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!
Indeed, the news is true. The Fourth Hour was officially released this week. Check out our convenient page if you need proof. In fact, that same page is laden with links to the Bandcamp page for the release, as well as CD Baby, Apple Music, and Spotify. We’re simply here to help!
Of course, it was a fun project to complete. Reaper worked beautifully as our new DAW, enabling us to finally move on after nearly two decades of Pro Tools. We also mastered everything “in the box” using a full array of cool plugins that essentially sound the same as our outboard gear.
It’s nice to be able to work again on The Father Road. I am currently porting everything over from Pro Tools to Reaper; the ADAT light pipe cable is shining. After that effort is complete, we move on to recording drum tracks, followed by melodic and spacey overdubs. The Lincoln Highway was never this psychedelic!
Expect a CD release some time in the latter half of next year. We can’t wait. After that, look for The Fifth Hour (yes, The Fourth Hour is the first release in our own “Spacefolds” series), as enough high-quality improvisational material is ready for overdubs. Dink and I went hard. Then Cycle comes next. As always, we’re keeping busy.
We appreciate your continued support. Consider supporting us with a download of the new album from our Bandcamp page. Sure, streaming is available, but it’s more fun collecting your own music, isn’t it?
Once again, thanks for listening!
Welcome to the latest news update from those intrepid travelers at Eternity’s Jest Records. With an emerging Spring now upon us, our thoughts turn towards a few upcoming Church of Hed releases. Let’s dive into the details!
But wait! A quick note to let you know Brandenburg Heights, formerly a Bandcamp exclusive, is being distributed to other digital providers, including Spotify, Apple Music, CD Baby, and more. We’ll do a quick post whenever the album is available.
Now we can dive into the details!
We are hard at work on multiple fronts here at the Church of Hed. Our next three albums happily reside in various states of completion. We’ll look at each following their expected order of release.
First off comes The Fourth Hour, an album focused more on the immediate and the improvisational – it’s almost Spacefolds-esque. We figured this album would come out after The Father Road, but the fact we recently switched from ProTools to Reaper as our DAW (recording software) of choice – after nearly 20 years – rearranged things. The Fourth Hour requires less production than The Father Road, so it makes more sense to finish this one as a project for learning Reaper.
A release sometime this summer is likely. So expect more news on that front in a month or two. In the interim, a single derived from The Fourth Hour sessions, titled Q Ching, is slated for release later this month. Once again, this approach provides us a great way to learn Reaper as well as a robust array of recording plugins, including a ton from Eventide.
Obviously, we’ll let you know when Q Ching and The Fourth Hour are ready for your ears. Expect digital-only releases. Stay tuned!
At the same time as The Fourth Hour, we are also traveling hard down The Father Road. Currently, drum parts are being written and recorded – still in Pro Tools – and when that process is finished, everything gets transferred to Reaper. At that point, the process of finalizing melodies and other “trebly material” is scheduled. The album is coming together fantastically, and since this is a much more complex project from a production standpoint (and twice as long!) it makes sense to release The Fourth Hour first.
There’s still a chance The Father Road might be ready by the end of 2019, but a 2020 release is more likely. We’ll keep you in the loop. Expect a CD and digital release.
Every time we enter the studio, piano practice ensues. Over the last two years, two new pieces appeared during this practicing and are gradually being developed. These two compositions, when paired with two other previously released tracks are slated to make up another Church of Hed album, called Cycle.
Cycle is likely to be released sometime in late 2020 or early 2021. Of course, there may be other albums before that happens, perhaps The Fifth Hour or even The Sixth Hour? Stay tuned and thanks for listening, we’ll keep writing and recording new music for you.