High Wolf

High Wolf

Kairos: Chronos

Not Not Fun

French globe-tourist High Wolf has hand-rolled his way up Mount Fuji, trainspotted every corner of Europe, hitch-hiked across America and Australia, chugged Ganges water, and crouched on all manner of smoke-stained prayer rug since first looping a bongo back in ’09. His apprenticeship in the House of Wah nearly complete, he’s hinted at a potentially seismic shift in the High Wolf third eye doctrine lurking in the near future; perhaps his Away Team exfoliation moment is nigh. Fortunately, Not Not Fun has coaxed the astral jungle jah concoctions of Kairos: Chronos out from the ether, because this LP is the summation of his entire half-decade Amazon Cosmos quest.  All the tenets of the High Wolf mythology are in place: humid hand-percussion heat-spells, coiling snake-charmer fuzz-guitar stacked six deep, sunlit synth textures, dubby bass-lines thumping through grass amps, ceremonial voodoo babble, etc. From the hidden temple hymn “Kulti” to the thirteen-minute self-beheading solar eclipse shakedown, “Alvarado,” the record represents rarified proof of The Wolf on High. On tour now in every country on Earth.

High Wolf

Atlas Nation

Holy Mountain

France’s High Wolf possesses a natural-born ability to produce tones most conducive to inducing transcendental states. Prolific without wearing out his welcome, the guitarist and effects box manipulator sets loose fervid streams of fever-dream drones. High Wolf’s tracks sound as if they’ve been sluicing since the beginning of time, siphoned for teasingly brief absorption before they shimmer off to the vanishing point. This elite droneur is one of the few musicians who could title a 7-inch A Guide to Healing without it coming off as an ironic gesture or a laughable boast. (Cop one and try not to get a spring in your chakras.) Atlas Nation—recorded in 2010 after a long trip to India and Nepal—deepens High Wolf’s penetration into the mystic. It evokes an uneasy peace with a new breed of tribal psychedelia shorn of all hokey signifiers. “Fuji Descent” starts the album with what could be a languid, paradisiacal soundtrack to a scrapped Alejandro Jodorowsky film. “The Dawn of Man” is a stark, stoned processional burrowing into malarial climes where guitars squawk in ominous tongues while congas cave in chests and clear brush with a vengeance. “Raagini” magnifies and psychedelicizes Rapoon’s mantric, ritualistic hand-drum patter and tropical-forest drones while hinting at Don Cherry’s jazz-raga peregrinations. High Wolf claims that “Haiti” was “recorded in a couple of hours [on] the day of the big earthquake in Haiti, so it’s the darkest / saddest High Wolf track ever.” It’s a fittingly miasmic, climactic threnody. Think of Atlas Nation as a...

High Wolf

Etoile 3030

Not Not Fun

Lupine looper and general world-lurker High Wolf has traversed a range of musical micro-terrains over the past half-year (the Shangri L.A. CD, the Untitled Cassette cs, etc) and with an upcoming Holy Mountain full-length on the horizon the timing of his inaugural stateside tour this Feb/March seems extra apt. To celebrate/support the trek we offer up Étoile 3030, a subtle six song zoner-cruise through pulsing gaseous clouds, brainwashed echo percussion, free hypno-fuzz riffing, and wobbly alien bass throbs. Tracks like “Dream Is Good” and “Studio 3” find HW in particularly long-form headspaces, flatlining into innerspace, curlicues of wah burning off like solar flares, trancing with the stars. Live, his crouch-core craft comes costumed in weirdo ritual drama masks and illusionist cloaks so def bear witness if the chance presents itself.

High Wolf

Animal Totem

Not Not Fun

High Wolf

Ascension

Not Not Fun

***“Pyramidal meditationist HIGH WOLF has been highly active since last summer’s Animal Totem tape dropped on NNF: he’s released three full-length CDRs, started his own record label (Winged Sun), begun a mail-collab with Astral Social Club (as Iibiis Rooge), embarked on two UK/Euro tours (one with heavyweights Gnod), plus trekked out on a month-long solo journey through India to collect field recordings and get deep. Whoa! Makes you feel lazy right? Well actually that’s not all, as he also spent a few months somewhere in there recording, mixing, and re-recording the five multifaceted ethno-flux odysseys that comprise Ascension, his debut vinyl full-length. Utilizing his usual toolbag of looped tablas, fuzz guitar leads, chiming white light guitar, synth swells, and cloud-climbing electronics, the album safaris through a host of ecstatic ritual landscapes with more focus and magic than any other High Wolf hunt to date. A beautiful album for dissolving, dreaming, dancing (in a certain way). Been spinning this one weekly, share the flight. Black vinyl LPs mastered by PETE SWANSON and housed in jackets with artwork by Kaugummi Magazine captain BARTOLOME SANSON.”—NNF. Edition of 400.