Bugskull – Hidden Mountain – LP

Track Listing

1. Old Town 02:52
2. Hidden Mountain 07:42
3. The Lights 05:26
4. Wolves 04:00
5. Early Winter, Hoping For An Early Spring 06:18
6. Lost Cause 04:10
7. To Be The Head And Not The Tail 07:20

Notes

Bugskull, the solo project and sometimes band of Austin, Texas’ Sean Byrne, returns with this stark and airy album of deeply personal songs born during the recent collapse of his marriage. It is a subdued and powerful album that I will not cheapen with anymore one sheet speak. It’s honest music. We are honoured to work with Sean again with his first new music in years, and happy to partner with our friends at Shrimper (who are releasing the cassette) and Almost Halloween Time (who are doing the limited vinyl). What else? There’s a fantastic cover of Beck’s Lost Cause. Hey, we’re all still alive!

Album notes below from Sean Byrne…
“After Bugskull & The Big White Cloud, I returned to college to pursue a degree in Special Education, and due to the limits of time and energy, took a break from creating or performing music. I graduated in 2003, the year my first son was born. My second son was born in 2006, the year I moved to Austin, TX.
During my time in Texas, I began to explore the folk/song-writer/country/Americana traditions found here. With two young children I had found that I could not spend hours tinkering in my studio, but that I could catch a few occasional moments playing my acoustic guitar on the couch as my children ran around me. By 2009, my marriage was seriously unraveling. It was during this year that I wrote the songs for Hidden Mountain. The title was created by my son as the name for our band. The image of something looming unseen in the background resonated with me for obvious reasons, and so I borrowed it from him. My goal in writing the songs for this album was to be completely honest and open about the feelings I was having about life at that time. And so I let the dark shine through. The issues with the relationship mirrored my sense of alienation within life, and the songs explore this, either individually or combined within the same song. As they songs emerged, I started reading the apocrypha and other myths, because I wanted the tone and form of the lyrics to reflect an ancient/timeless quality, in a sense to put distance between the words and ideas.

September 2009, Bugskull the band reunited to perform at the PICA Time-Based Arts festival, and an album which had been completed in 2001, Communication was released on Digitalis Recordings.
Spring of 2010 I performed at the KRAAK festival in Belgium, as well as other dates in Belgium and Germany. My friend Aaron Day (SONE) had invited me to record in his studio in Berlin, and for five days at the end of the trip I laid down the guitar and vocals. Aaron then began to work on his own, adding all additional parts, in a way both complementary and sympathetic, accompanying the songs without obscuring them.”

released January 18, 2012

Acoustic Guitar & Vocals: Sean Byrne
Electric Guitar, Synthesizer, Trumpet, & Processing: Aaron Day
Recorded by Aaron Day in Berlin, Spring – Fall 2010
Mastered by Kassian Troyer
All songs by Sean Byrne except Lost Cause written by Beck Hansen