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Trash Heap

by Herbcraft

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  • Limited Edition 12" "Toxic Yellow" Colored Vinyl in Gloss-Laminated Jacket and Insert
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Limited to 250! "Toxic yellow" colored 12" vinyl record in gloss-laminated pro-printed full-color jacket, with two-sided full color insert.

    NORTH AMERICAN CUSTOMERS ONLY, PLEASE!
    Record pressed, released, and distributed in collaboration with Cardinal Fuzz Records; CUSTOMERS OUTSIDE OF NORTH AMERICA, PLEASE ORDER DIRECT FROM CARDINAL FUZZ
    cful.bandcamp.com

    Includes unlimited streaming of Trash Heap via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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  • Limited Edition 12" Black Vinyl in Gloss-Laminated Jacket with Insert
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Limited to 150! Black 12" vinyl record in gloss-laminated pro-printed full-color jacket, with two-sided full color insert.

    NORTH AMERICAN CUSTOMERS ONLY, PLEASE!
    Record pressed, released, and distributed in collaboration with Cardinal Fuzz Records; CUSTOMERS OUTSIDE OF NORTH AMERICA, PLEASE ORDER DIRECT FROM CARDINAL FUZZ
    cful.bandcamp.com

    Includes unlimited streaming of Trash Heap via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

  • Limited Art Edition 12" Black Vinyl with Hand-Painted and Screen-Printed Covers, Autographed Full-Color Insert, Exclusive Bonus Cassette, and Pinback Button
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Hand-numbered and limited to 50! Black 12" vinyl in hand-painted and screen-printed front-and-back covers, with autographed full-color two-sided insert. Also includes the exclusive "Robes" bonus cassette, and a 1.5" pinback button of the Trash Heap monster art by Ash Brooks.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Trash Heap via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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  • Flower Room Autumn 2020 Collection: Herbcraft Trash Heap art edition vinyl + 4 limited edition cassettes
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    While supplies last: Grab the Herbcraft art edition vinyl with its exclusive "Robes" bonus cassette, and add the other Flower Room autumn 2020 cassettes at a nice price discount! Includes: Herbcraft - Trash Heap art edition on black vinyl (“toxic yellow" colored vinyl is SOLD OUT), Herbcraft - Robes cassette, Thick Air - Ultraterrestrial Atmosphere cassette, Witches Broom s/t cassette, and Scenes no.1 - Shadow Work cassette.

    Order now to receive the digital albums immediately, with bundles expected to ship in late November. Bundles will ship once all items are ready.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Trash Heap via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

  • Limited Art Edition 12" "Toxic Yellow" Colored Vinyl with Hand-Painted and Screen-Printed covers, Autographed Full-Color Insert, Exclusive Bonus Cassette and Pinback Button
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Hand-numbered and limited to 50! "Toxic Yellow" colored 12" vinyl in hand-painted and screen-printed front-and-back covers, with autographed full-color two-sided insert. Also includes the exclusive "Robes" bonus cassette, and a 1.5" pinback button of the Trash Heap monster art by Ash Brooks.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Trash Heap via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

  • Limited Edition Cassette + Temporary Tattoo
    Cassette + Digital Album

    Hand-numbered and limited to 100! Home-dubbed Type I c40 with slime green shell, individually hand-typed kraft label on A-side and hand-stamped B-side. Held in clear polybox with pro-printed double-sided wraparound tip-on cover, and includes an exclusive temporary tattoo of the cover art in exclusive full technicolor variation.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Trash Heap via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

1.
Trash Heap 02:14
2.
3.
All's Burnt 03:30
4.
Highland 05:01
5.
Eon Rd 06:27
6.
Docet Up 10:18
7.
Last Words 08:25

about

In the fall of 2012, Matt LaJoie began work on a set of lo-fi solo 4-track cassette home recordings that were intended to become Herbcraft's fourth album, Wot Oz. As a bridge from the full-band Woodsist debut The Astral Body Electric, the songs and sketches of the Highland Ranch year represented a quickly and vastly shifting world of sonic inspiration: heavy Japanese psych, American free-jazz and proto-punk, and heady Velvet Underground bootlegs supplanted the flowing, folky, hippie-cult jams of yore. Several songs and sketches from this era were demoed and scrapped before the band's trio lineup solidified around drummer/producer Aaron Neveu and bassist/organist Joe Lindsey in summer 2013 to record Wot Oz proper. Meanwhile, the 4-track cassette masters and crudely mixed 2-track bounce tapes from Highland Ranch were trucked from home to home in more than a dozen moves since 2013, eventually becoming lost in a mislabeled box for a couple years before finally being found in March. Now digitally transferred, remastered, and finished where left incomplete seven years ago, this previously apocryphal book of the Herbcraft story is being shared for the first time.

