Our new album, The Fifth Hour now resides on YouTube, with each track’s video featuring surreal visualizations to enhance your aural enjoyment. The entire track list is available as a playlist, making it convenient to listen to the entire album in one setting. Regularly take advantage of this opportunity to travel the star clusters of beyond.
Our new album, The Fifth Hour, is officially released! Find it at our Bandcamp page, where you truly support us by paying for a download. Of course, Bandcamp lets you stream the release as well. Download those FLACs derived from the 24-bit masters for the best sound quality, especially compared to streaming services and vinyl! The album is available on most popular streaming services.
Jonathan Segel from those indie-rock legends, Camper Van Beethoven guests on violin, guitar, and bass. Of course, Stan Lyon helps out as usual on bass and even synth! Tell all your friends! Read further for more information on The Fifth Hour as well as a Church of Hed news update. Thanks for checking it out!
Church of Hed’s new album, The Fifth Hour, features a return to the improvisational and immediate styles of their earlier release, The Fourth Hour, or even Quarkspace’s Spacefolds series. The music squarely resides in space, with deep Kosmische and Berlin School explorations informing the album’s psychedelic electronica and prog.
Church of Hed’s unique mix of spacerock, psychedelia, prog rock, krautrock, and electronic music channels diverse influences, including CAN, Cluster, Brian Eno, Hawkwind, YES, Glass, Reich, Riley, and so much more. In the end, it always manages to sound predominately like Church of Hed.
The band’s Paul Williams is joined on The Fifth Hour by Jonathan Segel, from indie-rock legends Camper Van Beethoven, on violin, guitar, and bass, as well as Quarkspace’s Stan Lyon, on bass and synth. Williams plays his usual array of synthesizers, keyboards, beatmakers, sequencers, and electrified drums.
A digital release, The Fifth Hour is available on download from Bandcamp, iTunes, and Amazon, as well as the usual low-paying streaming services, such as Apple Music, Spotify, etc. Never forget to support independent music by purchasing downloads and physical copies of albums!
1. Pleiades Waypoint (13.49)
2. Aniluminescence 1 (2.11)
3. Hyades Noir (6.25)
4. Blue Spaceways (4.20)
5. The Fifth Hour (8.43)
6. The Bells of Alpha Persei (3.26)
7. Aniluminescence 2 (1.20)
8. Son of a Silicon Rogue (14.58)
9. Bastard Son of the Fifth Hour (1.54)
Paul Williams: synths, keyboards, sequences, beats, drumming. Jonathan Segel: violin (3,5,8,9), guitar (3,8), bass (5). Stan Lyon: bass (3,9), synth (1).
Produced by Lance Starbridge
Cover photo courtesy NASA
24-bit audio files exclusive to Bandcamp!
Thanks to all family, friends, and pets!
I dove right in on the next Church of Hed project, quite possibly titled “A Blue Ridge Spaceway.” It’s another aural travelogue in the Rivers of Asphalt series, but this time we travel the Blue Ridge Parkway. The music is much more immediate and Berlin School-esque compared to Rivers of Asphalt and The Father Road.
Since Asheville is one of the prime destinations along the BRP, we only use synths by local synth-makers, Moog Music and Make Noise. We break that rule by also using plugins either by Moog or emulating Moog hardware. XILS-Labs’ Polymoog emulation, PolyM, provides one obvious example of our rule-breaking. Expect some space ambient piano as well! The album drops sometime in early 2025! As always, thanks for reading and listening!
Well, it’s been a few months since our last update. If you follow our Facebook page, Instagram account, Twitter/X account, or even our new TikTok account, it makes it easier to keep up with our latest activity. We are especially lonely on TikTok, so give us a follow! I expect to post more live performance videos on TikTok, Instagram/FB, and YouTube moving forward.
This news update covers the latest goings-on here at Eternity’s Jest Records. I always hope to post more updates here, but keeping up remains a much easier proposition on social media. Nevertheless, let’s dive into what’s been happening.
I am at work mixing and mastering the tracks from our upcoming album, The Fifth Hour. It’s the latest release in our series of more immediate and improvisational work, not unlike the Quarkspace Spacefolds Series. Of course, Stan Lyon sits in on a few tracks, playing guitar, bass, and synth. Yup, Dink bought himself a Korg Minilogue XD!
