Zach Hill
Tue 5 May 2009
Camping in Times Square
Colossal clusterfuck hardcore grunge/punk new wave band Bygones is releasing its debut album on June 23. Sargent House, home to These Arms Are Snakes, Maps And Atlases and Tera Melos are releasing the album, titled by- on CD and vinyl. Preorders are available on May 15 from Seargent House’s Official Merch Store. Oh, and that is the swoonworthy Amber Coffman of Dirty Projectors on the cover (above). The band features infamously octopied-drum messiah Zach Hill and guitarist from Tera Melos, Nick Reinhart. Like a celebration of schizophrenia, excitement, choral vocals and reverb, their songs ‘Click On That Smash The Plastic Death’ and ‘Nu Cringe’ have become noise-grunge favourites at EMJ. With catchy riffs and clattering percussion mingling with a mountain of epic guitar jams, both Hill and Reinhart are famed producers and are quickly amassing a raft of work.
There’s been scarce live appearances by Hill recently but he should not be blamed, for he is coming out with six albums this year. Yes, six. Did I mention his other bands? Hill’s original claim to fame, psych/prog faves Hella announced earlier this year that they are working on their first album as a two-piece and expect to follow this up with a much-anticipated international tour. Hill is also plying his trade with Guillermo Scott from Prefuse 73 and Tyondai Braxton from Battles in a band called Diamond Watch Wrists, who are releasing their debut album Ice Capped At Both Ends on May 5 via Warp (and touring the US in July). Then there’s another weirdo spin off project with Omar Rodriguez Lopez (whose album Old Money we recently reviewed on EMJ) from The Mars Volta (whose fifth album, out June 23, is called Octahedron!), called el Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. Hill plays drums on the group’s first album Cryptomnesia, also out May 5 on Rodriguez-Lopez Productions. CHLL PLL, the epicly titled new trio of Hill’s (he seriously never stops), is also said to be putting out their debut Aggressively Humble, and going by the songs on their myspace it’s going to be amazing! A psychedelic mish-mash of electronica, grunge and rock, it’s one of, if not the most exciting Hill project right now! Then there’s Hill’s next solo album, scheduled for release by the end of the year. So fear not, your cravings for gloriously eccentric math/grunge/psych rock will not be quashed, more like generously catered for. Prepare to get full!
It’s hard to believe Zach found the time to answer some questions for me a while ago, where he cited Lightning Bolt as “the most important, crucial punk band since Nirvana!”, but he must never sleep, so. Here’s a parting quote from who is quite possibly the greatest and definitely the most prolific drummer in rock right now, Zach Hill: “I definitely love to read but most of my reading nowadays is biography and special interest based stuff… like reptilian-human hybrid genetics meets David Lee Roth’s Crazy From The Heat.”
Posted by Sarah Gooding under California
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