Honey Ride Me A Goat or maybe in terms of the first taste, Honey Ride Me A Gong? Honey Ride Me A Goat have finally announced the release of their long awaited new album…

They are a band we’ve championed on these pages again and again over the last couple of decades (as well as via our radio waves). I can’t remember where we first ran across the rather excellent band from Kent, probably in some North London backroom somewhere. Let’s let Cuneiform Records tell their story…

“We first ran across this excellent English brutal-prog styled outfit when they collaborated with Hugh Hopper in 2007” said yer man from vital US label Cuneiform, “Then, just a bit after, they released a split vinyl LP with Upsilon Acrux! Upsilon Acrux? Hugh Hopper? That’s some pretty heavy hitting! So, we’re super happy to be able to work with HRMAG directly now on this new one, their first in some time.”

about

“At various times, it brings to mind everyone from DNA to Don Caballero, Molecules to Beefheart, Melt-Banana to Elliott Sharp. Combining complex rhythmic interplay with noisy textural scrapes, the trio rocks in the most abstract way, and has a brilliant way of transitioning from high-speed squawk to melodic passages that can be pretty in an off-kilter way.” – Dusted

“HRMAG were formed in the early 2000s by old School friends while attending Canterbury college with a shared love of Captain Beefheart, Black Sabbath, and Soft Machine. Early demos were recorded at Canterbury college and HRMAG began playing live around 2005, continuing to do so frequently up until hiatus in 2020. They released their self-titled EP in 2006 and went onto record a number of tapes and split vinyl releases over the next few years. Many of these recordings were eventually picked up and compiled in 2010’s ‘Udders’ by Australin label Lexicon Devil.

Recording in the studio next door to Hugh Hopper around this time, a session was arranged and the results ultimately released as Goat Hopper by Voiceprint in 2013, though the project was never fully realized due to Hugh’s untimely passing.

Several joint UK tours and a further split release with Upsilon Acrux followed, where the seeds were sown to one day collaborate with Patrick – the results of which are on this record.

HRMAG isn’t ‘math rock’ or a display of virtuosity and rarely leans on those familiar tropes. Their music shifts between tightly wound composition and free flowing rhythmic improvisation, likely in the same song, building and collapsing in calamitous cycles, sometimes tight, sometimes loose. They like to thrive on this tension between rigid forms and free exploration, usually favouring atonal riffing over melody. Often, parts aren’t explicitly notated, rather rhythmic frameworks shaped by repetition. It’s playful, absurd, and not taking itself too seriously.

This record moves slightly away from the band’s previous bludgeoning breakneck jazz-punk, and incorporates more direct song structures, opening space for improvisation and gives Patrick’s sax contributions a central, integrated role”