Halcyon High, a one-man band lost at space, sends off spindly electric guitar lines and whitecaps of white noise in a Spacemen 3-style shoegaze zone-out. To Be Infinite is a dense collection of spectral melodies, stuck somewhere between blissed-out indie rock rupture and trippy, seventies-sounding planetarium background music. Sole member Roger Anderson finds the perfect balance of drone and melody on these mostly home demo tracks, occasional dipping into audio samples and kaleidoscoping loops to flesh out his bare-bones guitar and feedback compositions.
“The Aftermath and the Damage Done” finds Anderson channeling Sigur Ros in a beautifully glacial landscape of ambling chimes and meandering guitar hum. The track channels a respectful chaos, barely held together by its sparse, but perfectly chosen moving parts. Bardo Pond cover, “Tommy Gun Angel” finds Anderson whisper-talking the curious demand, “Melt away like the snow,” while his multi-tracked guitars linger and evade, as if taking his advice and disintegrating with each collapsing moment.
The chill-out space-blues of album opener “Close Your Eyes, See the Light” orbits around Anderson’s fragile vocal approach, twisting delicate, looping chords from tremolo guitar and droning acoustics. The track eventually doubles up, splitting into a fierce feedback breakdown before burning itself out.
Before moving to Portland in late ’07, Anderson left his long-running online community resource for Bay Area post-rock and shoegaze bands, Cool Waves SF, to float indefinitely into the black space of the web. Hopefully, he’ll be able to establish a similar resource in his new digs as any scene would be lucky to have a leader capable of delivering a disc like Halcyon High’s To Be Infinite.
Favorite Track: “The Aftermath and the Damage Done”
