Monday, May 28, 2018

Interesting review of Corpse Pose

The following is from  https://cowsarejustfood.wordpress.com/

scene opens on the doulton fountain, soundtracked by post-summer shirtless dickerry; tar-lung yellowed bellowing from some east-end prolapse full of do it yrself tattoos, a gnarly invigoration of buckfast and sectarian odium.
(score fades in. hammer of hathor: via america / japan / scotland. hijikata tatsumi carouses with charles gocher; la monte young’s in costume; pärson sound nods off / out)
our rancorous protagonist atop, betwixt and almost pornographically inside this album. and it’s so fucking working.
i take a seat amongst the huddling, baffled travellers, their tourist chatter hushed, set on edge by the unanticipated advent of violence.
(the first track’s wandered into view, something approaching riff on something approaching guitar stumbles around, gestures spastic before it all klangs and clatters percussively down the bloody stairs)
he’s all sinew and strain, ectoplasmic with some random rage. butoh, detourned and random and alive and right in my goddamn face.
(it’s wheezing asthmatically into itself; a rubbery metronome, a fizz of thin reeds moulded into low rent ‘jazz’ and death throe noise. it starts, looking for a little lick or two but finishes with fists, a sweaty yuzna-like back ‘n’ forth shunt)
i’m waiting expectant for the third engorged act, a flail or swing at the ghosts in his head at his feet but this bastard, reduced to mutters, crouches and curls hisself all foetal.
(what feels like an interlude when i wanted climax, stillness when i wanted movement. there’s willing coaxing, ethnologically teasing one gentle jangle out as things bend and rattle. a minute meander, remaking/remodelling fourth world music and)
he contorts. coiling and uncoiling, flickering with nmda receptor antagonism.
(looping back through the crackle and hum of a bad connection to more loose string / percussion flaps)
he climbs to his knees now, gargantuan effort, buckled, garbled gabbling, the colour red, teeth and whatnots.
(the narrative arc’s all askew, as sun cut-throated sparks, huffing wildly too-late to life. let’s call it blooze, a splashing construction of re-de-tuned ur-rock. great clunks of noise, birthed and (s)played, obvious)
the people’s palace looms, menacing as the past and a historyless future can be. this is the afterbirth of fag-end sixties experiments and the mucked-out shed of the eighties. fifty pence for the electricity meter, alex harvey spitting out willie the pimp, bible john, bad speed cheap cider, neu! and knives knives knives…
(yes! heathen music! pagan music! jesus music! everything’s a / on show, a performance. fluxus jams till you want to do better yrself. and we’re reaching ecstasy too late, too soon as it whispers itself away. the ritual skree dies down, ears ringing)
no resolution, no explanation but yr man wanders waywards away innardly raging still. shirt tossed aside in dis-fucking-gust.
(emphasis on the wave in no-wave coz i stammer to my feet, seasick from absurdist warbles and atonal wobbles, crude scrapes against my lugholes. it ends, post-coital, lacking clarity, cohesion but i’m relieved, like i lived through something. this was corpse pose)
fade out.

frm-at / hammer of hathor

Thursday, May 10, 2018

May 18 Portland show


Well folks its our 1st Portland show in almost a year, happening on May 18th at the Waypost.  In a strange coincidence this also happens to be Mark's 40th birthday, woohoo!

We're excited as hell to play,  musical ideas have been flowing & we're both anxious to share some sounds with new and old friends.

Also wanted to mention I just uploaded our 10th album "Corpse Pose", which was released last year, to our WFMU page www.freemusicarchive.org/music/Hammer_of_Hathor

The next album which is #11, entitled "Threnody", is already recorded and we're fishing it around to labels (although we may end up releasing this on our own Wave White Wedded Words Tapes).

And finally,  with the acquisition of a new/old pro cassette field recorder we will be deepening our library of field recordings and on site live recordings.   We're hoping to record some sounds this summer at the abandoned Satsop Nuclear plant not far from here in Elma Washington....you can play/record in one of the old massive cooling towers!

Sunday, May 6, 2018

Not quite Hammer of Hathor, but almost!


I thought it would be cool to share this, not an official Hammer of Hathor show but almost!   Mark played with Jack Wright (and Evan Lipson and Greg Kelley) and Hathor played with Grrrlsxxx.   This was a fun night!
Stay tuned for a poster for the May 18th show in Portland, which also happens to be Mark's 40th birthday!! Woohoo!
Also we're hoping to have our 11th album, entitled "Threnody", ready for release in the next few months.  Its a real sonic treat.