If you're excited that San Antonio's the Grasshopper Lies Heavy just released new material, thank guitarist James Woodard's recent computer crash.
Woodard managed to salvage recordings from the fried PC's drives, but the incident scared him into releasing the rescued songs via a series of limited edition cassettes, the first of which dropped for preorder Friday.
The new release, available via Bandcamp, features a pair of 20-plus-minute tracks that veer into Tangerine Dream soundscape territory, steering clear of the skull-crushing heroics of the band's live shows. While the ride includes some heavier moments, it's largely introspective, melancholy and in line with Grasshopper's soundtrack work.
"Everything we see is an illusion," Grasshopper writes on the Bandcamp page for its new release. "We are made of sadness, like stardust but darker than black."
Expect more output over the course of the year. Next up is likely to be a three-cassette box set of an ambient live set Woodard performed at a Louisiana museum a couple of years ago.
"Dreading mixing that one," he said.
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San Antonio experimental metal band Grasshopper Lies Heavy drops new ambient release
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