news

Crow Tongue's "ghost eye seeker" was chosen by Julian Cope as his album of the month for April, 2008 at Head Heritage.

Crow Tongue's "The Red Hand Mark" and "Prophecies and Secrets: the Red Hand Mark in Dub" are officially released to stores tomorrow, April 22, 2008!

Crow Tongue has also released "ditch mix" volume 3.

All of the above are available from DARK HOLLER ARTS.

Crow Tongue has two upcoming live dates" May 3, 2008 (at The Shamrock in Belair, MD) and May 31, 2008 (at the Depot in York, PA). See Crow Tongue's MySpace page for details.

I won the instrument building contest at the 3rd Annual Cigar Box Guitar Extravaganza in Huntsville, Alabama with a tamboura-lyre I made to accompany Shane Speal on ragas and myself while singing. Inspired by this, I have started making primitive instruments under the name of MOTH instruments. There is a new section here under that name.

You will be able to find these instruments (as well as Dark Holler • Hand/Eye releases, used CDs unavailable in the Dark Holler catalog, records, books, Od Peacock creations, ephemera, and more) at our eBay store, Dark Holler Arts.

Crow Tongue's "ditch mix" volume two is available from Dark Holler • Hand/Eye.

Despite selling a couple of pieces, I've temporarily taken down the artwork in the "visions" section. I started to feel that having so many old pieces up there makes this site more of an archive than I want it to be - which is why there's not a lot of information about Stone Breath and the like here. My intent was not to make a museum of my past works.

I have finished the basic tracks for two full Crow Tongue albums - both have been sent to Prydwyn and await his contributions...at which point they will come back to me for final additions and mixing.

One album is based on Ezechial 37 and will feature contributions from Terry earl Taylor, Alicia Wade (of Moth Masque/the Wades/Funeral/etc), Tara VanFlower (Lycia/Black Happy Day), and maybe more.

The other album is self-titled and is the follow-up, conceptually at least, to "Hoofbeat, Caw, and Thunder." This album will sound, probably, more like Stone Breath than other Crow Tongue works as our new inspirations/obsessions were in their infancy when these tracks were first recorded.

more soon...

The first release by my new band, Crow Tongue, a 3" CDr called "ditch mix" volume one, is available now from Dark Holler • Hand/Eye. Do not expect this to sound like Stone Breath. Crow Tongue's sound is more primitive while yet using electronics and other technologies Stone Breath did not. More to come from Crow Tongue.

Both editions of "Primitive Recordings are now available. Insurrection has both the limited box edition and the wider release 'PovertyPak'. Dark Holler mailorder has the wider release version only.

I have long worked with the Trees Community on the official reissue of "The Christ Tree" - their rare 1970s album of beautiful experimental Christian folk music. I think it has been about four years, but at last the fruits of our efforts will soon be available as "The Christ Tree" 4CD box set from my record label, Hand/Eye. Including many many never-before released songs and performances, a detailed booklet, and notes by David Tibet and myself. All of this housed in a special digipack box that unfolds into a cross shape. I am really excited to see its completion at last. God bless the Trees!

Insurrection Records will soon be releasing a CDr album of mine called "Primitive Recordings." This record is just me singing and playing a 5-string banjo made from a cigar-box. Mostly traditional songs, with a few covers (Derroll Adams, Sydney Carter, Clive Palmer) - and the sound is raw and primitive indeed. Recorded live direct-to-tape through a stereo microphone capturing all of the bad notes and broken strings and dust and bones. There will be a special wooden-box limited edition version of "Primitive Recordings" which will come with the music on a set of 3" discs, along with some historical information on cigar-box banjos and another disc of some very early cigar-box banjo recordings by Beans Hambone from 1931. I will also do an original drawing for each of these wooden-box sets. Only 6 of these will be made available to the public (5 from Insurrection and 1 from me).

Crow Tongue is my new band, replacing all others. More soon.

On Old Christmas Eve and Old Christmas Day, January 2006, Timothy, Revelator, having had on his mind thoughts of the death of Time; and in his ears and eyes, great gatherings of crows wherever he went; and in his heart his twin children; sat down, put pen to paper, and wrote "Hoofbeat, Caw, & Thunder." In two days' and two nights' time, thoughts and hopes and fears began to spin together like a spider's web, and he produced what is perhaps his most personal work to date. Biblical and personal revelation blend as animist apocrypha is reconciled to Catholic Apocalypse, disappointment to hope, past to future. All these thoughts of ENDING blending with the demise of Stone Breath (Timothy's now defunct band), and the fact that he has not released an album in well over a eighteen months' time, lent this material a sense of urgency and he began to put it to music immediately (perhaps, in his mind, before The End).

With a host of instruments at hand (guitars, banjos, dulcimers, harmonium, lute, and something Timothy calls the motheart), he began to compose songs and drones to marry to his text. Besides bowed strings and blown harmonium reeds, Timothy created drones from field recordings he made of steam engines and whistles from various antique engine shows (another anachronistic interest of Timothy's); as well as recordings of the loudest instrument in the world, the factory steam whistle in York, PA, which is played every Christmas at midnight and heard for many miles around. He recruited friends Sarada, whose silvery vocals have graced many of Timothy's previous albums, and Shane Speal, the King of the Cigar Box Guitar, to help. Sarada sang with Timothy while Shane played a double-necked bass/guitar cigar box and a fretless electric bass.

"Hoofbeat, Caw, & Thunder" was meant to be taken as one piece (though divided into tracks for the convenience of the listener) and the sound weaves elements of Timothy's past with hints at his future musical direction. Not steampunk exactly, but steamdrone and folk (wyrd or otherwise), sometimes with distorted dissonance, and other times in quieter, acoustic lead settings. In this, Time has turned in on itself; where sounds of medieval lutes meet 1970's tube-driven recording equipment, and 1880's steam whistles are sampled, reconstructed, and looped by modern devices. "Hoofbeat, Caw, & Thunder," with sonic leaps back and forth through Time, becomes a meditation on the end of all things, or perhaps of just one man, and on love, and family, and what we leave behind.

9 tracks, 58 minutes.