The patron saint of the collection is the titular Trash Heap - the anthropomorphic all-knowing, raw-blues-belting, filth-loving, Kali-alluding mystical compost mound of Fraggle Rock. Feeding on the fears, grief, and refuse of the land's inhabitants, she dispenses light and abstract wisdom: a vehicle for transforming low vibration manifestations to higher octaves with wonder and mystery. LaJoie approaches the material on Trash Heap as a disciple of this mission, infiltrating scuzzy rock riffs with third eye chants and appeals to ascended masters. Inspiration arose via the grimy psych-punk of early Stooges, MC5, Back From the Grave comps, and local legends The Migs, as well as the greasy DIY rock n roll of Royal Trux and Don Gere's Werewolves on Wheels soundtrack, all wrapped in a fidelity guided by Les Rallizes Denudes live bootlegs. The results were warped further via DIY production experiments that incorporated psychedelic dub and Free Your Mind-style knob twistery, granting a further layer of hallucinatory mystery to the no-budget sessions.

The opening title track peels out right from the gate, coming at full blast before the tape has fully turned over from leader to ferric. More succinct and punk-referencing than anything LaJoie's turned in this side of S.S. Cretins, it gang-voxes its way through a classic teenage punk stomp, presenting something like a theme song for an alternate universe sewer-city animated series. "Below Your Mind" follows with a slight Anatolian touch in rhythm and scale; palm-muted electric guitar riffs interlock with a dancing bass, and tunnel-reverberated monastic vocals chant and croon a message of heart-centered self-reflection. The abstract noise-sound collage "All's Burnt" features light space-drums backing a duet for bass guitar and a pair of sneakers in a clothes dryer, before a thickly tremoloed electric guitar enters to usher in the instrumental garage rock jam "Highland". Followers of Herbcraft's past work will note that this is the original 4-track demo version of the song that would become Wot Oz's "Fit Ur-Head"; here, the instrumental "Highland" motors with a full tank toward the ultimate vanishing point in the sky, dual electric guitar leads reaching ever higher until the dome is pierced and gone beyond.

First single "Eon Rd" closes the A-side and is a prime example of the lane Herbcraft was cruising down throughout 2012, particularly in duo live settings (with Dawn Aquarius on organ/synth): cassette backing tracks featuring hand drums and dubby, funk-indebted bass lines laying the pavement, with delayed wah guitar and fuzzed out tremolo leads trading off with vocal mantra and free-wail. The track builds fiery electric guitar into a wall of echoing feedback, approximating Royal Truxian lo-fi psychedelia moves before finally collapsing back into the rhythm bed from whence it grew. The rhythm backing cassette approach is explored further on the twin longform improvisations comprising the entire B-side. Here, with only the 2-track rhythm tapes used at live Herbcraft performances available, LaJoie laid down new guitar, percussion, and vocal takes in the style of those solo and duo Herbcraft shows of the era to complete the picture. "Docet Up" drifts through light space-funk cloud cover, kosmische and earthy at once, while the closing "Last Words" drives a simple, swinging, handclap-led beat behind chugging half-step chords and harmonized bumblebee guitar leads, culminating in a towering psychedelic group chant.

credits

released May 22, 2020

Music and lyrics by Matt LaJoie. Written, performed, produced, and mixed by ML.

1-4: 4-track cassette demos recorded Winter 2013 at Highland Ranch (Windham, ME). Vocals on "Trash Heap" and "Below Your Mind" completed March 2020 at Green Lodge (Brunswick, ME).
5: 4-track cassette (with multiple 2-track bounces for overdubs) recorded Fall 2012-Winter 2013 at Highland Ranch. Mixed to digital Spring 2013; remastered March 2020.
6-7: 2-track rhythm cassettes recorded 2012-2013 at Clifton Ranch (Portland, ME) and Highland Ranch, utilized as backing tracks for live solo and duo Herbcraft performances 2012-2015. Additional percussion, guitars, and vocals recorded March 2020 at Green Lodge.

Cover art illustration by Ash Brooks.

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Flower Room Portland, Maine

Exploration & discoveries in improvisation & harmonization ☄ Tonal cosmology, virtual rurality, and hymns to the cosmos and the natural world, to heal and inspire a more harmonious You-We-All ☤ Welcome

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