is firmly anchored in the element of earth, seeking an ever-deeper communion with the roots and burrows, moss and mushrooms of the forest floor, then ATHOTW is all about air, light and freedom, the infinite cosmic possibilities of skies as open and expansive as the panoramic sunset depicted on the album's cover. There are evident similarities between ATHOTW's music and classic prog rock like early Pink Floyd (circa Ummagumma), Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Temple and Klaus Schulze, as well as more contemporary guitar-based ambient artists such as Steve Roach. Secrets Beyond Time And Space is a very absorbing and rewarding listening experience, an album which promises, if you allow it, to dissolve your ego and open your soul to the bliss of pure existence. It's also a lot less expensive than joining a cult! This is a work of rare craft and transcendental beauty, a true labour of love which seems almost too fragile and delicate to exist within the harsh commercial exigencies of the music industry.
Secrets Beyond Time And Space comes packaged in one of those 6" by 6" six-panel gatefold sleeves that have become Glass Throat's trademark style, with stunning artwork by James Woodhead, blending photography and finely detailed painting of gnarled and intertwining tree branches.
