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.

The Fifth Hour

The Fifth Hour Now Available on YouTube

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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.

Church of Hed - The Fifth Hour - Album Cover
Our new album cover, courtesy of NASA and the Hubble Space Telescope.
Dink and Hed explore the Pleiades star cluster armed with their synths.
Hed controls the Animoog with the Lumi Keys using MPE.
Jonathan, Dink, and Hed travel to Hyades.
Hed takes ye to the Blue Spaceways that lie beyond the sky…
The title track features an angular, indisciplined Moog pattern and violin.
We traverse another deep space star cluster with a modulated ring.
Animoog, the Lumi Keys, and little grains of Jerry from the Grateful Dead combine over MPE.
Jonathan and Hed search for the descendant of the Silicon Rogue.
A drunken attempt at the title track becomes the album’s coda, as it should be.
The original improvisation that inspired the title track.

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!