MP3 Roundup – Hallock Hill + Hopewell + Diamond Center + Ruin/Renewal

Diamond Center
WTT (from “My Only Companion” album)
The DC pairs a wall of reverb and noise with an eerie gothic country creeper.

My Only Companion is the self-released second album from Brandi Price and Kyle Harris, whose hometown of Lubbock, TX provides a perfect visual context for the duo’s heavily distorted hallucinogenic visions that span across the album. “Dos Fridas” sees Brandi’s lightly strained, rustic vocals soar over Harris’s frenetic axing and Jana Price’s perfectly messy bass drum hits. If you can imagine Ali Baba free-riding across West Texas atop a camel in some perverse, poorly adapted version of an Arabian Nightstale, you’ve got “Dos Fridas” in a nutshell. “Bombay Beach” gives Harris a turn on the mic, with Price’s dusty ahh-ohhs giving the song a distinctly disillusioned, moonlit charm. Beach House meets early My Morning Jacket? Yes, please.
I Guess I’m Floating

Further Info: Official Site | Facebook | MySpace |
See Also: IGIF | NPR | RVA Magazine
Hallock Hill
The Miller + Needing Bones (from an upcoming album “The Union” on Hundred Acre Recordings)

Hallock Hill is the musical nom de plume of Tom Lecky: an homage to the rural country where he was born in upstate New York.
Tom is now a 20 year resident of New York City and its environs. He lives there with his wife, two sons, and the voices of the past.
HAR

Further Info: Blog | MySpace | Twitter
See Also: Mountain7
Ruin / Renewal
Proverbs + One Of The Four Humors
Controlled detonation in an antiquated heating oil annex, often audible over the commuter rails of Newburyport, Massachusetts on muggy summer nights.
Further Info:  Official Site | Facebook | MySpace
Hopewell
Live Volume 1

Using recordings culled from their epic 3-night engagement at Truck Festival America this May and their 2009 performance at All Tomorrow’s Parties NY, this two-part live album spans Hopewell’s rich and controversial history. Volume 1 is a snapshot of the present day band. Atypically, Hopewell’s music actually becomes heavier and more abstract as the band gets older, the modern version has two drummers, often employ’s a choir and horns and is infamous for bludgeoning audiences into stunned silence with its brilliantly strange and unpredictable, psych-rock orchestration.