The album is also graced by indie rock legend Jonathan Segel from Camper Van Beethoven! Jonathan provides his unique stylings on violin, guitar, and even bass. The mighty CvB served as an important inspiration for me in the mid-80s and beyond. In short, they made the indie music world safe again for psychedelia (at least according to my limited musical worldview of the time.) They remain one of my favorite bands.
The Fifth Hour features a wide array of material. The album includes long deep exploratory space excursions as well as shorter pieces. Here are two of the shorter tracks I recently released on YouTube. Both feature the Lumi Keys keyboard controlling Moog’s Animoog software synth.
Expect the album to drop within the next month or two. We’ll let you know!
You might know that I also publish TabMuse, a resource for music technology focused primarily on synth and effects reviews as well as other topics. When I get something new to review, I now try to create a musical piece and craft a video for it. Here are a couple examples, check out our YouTube page for others.
Xils-Lab’s PolyKB III synth offers a unique design based on the legendary PolyKobol synth of the early 80s. Here’s a little four-part piece using four instances of the PolyKB III in the role of lead, pad, bass, and effects respectively.
Igor Vasiliev is a top-shelf synth maker for the iOS and Mac OS platforms. We used his SynthScaper on the title track of Sandstoned, providing the sonic ambience of Ohio’s Lake Erie coast at night. His new NoInputMixer app lets you explore the no input mixing trend on an iPad. I crafted a few soundscapes using it. Here’s my favorite.
Expect more little projects like these in the future. Explore our playlist for other examples. Maybe we will combine the best into an official release someday?
I also used TabMuse to publish more detailed liner notes exploring the production of our most recent album, The Father Road. We discuss the album’s concept and recording approach as well as the gear used on the release. The notes are encapsulated in a prologue and four sides, mimicking a vinyl version of the album never to be released. Links to the four sides are inside the prologue, along with cross links within each article.
After The Fifth Hour drops, I plan on focusing on the next Rivers of Asphalt release, an aural travelogue down The Blue Ridge Parkway. This project only uses synths made by Moog Music and Make Noise Music, both located along the BRP in Asheville. We also use a few soft synths inspired by Moog, most notably XILS-Lab’s PolyM.
I’ve been creating little stems for the project that I plan on orchestrating and molding into larger pieces. Expect an album, squarely in the Berlin School electronic music realm, with no drumming. Moog never made a drum synth beyond their DFAM, which I don’t own. Here’s an example of one of the stems, quite possibly emulating a drive across the BRP’s famous Linn Cove Viaduct. It uses the iOS version of Moog’s Model D and Model 15 apps as well as a MoogerFooger effect.
Beyond that project, I am also working on cool drum beats for an album where I play all the drum parts first and then record the music. In the post-Quarkspace area, I miss having the drumming lead a track as opposed to recording the drums after everything else. Likely to be called “Batteur Electrique,” expect that album sometime in 2025, assuming the next Rivers of Asphalt project drops later this year.
Once that album completes, the focus turns to the Cycle project, which includes new versions of The Autumn Shrine and A Cold White Universe title tracks along with brand new pieces for spring and summer. I practice those piano-based tracks everyday and expect to upload performance videos of both later this year. Of course, we will probably make room for The Sixth Hour at some point during this release schedule.
In short, I am always working on multiple projects simultaneously, while the next-up release gets most of my focus. As always, thanks for the support and thanks for listening!
Quarkspace released the album Drop for free nearly 22 years ago while still retaining our copyright. Why? We felt uncomfortable charging for an album with an noncommercial lyrical message. Other bands had also been following a “pay want you want” model so it’s not like we were that much of an outlier.
Of course, we still follow that model today. We provide a free copy of Drop on CD-R with every physical order higher than $5 on our Bandcamp page. It remains the best deal in spacerock and all other musical genres. Remember, the album is an All Music Guide Top Pick, rated 4.5 stars.
Downloading the album from its Bandcamp page is also possible, and we gladly accept donations. However, Drop has never been available on the myriad of digital music streaming services. We recently changed that by uploading the album to YouTube, each track with its own video laden with psychedelic visualizations. Note that Starbridge Freaks 2 has been on YouTube for over a decade.
So feel free to dive into the entire album and tell all your friends! We’ve included each track on this convenient page. Journey with us!
