Welcome to the Church of Hed

Home of Eternity's Jest Records, Inc. and Quarkspace Too

Forward looking aural travelogues expressed in progressive, psychedelic electronica and rock. Beats. Loops. Songs. Improv. Large-form compositions. Hyper-kinetic playing. 21st Century Berlin School meets spacerock and prog. Home of Church of Hed and Quarkspace.

ambient

Church of Hed Releases The Fifth Hour!

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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!

The Fifth Hour Liner Notes

Church of Hed - The Fifth Hour - Album Cover
Our new album cover, courtesy of NASA and the Hubble Space Telescope.

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.

Traveling Blue Spaceways to reach the nearest star cluster.

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.

Euclidean drum sequences for your night in space!

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!

Work Begins on Our Next Album

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.

Driving across the Linn Cove Viaduct?

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!

Church of Hed — A Cold White Universe EP now released!

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The new Church of Hed release — A Cold White Universe EP — is now available. A digital only release, you are able to download it from Bandcamp, CD Baby, and other sources. I’d recommend getting it from Bandcamp. First, it’s only a $4 download, and I used the 24-bit masters, so a lossless FLAC download ends up being better than CD quality. Boom!

A Cold White Universe EP
The cover for Church of Hed’s A Cold White Universe EP. Copyright Eternity’s Jest Records, Inc.

CD Baby only allows 16-bit music uploads and they are our main distributor for the other digital retailers — Apple, Amazon, Spotify, etc — so the music will still sound great when downloaded or streamed, but not as good as a FLAC from Bandcamp. So there.

Too bad this winter has been so un-winterlike, or else the release would have been finished sooner. It’s difficult to get inspired to do an ambient wintertime album with no snow on the ground and severe storms in the forecast. Oh well!

Other Church of Hed News

Now, I am able to move on to other music projects. The basic composition for the Rivers of Asphalt sequel — The Father Road is essentially complete with the exception of Wyoming. I continue to practice these pieces and expect to commence recording over the next few months. A release in 2019 remains the most likely outcome. Simultaneously, I am working on an album more akin to Electric Sepulcher — shorter songs, more concise, but still freaky and psychedelic.

A live show isn’t likely any time soon, but I may record a live performance inside the studio for video consumption. In fact, I recently jammed out on a bunch of classic Quarkspace loops — Recaesarian, Starbridge Freaks 1, Sheep Farm, and Park Rangers — and they sounded great with the Moog and Streichfett added to the sonic mix. It took me half the track to realize Park Rangers was in C# — we rarely played that one out. I also synced up the new DrumBrute with the Moog, Volcas, and PO-12 and performed a weirdly intense version of Brandenburg Heights, Part 1.

Practicing live performance is a good thing, whether or not I actually play out. My chops have been on an upward swing ever since I got the Yamaha MM8 with weighted keys, but playing the tracks in the studio definitely helps. Oh well, I ramble on. Support Indie Music and download your copy of A Cold White Universe EP today — from Bandcamp hopefully!