THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Formed around the uber-talent of Chris Jude Watson (founder of Snakes Don’t Belong In Alaska), Black Holes Are Cannibals are the band to take his vision to its outermost limits.
BHAC are a collective with a varying lineup — each time they record, all the music is improvised as they let their collective and innate abilities guide them. What binds them are the touchstones of drone, minimalism and just plain heaviness that run through the music they create. Call them drone metal or psychedelic; it matters not, as the music created is an immersive, all-consuming and thought-provoking transcendental listening experience that awaits those brave enough to take the ride with BHAC.
Surfacer was recorded at First Avenue Studios in Newcastle by the band on a TASCAM DR40, and is the embodiment of pent-up emotions gathered and endured during lockdown as they zap every ounce of feeling and anguish into this recording. Surfacer is not an album for the faint of heart; its two epic tracks of transcendence will challenge and push you to lose yourself in the sonic experience as the vibrations of droning instruments and throat vocalisations weave together into mesmerizing waves of sonic texture.
Surfacer draws from bands like Neptunian Maximalism, Qujaku, Neurosis and the visual work of Andrei Tarkovsky, Kenneth Anger and Larisa Shepitko — which influence the energy and darker sounds of the music — while also taking cues from more traditional psychedelic sounds and experimental places like Taj Mahal Travellers, Suzuki Junzo, Pauline Oliveros, Vahvistusharha and Tōru Takemitsu aurally, along with the energy of occult works like Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain and Hilma Af Klint’s Alterpieces 1-3.
As Terence McKenna might have said, BHAC are best experienced when listened to in complete solitude in a dark room while you are doing nothing else. To experience this album to the fullest, you must not have any distractions. Just sit down, relax, plug in, and let this album take you up into outer space.”
