Ari Rosenschein, the man behind STAHV, has had a busy year. The first STAHV album came out (which was reviewed here by yours truly), and he’s had a book released to a not insignificant amount of acclaim. Well, that streak of activity continues with the release of this new single, ‘All-Seeing I’, which we here at Echoes and Dust are happy to present to the world.
I wrote that STAHV’s debut album “occupies a neat little niche between post-rock, desert rock, and an Ennio Morricone soundtrack,” which more or less still holds true on this outing. However, this song seems less concerned with overall atmosphere than it is in showing off some really meticulous construction. Excellent harmonies and melodic evolution propel the 7-minute track ever forward. At the end of it, you feel like a good friend just left after a night of mirth.
You’re never bored, in other words. Part of that is because Rosenschein is so fluent with the work of the masters. Where the title of the final track of STAHV’s self-titled last year, ‘Grüver’, gestured towards krautrock, we see that influence rise very much to the top here. Importantly, it’s not the Kraftwerk/motoric strain, which, in recent years, has been done to death, but the heady stylings of Ash Ra Tempel, a controlled groove spiraling off into previously unknown soundscapes. Perhaps unexpectedly, The Wall-era Pink Floyd is extremely present, especially in the opening melodic salvo and a passage around the 4:00 mark. To cap it all off, it starts with a weird dub sound effect, which sounds lifted directly from one of Al Cisneros’ Om dubplates.
It’s a psychedelic mix, one that could easily have spun out of control, but Rosenschein keeps a steady hand on the wheel. While I made plenty of comparisons to Dylan Carlson in the first review, it seems like we’ve driven through the ghost town where he set up shop. Now we’re stuck in a time machine listening to mutant AOR from the retro-future.
Listen to it all here and stay tuned for more information about the release of the upcoming EP The Sundowner:
