Written by Fense

My love, how I miss thee. Were I capable of poetry, words would stream onto the page like none other. They would cover it front to back, emphasizing how I hate being away from your side each and every week, away from your scent and away from you arms. It is a curse. A travesty! And I am stricken. Love will make you do crazy things, like miss the Cumulus Music Festival, which debuts on the streets of Seattle tomorrow and features Beast, Please Be Still (MySpace), among other phenomenal artists.

This was going to be a feature on Beast, Please Be Still, but I figured that didn’t do the festival right. I figured I’d make it a list. Yes, a list that drops in several mp3s from several of the artists and talks a whole load of crap about love and clouds and rain and how life blows and all. Well, maybe not that last part.

Beast, Please Be Still features seven eclectic individuals with a plethora of unique instruments, time signatures, musical thoughts, and conceptual notes. This is a band that marries 1800s American folk with 1900s Russian polka, and tosses it through an instrumental, post-rock-y blender. If that’s not enough to make you want to check out this band, you must be a freakin’ idiot.

The Cumulus Festival favors the overcast, rainy January skies of Seattle and, aside from Beast, Please Be Still, features FensePost favorites like Bronze Fawn and Corespondents and Hypatia Lake, as well as newbies like The Luna Moth (yet another of Levi Fuller’s concoctions) and Joy Wants Eternity and Deelay Ceelay. You won’t want to miss Cumulus as it hits three well-known Seattle venues Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Visit the Cumulus Music Festival website for more info on the event, the bands, the tickets and the schedule, and feel sorry for me for not attending due to cupid’s damn arrow in my ass.

It’s list time.

Four New And Exciting Cumulus Festival Discoveries:

1. Beast, Please Be Still

Beast, Please Be Still: Mastodon March Smilodon Smile [mp3]

Beast, Please Be Still: The Guys At The Bar Served Murder For A Nightcap [mp3]

Beast, Please Be Still: Then You Took Over [mp3]

* * * * *

2. The Friendly Skies

The Friendly Skies: Our So Called Career [mp3]

The Friendly Skies: The Camera Likes You [mp3]

* * * * *

3. Joy Wants Eternity

Joy Wants Eternity: Above The Clouds Lies Eternal Sun [mp3]

* * * * *

4. Earth

Earth: The Driver [mp3]

* * * * *

Four FensePost Favorites On The Cumulus Festival Bill:

1. Hypatia Lake

Hypatia Lake: Her Tears Are The Footsteps Of Anges [mp3]

Hypatia Lake: A Plea To Remiel [mp3]

* * * * *

2. Corespondents

Corespondents: Snakeskins [mp3]

* * * * *

3. Snowman Plan

Snowman Plan: Your Toad Roots [mp3]

* * * * *

4. This Is A Process Of A Still Life

This Is A Process Of A Still Life: All My Blessings Are A Curse [mp3]

This Is A Process Of A Still Life: Horizon/Line [mp3]

Listening to the melodic first track, “Her Tears Are The Footsteps Of Angels”, one distinctly gets the impression that Angesl And Demons, Space And Time may be a bedroom pop album. After all, Hypatia Lake did release through Sad Robot Records, brief home to Carissa’s Wierd. But “A Plea To Remiel” distills that thought outright; guitars grow with a hefty post-rock, noisy intensity.

Yet as Hypatia Lake begins “As The Hourglass Empties”, the volume is once again soft and dreamy. This back and forth continues throughout Angels And Demons. Hypatia Lake is not necessarily shoegaze, but they certainly own up to some of that subgenre’s sensibilities.

“Jeremiah, Close Your Eyes Now” also begins on a soft note; the song has a startling similarity to “House Of The Rising Sun” in both vocal pattern and chord progression. Despite these commonalities, the song proves to be one of the stronger on the album—it comes in somewhere between the song The Animals made popular and the more loved tunes of Black Heart Procession.

Hidden in the songs is a supernatural element not common throughout independent music of this nature. You can see it in the titles, the mentions of “Jeremiah” and “Lucifer”, of “Orion” and “Remiel”. A deeper look behind these names will eventually shed light on the music of Hypatia Lake. For example, Remiel is the sixth leader mentioned in the Book of Enoch and, literally, means Thunder of God; not surprising as the song itself is thunderous and loud. Furthermore, the name Hypatia refers to what many consider the first woman in Mathematics, so it’s no surprise that much of Hypatia Lake’s music surrounds various historical items and events — both mythical and not.

Hypatia Lake is at their best in their softer, more subdued moments. Those early songs prove that, along with the loud “Of Brains And Stars”, whose placement in Angels And Demons comes off as awkward and uneasy. In fact, neither “Of Brains And Stars” nor “The Metaphysician’s Request” live up to the quality of those early tracks.

But “The Space That Defines Itself” resurrects Hypatia Lake with an experimental post-rock-y instrumental that could match “Remiel” in volume and its follow-up in “Upon Their Meeting, They Embraced” is filled with a similar level of distorted space-y-ness. Structure returns in “The Lucifer Rebellion”, oddly enough, but recedes back into space-ridden oblivion to close out the final track a few songs later, making Angels And Demons a bit disjointed, but a wild ride that will leave you satiated nonetheless.

Hypatia Lake: Jeremiah, Close Your Eyes Now

Hypatia Lake is currently touring the Northwest. Here are the dates… all goes well, I’ll be catching one of the Seattle shows.

8.28: The Brick Saloon (Rosalyn, WA)
9.02: Nectar (Seattle, WA)
9.06: Fez Ballroom (Portland, OR)
9.26: The Comet (Seattle, WA)

[CD, 2008]

1. Her Tears Are The Footsteps Of Angels
2. A Plea To Remiel
3. As The Hourglass Empties
4. Jeremiah, Close Your Eyes Now
5. Of Brains And Stars
6. The Metaphysician’s Request
7. The Space That Defines Itself
8. Upon Their Meeting, They Embrace
9. The Lucifer Rebellion
10. The General’s Gleaming Edge
11. The Patterns Of Orion
12. YUYM