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.

Berlin School

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!

Church of Hed February 2017 Real News Update

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Howdy.

Possibly a new album cover?
Possibly a new album cover?

Well, winter hasn’t really happened here in the Midwest, but nonetheless I continue working on A Cold White Universe EP — the soon-come Church of Hed release. As you might have noticed, this would make two “seasonal” EP releases when combined with The Autumn Shrine EP. This may be part of a larger plan? Stay tuned.

Mixing is going well, and I hope to begin mastering the tiny album this weekend. It features two tracks. Echoes of December is a five-minute exploration with arpeggiated synth and drumming. The title track is a ten minute jaunt of wind, ambience, delayed piano ostinatos, and a gradual descent into a foreboding winter. So there.

Expect a release in about two weeks — Bandcamp, Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, etc. We’ll let you know.

Aural Innovations Jerry interviews Church of Hed Paul

Jerry Kranitz, retired head-honcho of Aural Innovations, recently interviewed me about the making of Brandenburg Heights. It was published on TabMuse, my online magazine about cool music technology. Check it out, read some of the other content, and tell your friends.

New Brandenburg Heights Reviews Abound

Peter Thelen, for the legendary prog magazine-now-webzine, Expose, recently reviewed our Brandenburg Heights release. As Peter says: “Needless to say, this one is a grower, new things are revealed with each successive spin.” Indeed.

Andy Garibaldi, better known as AndyG, also reviewed Brandenburg Heights. “As a complete 40+ minute piece, it’s not a lie to say that this is faultless, almost a masterpiece, and certainly the finest piece of music I’ve heard to date from Church Of Hed, and decidedly an album that anyone into strong and varied, dynamic and consistent, quality and repeat playable electronic music, should really consider owning and enjoying, long, loud and often.” Yeah, man.

New Church of Hed Activities

Once A Cold White Universe EP is released, I plan on beginning work on a new studio album. This one will be beat-laden: live playing and soulful drum machine patterns — most of the time, simultaneously. A bit more upbeat compared to Brandenburg Heights, but still freaky as ever.

I am also recording a few drum beats and synth bass lines for Greg Kozlowski, guitarist for the US spacerock band, Architectural Metaphor — I’d link to their website or Facebook page, but they have neither. This work is either for an upcoming solo album or part of Greg’s Antrilon electronic music project.

Finally, practice work on the parts for the Father Road — my sequel to Rivers of Asphalt — continues unabated. New ideas for the Sierra Mountains and Nevada portions of the road recently arrived, leaving only Wyoming as the only part without any composition work. Dick Cheney would be pleased.

As always — thanks for reading!

Church of Hed Holidays 2016 Update

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With a New Year ready to dawn, here’s another news update from the Church of Hed. We hope your Holiday Season has been peaceful, so far.

Yamaha MM8
The Yamaha MM8 serves as a nice finger exercise machine. Photo by Paul Williams.

Rivers of Asphalt and Church of Hed Debut on Bandcamp

We just published Rivers of Asphalt and the Church of Hed debut album on our Bandcamp page. Our standard “Buy One Get 4.5 albums Free” (BOG4.5 Free) sale is also available from Bandcamp — it’s the best deal in music. Because of the redundancy with the “Shop” on this website, we now link to Bandcamp from the ChurchofHed.com menu. Git ya some!

Church of Hed reviewed at Sea of Tranquility

Brandenburg Heights and Electric Sepulcher were recently reviewed by Pete Pardo at the prog website, Sea of Tranquility. Pete ruminates about Brandenburg Heights:

“Brandenburg Heights is a fascinating listen from start to finish, Paul Williams’ ability to create seamlessly shifting moods quite effective over the course of 40+ minutes of instrumental music. Fans of synth dominated music would be well advised to seek this out!”

He opines on Electric Sepulcher:

“The more majestic “Trace the Rubycon” features Williams’ always excellent drum skills supported by lovely synth & piano melodies for one of the albums more prog rock styled compositions. If you are a synth enthusiast, there’s plenty to enjoy here on Electric Sepulcher, an album with many layers that is just seeping with space rock, psychedelia, ambient, electronica, and proggy goodness.”

Thank you for insights, Pete!

Upcoming Church of Hed Projects

A new “Seasons” EP is currently in the oven. This one will be called “A Cold White Universe EP” and it features darker Holiday and Wintertime explorations. Expect its release sometime in February.

I am making progress composing and rehearsing sections of The Father Road — the sequel to Rivers of Asphalt covering a journey from west to east on the Lincoln Highway. Recording is expected to commence next year with a 2018 release the most likely outcome at this point. The piano is the engine for traveling the old LH!

Concurrent with these other projects are two new “regular” albums. One album will be slightly more concise and beat-laden, while the other one is expected to be more of an ambient Berlin School release. Expect these albums to become available for public consumption over the next two years.

As always — thanks for listening!

New Church of Hed Album — Brandenburg Heights — is released!

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As promised in our last news digest, the new Church of Hed album, Brandenburg Heights, was just released. In the classic Berlin School format, the album features two 20-minute tracks. It almost makes me wish I had a vinyl fetish!

brandenburg-heights
Church of Hed — Brandenburg Heights front cover.

The album is available exclusively on Bandcamp; it’s digitally available today, with CDs arriving in about two weeks. Expect an update when that happens. If you don’t trust us, check out the back cover:

bh-back-cover
The Brandenburg Heights back cover. So there.

Expect reviews to be added to the Brandenburg Heights page on this website as they are published. We may even sell the CDs using the shopping cart here, but they will definitely be available from Bandcamp. The same “Buy One Get Four Free” deal will be in force, so you can score on the debut Church of Hed CD as well as Quarkspace’s Drop, Spacefolds 8, and Spacefolds 9 as well for one low price. The best deal in music!

I am also constantly working on new music, so look for news shortly on a couple upcoming projects — in addition to the sequel to Rivers of Asphalt. A decent amount of the road design, uh, music composition, is complete on the latter album. Still, it will take at least a year or two to record it. I don’t want to get bogged down with it like the original album which took from 2004 to 2010 to finish. The Era of Slacking, indeed.

As always, thanks for listening and the support. Get out there and buy many Brandenburg Heights copies for all your friends!

Church of Hed Summer 2016 News Digest

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Howdy. I just wanted to share some news about the latest happenings here at the Church of Hed. Our last update is here if you are interested in checking it out. Thanks for the interest as always.

Work on the new Church of Hed Album Continues

I’ve been working on hard on my new album which is probably going to be called Brandenburg Heights. One of the pieces involves a total destruction/reconstruction of the old Quarkspace electronica classic, Recaesarian, from Spacefolds 5 — more on that later. “Caesar” got me thinking Roman, which made me ponder the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. I grew up near a town in Ohio called Berlin Heights. Throw in the modern Berlin School style of the music and there you have the album title etymology.

Speaking of Berlin School, the album follows the classic 70s format used by Tangerine Dream and early Mike Oldfield, featuring two “title tracks” with the added Part 1 and Part 2 monikers. Part 1 is the aforementioned Recaesarian reconstruction. I owned the Volca Bass and Keys for about a year (as of January 2016), using them primarily as sound modules instead of their embedded sequencer functionality.

Sub37-Z1-Streichfett-Effects
The Moog Sub 37, Korg Z1, and Waldorf Streichfett make for some Berlin School fun. Photo by Paul Williams.

After picking up the Korg SQ-1 to serve as a MIDI sync traffic cop between the Volcas, Monotribe, Teenage Electronics PO-12, and the glorious Moog Sub 37, I started to work on this large-form Berlin School piece using the 5/4 time signature, key of D, and chord progression from the live version of Recaesarian. This Philip Glass inspired minimalism section appeared in the middle, with a soft landing serving as a coda arriving some 20 minutes after the beginning.

I was able to recreate the piece live in the studio and finally got a basic recording I liked. Over the past few months, work continued involving orchestration and physically playing new parts. Doing those Glass arpeggios on the weighted keys of my Yamaha MM8 still requires some effort and practice. I’ve always liked to combine sequenced, quantized loops, beats, and patterns with kinetic playing on both drums and keys. So there.

Yamaha MM8
The Yamaha MM8 serves as a nice finger exercise machine. Photo by Paul Williams.

Part 2 began to take form when I found a studio improv I recorded last December featuring a Sub 37 arpeggiation and a live drum beat all in 7. Taking a more modular form, I gradually wrote a few other parts — all in weirdo time signatures — including some Berlin School action using the same setup as Part 1. This track also comes in at around 20 minutes.

Brandenburg Heights, Part 2 is almost finished; I just need to add some sprinkles and frosting. I plan on having the album out this fall and it will be released exclusively on Bandcamp. With two 20 minute tracks, I don’t feel this release is appropriate for streaming services like Apple Music, Spotify, et al. I’d get less than a tenth of a penny for an entire album stream. I will also have an autographed hard copy CD-R version available from the Bandcamp page with the same BOG4 deal we offer at Eternity’s Jest Records.

The Rivers of Asphalt Sequel in Progress

Concurrently with the work on Brandenburg Heights, I’ve been writing and practicing material from my next, next album which will be a sequel to Rivers of Asphalt. Instead of Route 66, we are traveling the Lincoln Highway from San Francisco to New York City. I’ve written material for San Fran along with most of the areas from Kansas to the East Coast. I haven’t recorded much yet, but continue to practice and refine the material. This one gonna be proggie.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. Expect an update when Brandenburg Heights is released.

