The Wind Harp – Songs From the Hill (United Artists, 1972)

Now here’s a pretty unusual record that has come to my attention recently. Issued in 1972 as a double LP set, ‘Sounds From The Hill’ purports to represent the sounds produced by a gigantic ‘wind harp’ erected on some desolate hilltop by a hippy commune in Northern California, as illustrated by the rather beguiling and old fashioned (even for 1972) cover photograph reproduced above.

Now, given that this was released by a major label, presumably to take an early bite out of the post-hippy ‘new age’ market, you’d be forgiven for suspecting it might all just sound like a bunch of bloody wind-chimes or something. And who knows, perhaps such mellow meanderings were even what the harp’s creators were aiming for. But thankfully Mother Nature had other ideas, and ‘Songs From The Hill’ is actually a pretty remarkable document of dense, organic womb-drone, exhibiting the kind of chilling distance and remorseless tonal purity that music created by human hands is rarely able to replicate, however hard contemporary noise/ambient artistes might strive for it.

It is undoubtedly a spiritual sound, just not in a way that I suspect either the record company nor the hippies were anticipating. Certainly anyone sticking this on to accompany a meditation session or drug trip would get more than they bargained for; bummers, paranoia, bloody noses; all are possibilities. For however much we may be taught to view nature, and atmospheric conditions / weather systems in particular, as an entirely beautiful, harmonious system through which we can gain understanding of ourselves via an impression of dissolution within it’s patterns, it swiftly becomes clear upon dropping the needle that the sounds emerging from this here Wind Harp were REALLY FUCKING MALEVOLENT.

Most of the eleven tracks, arranged thematically according to seasons and the elements, begin with tones suggestive of the unsettling amplified silences developed by Alan Splet and David Lynch for use in the latter’s films. Over this float warped, low-end theremin type sounds and variations on the kind of ‘futuristic engine hum’ tones rendered ubiquitous by a thousand b-movie flying saucer / laboratory scenes, all darkened and elongated for a particularly woozy, nightmarish quality. Before long, tension seems to build, and a kind of full-spectrum aural sandpaper begins to accumulate, ebbing and flowing with the gusts of the winds, occasionally starting to resemble some creepy, organic Merzbow nastiness.

This is not the sound of the gentle, refreshing wind that weaves through orange groves on a lazy afternoon and blows through the hair of steadfast labourers and sullen hippie girls, that’s for sure. What’s tinkling the ivories here is the kind of wind that spreads bush fires, that blows through ribcages in Death Valley. Wind that freaks out timid kids who leave the windows open at night, that drags intrepid sailors toward their watery doom and…. well you’re connected to the same collective unconscious as I ma, you dig up the imagery to finish off this paragraph.

The Harp itself must have been quite a piece of workmanship to produce this variety of sinister sound, assuming the recordings presented here are honest representations of the wind doing it’s thing amid what looks to be a apparatus of metal strings and wooden sheets(?). I suppose it’s possible that someone might have been on hand to alter the arrangements of the harp on the fly to create variations in tone, although the singularly relentless quality of the drones presented here would tend to suggest otherwise. On the other hand though, it does seem that a degree of post-production has been applied to these recordings; occasionally we hear oddly incongruous sounds such as tolling bells and rustling grass which put me in mind of the kind of stuff that has a tendency to turn up on other, more dubious commercial ‘ambient’ records. It certainly seems likely that the more ‘effective’ (by whose criteria god only knows) sections of the master recordings have been blended and segued together, both to fit the record’s spurious seasons / elements track listing, and also perhaps to avoid the total monotony of listening to the wind blowing in the same direction at the same speed for hours on end.

Regardless of questions of authenticity though, The Wind Harp certainly makes for a hell of a listen, and comes recommended should you be feeling a little too comfortable in your life, and in need of a glimpse of the blind, chaotic and ultimately destructive natural forces at the mercy of whose temporary placidity we erect our fragile civilisations. It would also be just the ticket for soundtracking eerie, low budget horror movies and invoking lesser Cthulhoid deities. Or so I would imagine.

Mp3 > The Wind Harp – Cycle One: Seasons: Winterwhite

Labels: album reviews, drone, The Wind Harp