High Places - High Places

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Customer reviews
Press release

5...according to our Brian on Thu 18 Sep, 2008.

Getting words down on screen about High Places is a tricky old business. Intrigued I was after Meister Philthy waxed lyrical about them after seeing them as support at a Deerhunter gig. An oddball couple, boy/girl duo on Thrill Jockey, they immediately engage you with sing-song sassy lady vocals hovering over a wonked up soup of cascading, dislocated rhythms, almost like a disembodied caribbean carnival of jittery sound! There's a strange magic at work here. It's ghostly music, very tender, reminding me a little of Animal Collective's kaleidoscopic safari template but without the Beach Boys obsession. Fragments of manipulated, furiously edited samples collide, forming a glitchy mist of beautiful future music with Mary Pearson's playful lyrics swooping above the ever shifting organic template of complex layers below. I can definitely hear elements of Scape records natural minimal techno exploration here, as well as Wildbirds & Peacedrums' delicate, tribal primitivism. I feel like I'm by the sea with this album, the waves lapping whilst all the free nature around you envelopes your every sense! They're something quite delightful these kids and their debut is a treasure to behold! The self-titled album is CD only on Thrill Jockey.

Since their inception, High Places have created a signature sound out of using bass-heavy yet crisp beats, lilting vocal melodies and syncopated rhythmic lines performed on folk percussion instruments, guitar duets turned into treated samples, and percussive lines created from the manipulation of household objects. The songwriting is expansive and fluid, all the while managing to be concise. High Places gravitate toward the organic over the electronic, and that natural aesthetic adds warmth and intimacy to the recordings.
High Places’ self-titled debut was recorded by the band’s Rob Barber and Mary Pearson in their apartment in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood. They employed a wide variety of instruments to make this album, ranging from the more traditional: 12 string guitar, banjo, shakers and rattles, bass, bells and Kalimba; to the inventive: plastic bags, mixing bowls, wood blocks and other common household objects. The album has a contemplative and organic lyrical tone emphasized by the themes of goodness manifested in nature, hardship and wonder as necessities to human existence and growth. Additionally, the idea of maturation and development is further accented through the recurring mention of trees and their extending, enveloping braches.

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