White Hills' second album for Thrill Jockey records is in part, based on corporate misgivings and an insipid quality of life in America. Here, the musicians generate space-rock, modern psychedlia and noise music to shape a rather punishing sequence of events. And from the noise or volume perspective, these gents would give vintage Black Sabbath a run for the money.
H-p1 is a fun listen, teeming with phased vocals and foreboding vistas. The artists project a thunderous soundscape, contrasted with streaming EFX and doomsday vocals. However, the compelling aspects of the album supersede the austere implications, which may or may not be intended as tongue-in-cheek.
In modern times, free-jazz and experimental rock aficionados are warming up to many bands of this ilk due to off-kilter mechanisms, serving as the antithesis to rigid or overproduced endeavors that signify additional paths previously traversed. Hence, this outfit's nervy demeanor conveys a sense of danger. For instance, White Hills merge ethereal imagery into the grand schema with electro-distorted church bells atop a harrowing undercurrent on the piece "Movement," where notions of judgment day come to fruition.
At times the band sparks remembrances of the British progressive space-rock outfit, Hawkwind. Intermittently framed on ostinato themes and mind-numbing motifs, the musicians soar to a cosmic wasteland while driving matters into submission during various passages. It's sort of like a cyclonic suction machine that fuses a high-octane aura with a highly-entertaining trek into forbidden musical dominions.
