Rose, Haroula & Oliver Hill

Rose, Haroula & Oliver Hill

Cycles

Ba Da Bing!

The world of Cycles is supine and aquatic. Sounds echo within sounds, which encircle melodies like small creatures gathering. As both a record and a series of short films, Haroula Rose & Oliver Hill have created a friendly, multi-faceted planéte sauvage.  Written & recorded in one torrentially rainy week at home in Los Angeles, the music explores the acoustics of the tactile world - sounds coarse and smooth, heavy and light, the smell of wet terrain after a long drought, a long deep breath coming up from dark water to the surface. Cycles presents earthy, bubbling spaces which are womblike and nourishing - not surprisingly, Cycles was conceived and completed in tandem with the birth of their first child. Instruments were splayed on the rug and a set of creative constraints were put into place: no words, no drums, no guitars, yes dynamics, yes field recordings around the house, yes fades and slowly overlapping layers. And of course, bells. The result is a series of mercurial and cinematic scene changes - stepping through doors, popping out windows, crossing into and out of interior and exterior settings.   Haroula & Oliver bring together dovetailing artistic histories across media - as a filmmaker, Haroula’s feature directorial debut Once Upon a River went to over 40 festivals internationally taking home 19 awards, and her sophomore feature All Happy Families, starring Josh Radnor and executive produced by Michael Shannon, saw a theatrical release in AMCs last fall. Oliver wrote the score and original songs -...