hollowmoon
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hollowmoon

Brighton, England, United Kingdom | INDIE

Brighton, England, United Kingdom | INDIE
Band Alternative Avant-garde

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This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

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"FM to Web: Lovers don't mind by Jake Fern"

I feel like I discovered America or something like that. The HOLLOWMOON come from England, Brighton specifically and personally they stole my heart. Their debut EP titled 'Lovers Don't Mind' is the best I've heard for months, not to say for years ...

This band has a soul, heart and songs that bent bones. Reading (exclusive of course) Jake Fern's article for my column here, I understood why the fire that burns this amazing band is so spontaneous and genuine. The best kept secret of 2011 will not be secret much longer.

The EP is officially released TODAY. Truly, I look forward to their album as few times before. Sometimes music is a blessing even in the gray times we spend our time among the ruins of a world that is changing violently and underground as ever ...

This Saturday 8-10 at Channel 1, I will have a 'Rockzone session' which recorded EXCLUSIVELY for the show.



HOLLOWMOON – ‘NOTHING IN THIS WORLD IS STILL, EVEN THAT GIFT YOU DIDN'T GIVE HER...'

We started making music together over a decade ago, and pretty much against the odds we kept going. I joined an organisation that some ex-members now call a 'cult' (although I tend to disagree) and was asked to leave England and work overseas, firstly in Nepal and then Sudan. I still don't know what to make of those years, living as the only Westerner for hundreds of miles in a mud hut, celibate and with only a long wave radio and cassette player for entertainment. But we kept writing sporadically and would get together in between trips, creating hundreds of demos but nothing we wanted to release.

Steve wrote music that appeared on the BBC's Ideal with Johnny Vegas and on the later trips I took tapes of Steve's music and wrote lyrics to it dripping with sweat in the night under my mosquito net.

Many of the songs that will appear on Closer Than The Blood, such as 'Voices From Another Sphere' and 'Jennifer Howe' were written that way. The words to 'Nothing Between You And The World' were written whilst building a thorn bush perimeter to a small wood we were trying to replenish.

Steve and I wrote to each other about what was happening politically. I was in Sudan when the planes hit the towers and at that time, despite having read books years before that laid bare the Agenda, wasn't thinking in terms of conspiracy. Steve was more on the ball and it's a perspective that in different ways is always there in the music we write. The songs are essentially all about love but significantly also about what prevents us from really loving... the conditioning, the propaganda, the manipulation. And hopefully they are a celebration of the whole experience.

The title of the album refers to a quote attributed to Christ in one of the 'outlawed' gospels where in response to the question, 'Where is Heaven?' he responds, 'It is closer to you than the blood than runs through your own veins'. That is essentially the only thing we need to know, i.e., that all the answers are here, with us. It's just a question of uncovering what is already there.

Sometimes all the questions and possibilities can seem overwhelming, which is why it's so important to keep centered and focus on the heart as much as the mind. We reckon these next few years really could see huge changes. Never before have the channels of communication been so open, the opportunities so great. And yet conversely, never before have the means of control been so integrated into our daily lives. These are definitely interesting times.

Gar, Ben and Iain have all got involved since I returned to England from the final field trip and all of us share similarities of perspective on life perhaps more than we share musical tastes. I think that's more productive than the other way around. Ben's basically a metaller, Gar plays a lot of folk and Iain's a big fan of Peter Green. Steve and I met through a shared love of bands like The Velvet Underground, The Stooges and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. Whatever the influences, musically it's important to me to be genuinely English, to be authentic and true to ourselves. If you can do that then at some point people will respond. - Mixgrill


"Talent Scout: Hollowmoon"

Like music that challenges the listener and triggers thought? One reading of Hollowmoon’s biography, as written by lead singer Jake Fern, and it is abundantly clear that this UK band’s music and lyricism is steeped in philosophy, literature and a desire for greater understanding. Check for instance the description under the YouTube video for the band’s latest single, “Rising In The Blue Sky,” and the reader will find an extensive philosophical analysis of the work of Ezra Pound, whose voice is even featured in one of the band’s other songs, “The Lovers Don’t Mind.”

Hollowmoon - The Lovers Don't Mind

Do not be intimidated by these elements however, for the music of Hollowmoon has an irresistibly catchy feel. There is a clear psychedelic influence in the sound, reminiscent of The Doors in their bluesier moments towards the end of their career. Though Fern’s vocal delivery takes a slightly more subtle approach when compared to Jim Morrison’s dominating and commanding presence, the lyrics of both are entrenched firmly in existential, philosophical matters of human emotion and existence. Fern describes this perspective, stating that the songs “are essentially all about love but significantly also about what prevents us from really loving… the conditioning, the propaganda, the manipulation.”

Yet to merely reference another band’s music would detract from the wholly unique sound that Hollowmoon has crafted. Their blues-rock, especially on “Rising In The Blue Sky” is attractive and tantalizing, but a feral, menacing feel oozes with every guitar riff and Fern’s provocative wail. As it should, the music is beginning to draw the attention of the public. Tom Robinson of BBC 6 Music called it “one of the most original things we’ve heard all year.. a great sound, relentless and rolling.. a band you’ll hear a lot more of on this show..” In other words, don’t sleep on Hollowmoon. - ResonantPassage


Discography

Closer Than The Blood (2011)

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Bio


HOLLOWMOON

I kept leaving the country. We'd write a load of songs, play them live and then I'd leave for Africa and write on my own in my mud hut. With just an imported Chinese tape player as my studio and a cassette of his music to write lyrics to. The only Westerner for a hundred miles. No TV, just Long Wave.

We wrote to each other about the 7/7 bombings, De-population and UFOs. He stayed in England and wrote songs with Horse-Eye Level and Celebricide, three of which were used in the BBC series Ideal, starring Jonny Vegas.

Now we're together again for good, with two other musicians who share a love of Conspiracy. Before we talked music we talked 9/11 and Illuminati.

Closer Than The Blood was initially the title of a novel that the solitude of a refugee camp made easy to write. Back in England I couldn't write... too many distractions. So it became an album instead. Release date: Spring 2011

After live shows in Brighton and London we are releasing the first single on 31/12/10: The Lovers Don't Mind.

We love anything that's from the heart; the energy of bands like Arcade Fire, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Suicide, Interpol, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, the soul of Nina Simone, Jonny Cash, Micah P. Hinson, the sorrow in the songs of Nick Drake and Leonard Cohen.

The album was recorded at Brickhouse Studios in Brighton.

NB

Hollowmoon: There is a theory that the moon is an artificial satellite, a kind of 'hide' similar to those used in the observation of wildlife. Only that in this case it is we, the human race, who are the wildlife being observed. The fact that the moon covers the sun exactly, that we only ever see one face and that it apparently rings like a bell when struck by space debris is good enough for us, but who knows?