Thanks for listening, watching, and supporting us. Consider a subscription to our YouTube page. Also remember to support us with a download (or more) from our Bandcamp page. If you want a CD-R of Drop, order a few CDs. Thanks again!
Yes, the long wait finally ends with the release of our new album, The Father Road. It takes you on a surreal aural journey across the United States along the Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental road built for automobiles. It’s effectively the sequel to our 2011 album, Rivers of Asphalt, which traveled the legendary Route 66. The music shifts and evolves in tandem with the scenic backdrop of America from San Francisco to New York City. As with the original release, the sense of a lost era lurks throughout the album.
Downloads and CDs of the new album are available on Bandcamp. You can also stream a few of the tracks to sample the album. Additionally, here are some links to the album on the most popular streaming services. Note that buying a download or CD supports us more than streaming revenue. Apple and Amazon still offer downloads in addition to Bandcamp.
We are limiting YouTube distribution of The Father Road to our own videos. They boast better audio while also providing trippy visualizations to give your eyes a similar enjoyment opportunity as your ears. Check out these few already published videos and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Thanks!
Explore the in-studio live performances and rehearsals of tracks from The Father Road in the video playlist. Expect additional video production to begin as I have more time with the album being released. I am also producing videos for Quarkspace’s classic Drop album.
Since the release of The Father Road, I’ve been working on new ideas as well as restarting rehearsals for live in-studio performances. Of course, Brandenburg Heights Part 1 appears on the docket, as I love to play it. The first few sections of Part 2 are impossible to do live by myself, but perhaps combining the ending section into a larger piece makes sense. Oh well, I digress.
I always plan on updating the CoH website with relevant news, but sometimes I forego this aspect of my marketing responsibilities. Nevertheless, follow us on Facebook or Twitter for more timely information. I hope to post some news regarding our next release plans, beyond The Fifth Hour (the next release in our installment of improvisational and experimental works) coming out some time in 2023. As always, thanks for listening and reading.
I apologize for the lack of updates in nearly a year. It’s been a crazy time as we get closer to the release of our next album, The Father Road. In addition, we’ve been re-releasing classic Quarkspace albums on our Bandcamp page. In fact, the entire Eternity’s Jest Records, Inc. catalog is now available on Bandcamp. Support us with a download today!
So let’s provide a little progress update on The Father Road as well as the other happenings here at Eternity’s Jest. Information remains the root of knowledge or something like that.
Of course, we sadly begin by paying our respects to the late Klaus Schulze, one of the most important progenitors of electronic music. He remains a massive influence on our own work, with his magic synth-based sequences, filter sweeps, and LFO tweaking. His passing was sudden. We look forward to the release of his next album in June, now coming out posthumously.
We expect to watch his Loreley concert with Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance this weekend. It’s a stunning work and worthy of your interest.
Mixing began on the next Church of Hed album, The Father Road, about a month ago. I also went ahead and mastered the first four tracks to test out a return to outboard mastering. I mastered The Fourth Hour in the box, and felt it didn’t sound as good as earlier albums. Thankfully, these first four masters sound great. In fact, I produced a quick video of Sierra Crest for your perusal.
I expect the album to be ready in the June/July timeframe. Our mixing work currently lies in Nebraska, and the track “Prairie Waves.” It’s a bit of Kerry Livgren influenced prog, compressed into a 3.5 minute diamond. Can’t wait for you to hear it! So we are halfway done with mixing, making great progress. I love the new plugins I recently bought, like the Maag EQ4 and Softube’s Tape. Great stuff! Also check out the video of some of the studio sessions from the album; it’s posted at the bottom of this article.
A nice side project over the last year involved re-releasing our entire catalog on Bandcamp. Every Church of Hed and Quarkspace album is available, along with the debut National Steam! I tended to time releases with their Free Bandcamp Fridays, which provided the deadlines for me to do the necessary curation. Spacefolds 6 and Spacefolds 5 even have extra tracks! Check them out, especially SF5 and its new cover art! I feel it remains our most underrated Spacefolds release.
While working on The Father Road, I also did some rehearsing to prepare a new live show for streaming. Unfortunately, work on the new album took precedence, so I ended up delaying a full performance. After The Father Road release, I expect devote more time to producing immediate music I am able to play live without overdubs, as well as a few delights from Quarkspace and even Natty Steam.
The visualizer tool I used for the Sierra Crest video posted above also provides the means to produce videos of some of our studio tracks. So expect more videos from that angle as well. Here are some examples of both.
So I think that’s all I have for today. Expect more updates as The Father Road gets closer to release. Thanks for reading, listening, and watching!
Howdy. I hope your spring is going well. We’ve got a fresh news update covering the latest goings-on in Eternity’s Jest land. Enjoy the reading and thanks for the support!
First off, we re-released three (four) classic Quarkspace albums on Bandcamp as part of their Free Bandcamp Fridays. Expect another re-release next Friday. All three (four) are part of the Spacefolds series of improvisational psychedelic spacerock, with a touch of prog and electronic music. Let’s take them in chronological order.
Spacefolds 1 and 2 started things way back in 1996-7. The first features the time-honored Quarkspace improvisational sound, including the classic, Fäerienôt Space. Spacefolds 2 sports our earliest experiments with sampling and beats. Quarkadelic will freak you out!
Released in 2007, Spacefolds 8 provides another hearty dollop of deep Quarkspace excursions. This album also features a guest appearance from Architectural Metaphor’s axe-man, Greg Kozlowski. It’s great stuff!
Finally, we have 2013’s Spacefolds 12, the final installment of the Spacefolds series. Expect a nice mix of spacerock, psychedelic guitar excursions, with a bit of Berlin School and other electronic influences. Buy all three for all your friends! Remember, Bandcamp supports downloads in a variety of formats, including FLAC!
I also created a series of videos of my studio drumming, putting some cool drum plugins through their paces. These include Spitfire Audio’s Hans Zimmer Percussion and MeldaProduction’s MDrummer. I reviewed both for TabMuse — check out the links. I also added a couple of videos showing me practicing tracks from Sandstoned.
Everything is encapsulated in a convenient YouTube playlist. Check them out!
The main focus of my 2021 activity involved finishing the composing and recording of The Father Road, an aural travelogue down today’s Lincoln Highway. My “road construction crew” currently spans from Ohio through West Virginia into Pennsylvania.
After this work completes, only four more of the album’s 20 “songs” need their final compositional activity, Philadelphia through New York City. At that point, mixing begins, along with any fixes. Rest assured, I will be adding some freaky synth and sound effects.
If the album is finished in early November, I plan on releasing it this year. If not, I will wait until early 2022. I’m itching for it to be complete, so I can get back into more a live experimental improv mode before fully diving into Cycle. However, expect some more live video action earlier this summer, as I’m still rehearsing another set of material.
As always, thanks for reading and stay well! Peace!
As the end of the year approaches, here’s the latest news from Quarkspace and Church of Hed. Needless to say, 2020 challenged all of us. Hopefully, 2021 offers a chance at a rebound. Either way, expect new music from us (well, at least Church of Hed)!
When legendary comic book artist, Matt Howarth contacted us about doing a project together back in 2003-4, we were game. The resultant Node in Peril is a combination comic book/CD with Matt’s great artwork and storyline. It also features our most psychedelic music. For the December Free Bandcamp Friday, we re-released the album.
Either purchase the comic book/CD or just the digital music. Of course, we’d prefer if you bought the full package. It’s a great piece of outer sci-fi art!
I also released a new extended single on Bandcamp — Caesar Grinder Salad. For this track, I mashed up two classic Quarkspace loops, Recaesarian and Astral Grinder, and added a few overdubs. It’s a classic slab of electronic music meets spacerock whilst odd time-signatures abound. Check it out!
Of course, expect more surprises for the next round of Free Bandcamp Fridays, starting in February.
Speaking of Recaesarian, I performed the Quarkspace track as part of my live stream this summer. Additionally, I did a version of the track with the superior sound quality of a board mix. I uploaded that to YouTube. Check it out!
I continue to rehearse a second set of material, with more Quarkspace material being featured this time out. With new video software on its way, expect some form of a live show video as opposed to a stream. Facebook’s new interface really sucks, which gives us a good reason to choose better sound quality. Expect a YouTube upload, and I may upload it to Facebook as well.
We are also doing a Bandcamp 50 percent off deal until January 3rd, 2021. Just enter “2020holidaze” when checking out to get half-off your order. Add a bit of psychedelic spacerock, prog, and electronic music to your Holidays!