Church of Hed News Update — New Album Coming!

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Howdy,

Just a long overdue news update to keep you informed about the latest happenings with the Church of Hed. First off, I’ve uploaded two of our albums to Bandcamp — Electric Sepulcher and The Autumn Shrine EP. Expect Rivers of Asphalt and the Church of Hed debut to show up there over the next few weeks, when I get a spare moment or three for uploading. We’ve piggybacked onto the Quarkspace Bandcamp account for simplicity’s sake.

You have the option to listen to the albums, download them in FLAC or MP3, or even purchase a CD in the case of Electric Sepulcher. As always, we throw in a free download card for The Autumn Shrine EP (among other freebies) as a “thank you” for your support.

Dark Matter
The TC Electronic Dark Matter distortion pedal is expected to make an appearance on the next Church of Hed album.

New Church of Hed Album in Progress

I’m also in the middle of recording a new album. This comes as a surprise, since I really should be working exclusively on the sequel to Rivers of Asphalt — I am still composing and getting my fingers familiar with the parts on RoA 2, but it isn’t my main focus, currently.

After picking up the Korg SQ-1 sequencer, I rearranged my studio so the SQ-1 could serve as a sync “traffic cop” between my Volcas, Monotribe, Teenage Engineering PO-12, and the Moog Sub 37. Needless to say, a new Berlin School composition appeared soon afterward. It clocks in a 20-21 minutes in the old school way.

A complimentary piece was developed out of a Sub 37/drum improvisation, with additional sections being written, including another SQ-1 managed sequencer workout. This track also approaches the twenty-minute mark.

Additional overdub and orchestration parts are being written, rehearsed, and recorded. I’m really excited about this album! Expect a release later this year — probably late summer or early fall.

At this point, I am considering making it an exclusive Bandcamp release, since two twenty minute tracks don’t really fit the current streaming-based digital music market. I expect to provide some form of CD version through Bandcamp as well. We’ll have more details as the release gets closer.

As always, thanks for listening! It’s Eternity’s Jest Records 20th anniversary this year — thank you for your continued support of our weirdo music stylings!

Electric Sepulcher reviewed at Expose

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Peter Thelen of the legendary progressive music magazine, Expose, recently reviewed Electric Sepulcher. Check out this great take-away quote:

“If you miss the old days when electronic music was progressive and innovative, and not just a brain-dead wallpaper of 4/4 dance beats, then Electric Sepulcher is definitely worthy of exploration.”

Indeed.

The irony is there are no odd time signatures on Electric Sepulcher. I’ve got the filters at the beginning of Godspeed You! Alien Dingo pulsing in 5/4, but that’s about it. The title track of The Autumn Shrine EP does have a 5/8 section in the middle. I will always love my weirdo timesigs! You should love strange time signatures, too.

Make sure to check out the rest of Peter’s review and explore the rest of Expose if you have any interest in progressive music. No neo/symph only bleating there — although they do cover both sub-genres.

Thanks for listening! And for reading.

 

The Autumn Shrine EP Officially Released!

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The Autumn Shrine EP is officially released! Featuring 22 minutes of Prog, Space Rock, Minimalism, and Electronica, this mini album belongs in your collection today.

The Autumn Shrine EP Cover
Church of Hed — The Autumn Shrine EP

 

A digital only release, the Autumn Shrine EP is the first in hopefully a regular series of timely EP albums released in concert with our normal schedule — as long as the muse allows it! Check out this description:

The Autumn Shrine EP, Church of Hed’s fourth release, is centered on the nearly 14 minute title track, a Floydian spaceprog epic essentially serving as a requiem for Quarkspace. A Philip Glass-inspired Moog improvisation and a beat-laden electronica track from the Electric Sepulcher sessions (Church of Hed’s third album) round out the EP.

You can sample the tracks and purchase a download from CD Baby today. We will be offering a free download with every order of either Electric Sepulcher or Rivers of Asphalt (Quarkspace’s Node in Peril too!) from our shop here at Church of Hed Dot Com. This also includes the free copies of the debut Church of Hed album, as well as Quarkspace’s Drop (an All Music Guide Top Pick), Spacefolds 8 and Spacefolds 9. Whoa. What a deal! Give Hed for the Holidays!

Expect the EP to be available soon from other digital sources, including iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Music, Spotify and more. In fact, we already heard from one fan who listened to the tracks on Spotify overnight. She loved it! Keep an eye on this website, since we’ll update things when reviews are published. As always, we appreciate your support.

PW