STAG HARE

Spirit Canoes (2011)

It's time to open up the gates on an artist who, in certain ways, inspired the creation of Obstacle Illusion. We've received so much good energy from his music that it's time to pass back some vibes. After all, he recently made all his music free to download, and we'd like to point as many people as we can towards it.

"In Utah there are such large flat expanses surrounded by these mountains. I have spent a lot of time riding in a car watching out the windows as these landscapes roll past. I think everything I love to create is in these landscapes, texture, story, time, vast slow changes......natural shapes, you know?" - Stag Hare, in an interview with foxy digitalis.

It's something you hear straight away in all of Stag Hare's music;  the geological and ecological progression of time, the ground-swell of radiating guitar drones, almost raga-like in their languor and meditative drift, and the way all the sounds together feel as if they are being inhaled and exhaled rather than played. Vocals play out like mantras for concentrating the mind, and the occasional upsurge of rattling bells and chimes feels like an invocation or ceremonial welcoming for spirits, echoing vibes and other unknown energies to pass through, swirl around and generally synchronise with you wherever you are. 

Black Medicine Music (2008)

Black Medicine Music (2008) is exactly that; sound-based medicine for the whole being. The album art reveals some of the alchemic ingredients at work; two hands give us a human factor, but it's grounded in the material substrate of nature - there is no separation, but instead, we see nature shining through two sheer human paws. The rainbow-filled vessel feels like an offering, but also a source of nourishment. Stag Hare's music is like a warming cup of yerba mate, keeping us ever alert and aware of the magic inherent in all our surrounds.

On 'Holy Quinn' it feels like waking up, but by the end we've moved from sweet morning tranquility to an excitable, playful rain dance reminiscent of the flute-charmer intro to Herbie Hancock's Watermelon Man. Energetically speaking, 'Crystal Dust Dream' takes us even further, perhaps on eagle-back soaring through mountain chasms and redwood forests. The harmonica calls down rain and triumphant thunder and gives life to the land, while solar-currents run through the guitar strings and drench the listener in simmering layers of chest-soothing drone. The percussive elements throughout all of Stag Hare's music are essential; the rhythms are deceptively simple, always hypnotic and feel as if they're tuned to the rhythm of hiking footsteps or the migration of reindeer.

Ahspen (2007)

While we've been focusing on Black Medicine Music (perhaps because it was his first release to ever find us), every Stag Hare release is equal. If every song was collated onto a single album they would still make perfect sense. They grasp with similar ideas, explore similar territories, and evoke that same sense of peacefulness, joy, radiant energy and calm ease which has made Stag Hare, for us, an essential beginning, set and setting to all our inner explorations, backyard gatherings and outer journeys across the various nooks and vistas of the natural world. 

JOGGING HOUSE - LONGINGS (2012)

Icy uplift and drift, crystalline beats, serene and yet energised; for long journeys over vast landscapes or smoke-heavy dancefloors at 3am. ♥ it.

BEWILDER BEAST - RUNNING (2012)

Cloudburst; sunlight leaking through humid fields of tropic rain; the atmosphere dense with sweat; human breathing, human movement; a coral atoll visible not far away, sand between the toes, waves rolling in up to the knees, bass heavy in the chest and rattling nearby palm trees; the high is sweet and real, the vibes pure.

If everyone in the world all of a sudden decided that it would be MORE FUN to just get along, what would take place?

gimme Bewilder Beast, a soundsystem, the beach, sunset communions…

It's a question I ask my kids when I teach. Then: what if these things we envisioned just went ahead anyway? Maybe we could bring about little bursts of paradise by working backwards? Our world is simply the realtime arrival of ideas from human minds. When it comes to the arrangement of human society, all it takes is an agreement to play by an idea.

'Push'd Out' thrums and kicks with hi-energy synth - it's the arrival of joyful relief setting in with a sincere recognition of our origins; that we are as much skin and bone as we are anger and joy, as much dust and ash as human son or daughter, and as much bird and mammal as we are anything ever fired up into life beneath the offering sun. 

This whole album, easily one of my favorites from 2012, just oozes with joy. Another feeling sets in - it may not be what inspired the music, but it's what the music inspires in me, and it's the simple fact that all people, no matter where you look, want nothing more in this world than to be happy. It's the great equaliser. Try just twenty minutes alone with this idea, eyes closed, with Bewilder Beast for company, and wonder... 

To me, it seems our only problem is that we differ in our ideas as to how to bring about this happiness. All strife begins here. For me, the question of all ages is this: Can we learn to play by an idea which includes everyone as a player in an infinitely changing, ever-dissolving and ever re-forming cycle?