Greetings. I hope everyone is still hanging on during this latest Coronavirus surge. We are staying busy by re-releasing the Quarkspace classics Spacefolds 6 and Spacefolds 7 on Bandcamp. Additionally, working on Church of Hed’s upcoming The Father Road album while publishing more live in-studio video performances also helps. Let’s check out the news!
I regularly get asked why most of the older Quarkspace releases aren’t on Bandcamp. My standard answer mentions they are available on all the other digital music services and I tend to stay forward-looking as opposed to worrying about older releases.
But with Bandcamp’s generous Free Friday celebrations, where they donate their cut of all sales to the artist, I figured it would be a good opportunity to release some of these older albums on the service.
Spacefolds 6 is my favorite Spacefolds release; a searing mix of spacerock and electronic music. Thus, it made sense to put it out first. I also discovered a couple extra tracks we included as a bonus.
Spacefolds 7 makes a perfect pairing with Spacefolds 6, albeit a more ethereal and psychedelic spacerock experience. Sadly, I couldn’t find any bonus tracks for this album. Note that this album is still available on CD at Bandcamp, so you can get the download, a CD, plus our free BOG4 deal with free CD/CD-R copies of Spacefolds 8 and 9, the debut Church of Hed album, and Quarkspace’s Drop. It remains the best deal in spacerock or any music genre, for that matter.
Expect more surprises and other re-releases for upcoming Bandcamp Free Fridays. Hopefully, they continue this practice into 2021, considering we are NOT “rounding the corner” on COVID-19.
Our last post talked about posting our Facebook live stream concert on YouTube. The week before that show I recorded the set as individual pieces with a separate stereo audio track run through our outboard mastering gear. I synced the video and audio together in Reaper and produced videos with truly kick ass sound quality.
We are in the process of posting these to YouTube. I also updated our Audio and Media page with a few of them. And here they are!
Expect more of these videos in the future. In fact, I think I am just going to eschew the Facebook live stream next time out and just publish videos with superior sound quality on a one-off basis. I am working on a completely new set list with a large dollop of Quarkspace material, in addition to different Hed tuneage. However, a Solstice-time Facebook live stream still might happen.
Also please subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Another reason I am less apt to do a Facebook live steam in November is my focus on The Father Road, allowing for less time to rehearse live material. I recently finished the drum tracks, which enables the writing of melodies and other sonic decorations. Construction on The Lincoln Highway in California is going quite well.
If you don’t understand that metaphor, The Father Road is an aural travelogue down the LH from San Francisco to New York City. It’s a sequel to our earlier album, Rivers of Asphalt — an aural travelogue down Route 66. In fact, I originally intended on releasing both together as a double album when I began composing it way back in 2003-4. There are motifs shared between both albums — including two versions of Open Road Illinois, since the LH and Route 66 actually share the road for a bit in Plainfield, IL. RIP, Bel Air Drive-In sign!
Well, that’s all I’ve got this time out. Expect another update before the end of the year, if not sooner! Thanks for reading and listening!
Good day. I hope everyone is managing as best as possible during the continued pandemic and other civil unrest. Stay safe and well and escape when you must. Obviously, music plays a key role in escapism.
Our Facebook live stream performance went well. It was fun; I was nervous, but got through the set without any train wrecks. Thanks to everyone who watched the show live and afterwards.
Our Reaper DAW has some video editing functionality, so I was able to trim some of the dead air, and more importantly… remaster the audio! I uploaded the new version of the video to YouTube. It sounds pretty sweet.
Here’s the set list and other links to our Bandcamp page and virtual tip jar. Subscribe to our YouTube page, as I plan on uploading videos on a semi-regular basis.
As you can see, I played a nice cross-section of Church of Hed material, some old Quarkspace, and even a drum solo as a tribute to Neil Peart. I plan on doing another show of completely different material, and perhaps Dink might be present as well, although COVID-19 has the final say.
In other news, sadly, one of our cats died of cancer earlier this month. Grace Williams features on some of our album art, along with her sister, Lucy. She will always be missed.
I also started recording the drum parts for The Father Road; they are going well, but I am a perfectionist. Can’t wait to start overdubbing the melodic and sound effects on the entire album. Still shooting for a release in the first half of 2021.
Additionally, stay tuned for upcoming surprises on our Bandcamp page. These will be in tandem with their Free Bandcamp Fridays, which take place the first Friday of every month for the rest of the year. If I told you more, they wouldn’t be a surprise!
That’s all I have for today. Stay well!