House Of Low Culture - Edward's Lament!

On the previous Giant post, I made some mention of Isis' trajectory into hideous post-metal. I don't wanna be unfair to the guys - they were an incredibly important band both for the 2000s experimental metal and for my own formative years of musical taste. Their music up till Oceanic (and Panopticon to a lesser extent) is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. It's just that their choice to remove the sludge parts and to become a Tool-cum-post-rock thing led to mediocrity. I kind of suspect that the people who pushed them more into that direction were bassist Jeff Caxide, drummer Aaron Harris and guitar/keyboard player Clifford Meyer. I'm saying this as they later released that hideous Palms album with the singer of Deftones, which is very similar to latter-day Isis. Aaron Turner on the other hand continued releasing good music outside Isis, with Old Man Gloom, Split Cranium and Mamiffer (I haven't paid too much attention to Sumac, tbh). One of his best ventures, though, which was contemporaneous with the good times of Isis was House Of Low Culture, a solo drone/ambient project, which started out as a riff heavy Sunn O))) style-thing, but on this album he focused on electroacoustic compositions, robotic drones, guitar soundscapes that with a full band they would have definitely been included in the early OMG and Isis records, and spectral atmospheres. It's a decent companion to the Lotus Eaters project Turner maintained at that time with Stephen O' Malley and James Plotkin. 2003 cd on Neurot.

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Lotus Eaters - Wurmwulv

The second and last full-length (fourth release overall) of Lotus finds continuing their electro-acoustic drone improv experiments with a slightly noisier touch I'd say and a darker, more desolate feeling that is also similar to the Aethenor project O'Malley had started during that period. 2007 cd on Troubleman Unlimited.

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PS. There's another Lotus Eater release entitled Alienist On A Pale Horse. Opium Hum blog has uploaded it, so you can't find it there.

Lotus Eaters - Mind Control For Infants

First full-length for Lotus Eaters, and one of the very first drone/experimental albums I've ever heard. First two tracks focus on beautiful electro-acoustic guitar-based ambient sounds, while the following four tracks go further into more abstract/ musique concrete territory with found sounds, e-bows and some threatening bass sounds. The final track's drone static is just a liberating, glorious piece and I think that there's an underlying narrative approach through phases of sleeping here, or at least that's how I always perceived this album. A true masterpiece-if anyone could share the purported expanded lp version on Taiga Records I'd be more than grateful. 2002 cd on Neurot Recordings.

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Lotus Eaters - Lotus Eaters 7"

Lotus Eaters is a sadly now defunct project consisting of three of my high-school musical heroes, James Plotkin, Aaron Turner, and Stephen O' Malley. However, much to the consternation of most people who expected a mind-blowing sludge/doom monster, in this project they played immensely beautiful and dreamy drone/electro-acoustic improv music. There is excellent musicianship and production here, featuring both acoustic instruments like guitar and accordion and made sounds akin to a quiet form of musique concrete, and the whole thing revolves around a gorgeous acoustic guitar melody. More than highly recommended. 2002 7" on Drone Records.

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