HELIUM HORSE FLY – Hollowed ( Dipole Experiment Records) – Right now midway through Monochromo, midway through this this massive eleven minute epic that’s somewhere between the best bits of Kayo Dot and Extra Life, actually there’s hugh bits of the hugeness of Huge Baby, actually there’s lot here that compares with those gloriously huge early days of Huge Baby in the most positive of ways (huge ways), that and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and the large expanse of Meshuggah and the charm of Bjork and the jagged edges of Stravinsky, well actually this feels massive. Helium Horse Fly’s latest album, Hollowed,  is even bigger than the last one, this is dark, this is epic, this is brilliant – this is so full of colour, dark colours, warmth in the darkness, this is pushing the envelope in terms of big (in terms of Huge)  this is properly progressive, and she voices it so well, so much personality, who is she? Do I really want to know who she is?  This is dark in so many beautiful rich ways, fire fought with fire, it would be easy to name drop the darker compositions of Cardiacs or make reference to the rush of Camp Blackfoot when Helium Horse Fly start to gallop, but then there are parts that are beautifully still and whispered and long passages of music that hardly moves. guitars almost not touched, the light brush of sound, the whispered voice.  All fourteen minutes of In A Deathless Spell are just exquisite.

Marie Billy, Helium Horse Fly

Yes indeed, the first truly great album of the year has landed and yes, the artwork on the front cover will tell you lots about the sound they make, about the “venomous noise” they talk of themselves, the art is by David McCraven, he deserves a mention. This is brilliant, the “progressive baroque hardcore” crash of it all, and no, you can’t really put a label on it or say it really sounds like anyone or anything else (well maybe the first days of Huge Baby when they really did burn their hands on candles and he yelled from behind the the PA stack rather than take to the stage). The whole album is wonderfully tense, all six epic tracks are brooding, it needs to be loud, it needs to wrap itself around you, you need to let it,  let that quietly breathing surround you, that cathartic warmth.  Almost sonically violent, always pushing at you, beautiful. They’re from Liège, Belgium, she sings in English, her name is Marie Billy , they’re brooding, the sound is massive, there’s four of them, they’re loaded with mystery, with darkness, more than a hint of menace, with a less is more sense of drama. Every moment is considered, every note vital, every piece as good as the last one, nothing excessive, every moment lean, every moment needed, maximalist minimalism. So many rich colours here, dark colours, warm rich colours, surreal, a grotesque universe, dramatic. The calm is indeed deceptive, the madness latent. contemporary classical performance, really truly progressive. Hey look, you have their bandcamp page there so you really don’t need our words, you have your own ears, music reviews are so last century. (sw)

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HELIUM HORSE FLY are

Marie Billy: vocals/keyboards
Stéphane Dupont: guitar/vocals/keyboards
Dimitri Iannello: bass
Gil Chevigné: drums

Meanwhile, if you missed The Other Rock Show last weekend, or you haven’t heard the show yet then here you are, last Sunday’s show went like this…

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Helium Horse Fly

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