New Equivoke Review of MAZE

Well A.M.O.E. has received it's first online review done by Sanakan over at the EQUIVOKE site.
Sanakan has some exceedingly positive, affirmative and relieving things to say about the album and takes you through the whole thing song for song. We here at Night Heir are extremely appreciative, Sir!
Check it out here.

A Maze Of Evenings

At long last I am replete with excitement to tell you that the second Night Heir album A Maze Of Evenings is available for you to hear. Though it will likely need the mastering touches of hands beyond our own eventually, it stands before you now a rugged & raw colossus.

Two years in the making, and much like giving birth, the process of creating this album was beautiful but ugly, exciting yet painful. Hopefully this truth shows within the music itself.

Two great talents joined me this time around and I can't say enough about these gents and the unbelievable sounds and ideas they contributed. Samuel Rosenberg, who now lives in Sao Paulo, was an insightful and extremely enthusiastic aide during the entire writing process and then proceeded to conjure up a flurry of bass lines, incredible rookie slide guitar, backing and choir vocals, and even stepped up to the plate as half of the twin lead guitars for the flagship song Inamorata. He also pounded obnoxiously on my door many terrible mornings in a row to get me out of the damn bed and into the studio. Very much appreciated.

Andrew Diluvian's contribution came from a wildly different direction, adding an almost musique concrete kind of ambiance to several areas of several songs. Among other things he used a filing cabinet and violin bow to produce the most ungodly din you can imagine, he concocted the sound of a massive rolling wheel, he turned lots of knobs on his big collection of science fiction gear, he provided atmosphere and texture through field recordings, he sang and shrieked and howled. When I asked Andi to emulate the droning peal of a huge Tibetan horn for the song Solar Plexus, he did it. He used a chair and our dining room floor and that's about it. Amazing!

Including myself, a total of fourteen different people sing on this album.

Choir sections were filled out by a colorful cast of wonderful people. Among them, Justin Wiese, Wolfgang Ratzlaff, Adam Muscleman, Trevor Giblin, Clinton Agresti, Miranda Ariel, Lauren Oberle-Hall, Morgan Ray Denning and Heather Wiese. Also, the lovely sisters Crystal and Angela Lariza lent the game-changing angelic grace of their voices to songs like Slowland and Inner Female.

I'm very gracious to these fine humans for helping to piece together this monster.

The songs are as follows:

1. Inviolate

2. Inamorata

3. Daymare

4. Giver & Receiver

5. The Wheel

6. The Curator

7. Solar Plexus

8. The Snakewife

9. theme from Slowland

10. Draw Me Down The Moon

11. Inner Female

12. Inviolate

It clocks in at around 72 minutes and is a rather larger affair than the first release in every way. The vain promises of a release last year seem laughably naive now.

There were plenty of difficulties and obstacles to traverse throughout the whole journey and we had more than our share of technological woes, seasonal depression and vice. It's all right there in the music, folks.

The album has been uploaded to the Bandcamp site and is available as a high quality Aif download and you can choose your own price. Also, because I like to ensure better quality links right off the bat before anyone has a chance to spread shitty versions around, here is a direct Mediafire link as well for mp3 format. (This link has been changed, see more recent posts for the mastered link.)

As of right now this thing exists solely as downloadable digital files. Of course, the ideal is to eventually release it in beautiful physical form. We are still deciding how to go about this, whether through the audio cassette route again or, should the fates smile on us, maybe a friendly label will help us press records this time. More on that later, for now I feel it is important to bring the music to the masses as expediently as possible.

Huge thanks to the people who bought the tapes and shared their interest and kind words.

Your patience is greatly appreciate and I hope you will not be disappointed.

Enjoy.

Seasonal Greetings and Status Update

 Greetings!

I had the pleasure of spending the Holiday in my homeland of Maine (where at one point I had to ride a bus through an amazing blizzard as these skillful photographs prove.)

The Seasonal period has been a dizzyingly busy and intense time for both Andi & myself as we work on completing the new record amongst many other unrelated demands. Family, occupational & personal obligations have slowed everything down in the past couple weeks of course and I was somewhat dismayed to realize the record could not realistically be completed in the apocalypse-year. At the present moment, I like to think of this as a decidedly good omen.

There came a point when I figured if we could theoretically work 24 hours non-stop a day for a week, we could slambang this thing together with a severely rushed mix-job and it would be done... OR we could do it right. From conception through recording this project has taken just about a year and half so far (whereas the first album took a little over a Summer!) and that's just too much of an investment to be rushed and hasty at the end just to meet an arbitrary date. It isn't like the world is awaiting all this, anyhow.

BUT for those of you who do care, know that all but some brief details have been recorded and the final mixing process will commence this month. 

As far as a more "official" physical release- that is all still very ambiguous and isn't slowing down the actual production in the slightest. When it is done, it will be available for download ASAP.

P.S. in related news, Andi's own solo project BOUGH has just finished a delicious new album entitled YARROWVEIL and you should explore it here.

Thanks for hearing.

Strange Experimentations in Der Bough House

Working on some of the sound design/atmospheric elements for the new album:

Today we recorded Andi using a cello's bow to play a filing cabinet.

It sounded unbelievably menacing.

We've also recorded other unusual things like chairs, lazy susans and trash cans as well.

Xmas is still the hopeful date to have this thing all finished up, but

A Maze Of Evenings will definitely be complete before the year is out.

We're very excited.

Photos and News

Andi Diluvian

Samuel Rosenberg

Sean Barry

A selection of our first proper band portraiture recently taken by the lovely photographer Melissa Carmel. 

Not so surprisingly, the new album has proven to be quite a chore but has so far grown beautifully. All of the principle guitars, bass and drums are complete and it merely awaits the vocals, some keyboarding and Andi's atmospheric flourishes. The design for the cover and other related imagery is developing simultaneously as well.

Also, I'm quite pleased to announce that the previous album -Wind In My Dream Mist In My House- has been officially mastered by the great Colin Marston. All of the files on the Bandcamp site have been updated accordingly with this new version -which cements the quality, without "changing" the content, of the original. As was my hope. Much gracious thanks to Colin for his time and patience.

A couple recent foreign language reviews of that album:

Aristocrazia

Abismo 

I am still searching for interested labels to finally release WIMDMIMH in some format or another, until then the hand made tape edition is still available.

There simply isn't enough time in the Night to cover all these bases as much as I'd like and to be sure the new recording has taken the frantic, nervous front seat.

Many thanks to those who have listened and appreciated so far, it has truly given us fuel.

Updates to follow...

In The Bough House

The Throne.

 

We recorded two absolutely lovely ladies - the sisters Crystal and Angela Lariza, whose gorgeous, effortless, ethereal voices will go some miles toward making this recording much more dynamic then the previous one. We are really very excited.

Soon we will have to start organizing the MANCHOIR.

In The Bough House

Sam at the console.

Pizza on the skins.

We celebrated the Solstice by recording the smooth criminal Sean MacNeil on sit-in guest drums. He will be on two songs total, we think. 

Previously, he performed the dazzling piano work on "I See Myself" from WIMDMIMH.

Now he plays drums in a great Portland band called Denver.

Portraiture

 

These photos were taken back in 2010 by Justin Wiese in tandem with the completion of WIMDMIMH, and were sadly never effectively used. But here they are.

Night Heir is in the Studio

Last week, Night Heir officially began recording drums for the second album: A Maze Of Evenings.

The majority of the work on WIMDMIMH was done alone, which was no easy task I can assure you. This next one is decidedly a much larger and more daunting undertaking. Thankfully, this time around, the creative source-point has expanded threefold so far. Sam Rosenberg has already helped significantly to flesh out the entire writing process and now as we set in to record we are thrilled to have enlisted Andi Diluvian:

The home recording studio formerly known as The Clearing has now been rebuilt and expanded by Andi into a space we are calling The Bough House.

I will put up some imagery and some more words, perhaps, as the recording develops.

EQUIVOKE review

Thanks to the lovely EQUIVOKE blog for it's generous review of WIMDMIMH. Here it is.
It's encouraging to get this kind of feedback as we are very anxious to begin recording the new record as soon as technologically possible.