Grand Blue Heron – Hatch

Description

Vinyl w/Download

It’s already been favourably compared to Nirvana, The Cramps,Jesus Lizard, Earth, Joy Division, Sisters Of Mercy, Motorhead and Neil Young in Monolith Cocktail.  http://monolithcocktail.com/…/tickling-our-fancy-027-warzo…/

“Lovers of dense grooves should be excited about cracking this open” Kerrang!

“Driving post punk recalls early Joy Division but with an abrasive Gang Of Four anger attached to it. A stunningly powerful album that will appear in my top 10 of 2015” – Soundblab

Interview with Famous Last Words who also said “The much needed indie revival, in its truest sense of the word, definitely begins here.”

“Without a doubt one of the better Belgian releases of the year” DA Music  

Back in 2011, Belgian underground power threesome Hitch decided to call it quits after a decade and a half of recording and hard touring. This was truly a sad day. Men wept openly and loudly, women smote themselves to the ground in a frenzy. Ach, these poor souls should have known that blood is truly thicker than water, for it was written that all members of Hitch would one day be found back on a stage. In 2015, that day has come.
In the interim bassist Paul Lamont was asked to join the noise-prog collective ‘A Clean Kitchen Is A Happy Kitchen’ alongside ex dEUS guitar player Craig Ward ex DAAU drummer and solo artist Butsenzeller and with whom released two acclaimed albums on Jezus Factory Records and a split 10” with Silent Front.

Ever since the split of Hitch, though, Lamont had taken it upon himself to learn how to play the guitar. And so he learned to play a bit, wrote a number of songs and posted some of his demos on interwebz where they were there for the world to find. On a truly good and sunny day, a brave man in the city of Ghent heard them and wanted him to play these demos live. Without a band this would have been difficult, he thought, and he called upon his old sparring partner Olivier to join him in playing this one show of his songs. Olivier reached out to his former “For Four Weekends” buddy Arthur Verschaeve (formerly of Belgian band Moonlake) for additional guitar slinging and since mutual friend Pedro Demeulenaere (whom all of them knew from his recording work he did for the ‘Trails Are Ablaze’ album by Hitch) fit the description of ‘must play bass and have funky haircut’, he was asked to join as well.

The first show came and went well. Soon after the first, a number of other live opportunities came around and gradually the original songs by Paul were more and more replaced by group penned material. Ten months of rehearsals and three months of recording later, Grand Blue Heron is about to unfold its wings in the shape of their debut album ‘Hatch’. The album features ten tracks that refer to both the independent, alternative guitar music of the nineties, but equally winks an eye at that of the seventies. References that have been attributed to the music range from Motorpsycho and the Jesus Lizard, but equally include Earth, Neil Young or Barkmarket. ‘Hatch’ is diverse in tenure, but keeps a common thread running by means of the signature mix of guitar players Arthur & Paul’s sounds. The album will see a release on October 10th on Jezus Factory Records (London). The album was composed, engineered, recorded, produced and mixed by Grand Blue Heron at their own rehearsal space and studio (the infamous Château Rocque). It was mastered by Jeff White at Ipressrecord in Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A. Pieter Nolf, of Embers fame, provided the artwork for the album, which will be presented and available for the very first time at the 4AD Club in Diksmuide, Belgium on October 10th, 2015. Further dates and a UK tour are being planned for 2016.

Watch out for the new bird. It is coming.