Hail - Hello Debris (Mega Blowout Sale)
SKU
ReR Hail 3
"Susanne Lewis and Bob Drake met in 1980 at a Denver recording studio where Bob was working as an engineer. They immediately discovered a musical kinship and have continued to play and record in various projects since, notably Hail, but also Denver legends Thinking Plague and 5UUs.
Their first LP (Venus Handcuffs, 1986) was recorded in an abandoned yoghurt factory, the second (Gypsy cat and Gypsy Bird, 1983) followed soon after. At about this time Bob got a job as a sound-effects engineer for a horror film company and Hail was able to use the studio at night. Suzanne still has vivid memories of singing to a case of gory monster heads and body parts.
In 1989, Susanne moved to New York City but Hail continued to work long distance, releasing Turn of the Screw in 1991 - their first for ReR. Soon after, Hail toured Europe, adding Chris Cutler on drums and Bill Gilonis on second guitar to make up the numbers (two people can only do so much alone on stage).
Back in the USA, Bob moved to Los Angeles to work in a series of major studios, which is where, in 1993, again in dead time, Hail recorded their 3rd album Kirk, this time with Dave Kerman rather than Bob playing most of the drum parts. A few months later Bob moved to the south of France, co-founding a studio there, where he still lives and works, while Susanne went back to NY, working at MOMA while completing a degree in classical music composition.
Both continued to work apace, recording and releasing a stack of records on their own, before reconvening Hail in 2003 to record Hello Debris in France, made in several bursts between 2004-6."
"After a break of almost 15 years Susanne Lewis and Bob Drake have reconvened their classic partnership. In the meantime rock and post rock has mainly moved away from the song and its classic shapes, leaving commercial pop to straighten them out and endlessly repeat the same tropes and tricks. Hail is rare amongst bands in its adherence to the notion that what makes a song interesting is the application of imagination and skill to its arrangement, performance and recording. The plan is not to drag songs away into other domains by grafting on bits of jazz, classical or electronic vocabulary, but to make them more what they are; to concentrate and distill them. Susanne Lewis's voice is extremely personal, never generic, Bob Drake's signature rhythm section work always exemplary. The songs are real rather than clever, and the production constantly invents contrapuntal detail and colour. This is a virtuosic album that never shows off. For those who wish there were more good songs on the experimental side of transfigured pop."-Chris Cutler
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