Trost, Heather

Trost, Heather

Desert Flowers

Ba Da Bing!

As Heather Trost put together her new album Desert Flowers, she imagined herself sitting out on the mesa amidst the arid climate and sand. Even with such little water to survive, wildflowers bloom. This vision is an embellishment of Trost’s Albuquerque surroundings, an intersection of rural splendor and emptiness. She remains focused on those purple, yellow and orange flowers with faces beaming up to the sky, thriving on very little. “How does a flower grow in the desert?” she sings. Desert Flowers postulates the potential for new life. Using the messages from the unconscious during sleep, the record ultimately conceives a bridge to the world beyond one’s own. Written and recorded in her home studio, Trost began with harmonic frameworks, allowing the melodies to naturally take root. Introductory track “Frog And Toad Are Friends”—yes, named after the book—is like a surf song from a sci-fi movie. Trost sees it as a mindwipe, “a playful kind of romp to help shake off the cobwebs and get the bones moving.” The album ripens as it progresses, and “Sandcastles” best embodies the spirit of the record. Lush strings and bass are complimented by a slow guitar groove, as Trost soulfully fantasizes about Earth’s regeneration. “In time, the bullets and tanks, and all of humanity’s violent creations will melt back into mountains and the ocean,” she says. Integral to the record’s creation was Trost’s cohort in A Hawk & A Hacksaw and record label Living Music Duplication, Jeremy Barnes. “This album wouldn’t sound the...

Trost, Heather

Petrichor

Third Man

***Third Man Records is chuffed to present to you the New Mexico-based artist Heather Trost’s second or third solo full-length. Petrichor is fresh, unique, and really fucking good. Sonically, this modern psychedelic pop music is as experimental as it is accessible. Petrichor was recorded between 2018 and 2019 by Heather Trost and her husband Jeremy Barnes at their home studio. The two are community activists, urban gardeners, and full-time musicians. Trost has an impressive body of work, notably in collaboration with husband Barnes (Neutral Milk Hotel) on their own record label Living Music Dupli-Cation, and their dazzling and uncategorizable Eastern European folk-influenced band A Hawk And A Hacksaw, where she sings and plays violin, autoharp, keyboards, and other instruments. These seven lush, beautiful songs defy easy categorization, gleefully mixing elements from multiple genres--but it’s never to impress you or show off. You might not even notice how smart the record is until a fifth listen, a testament to how much work was put into the futuristic and shimmering record. We all can have a hard time holding on to a shred of hope. With Trost’s Petrichor, we have a record that sounds like the soundtrack to what might come next, on the off chance that what comes next really doesn’t suck.

Trost, Heather

Agistri

L.M. Dupli-cation

Heather Trost is best known for her work composing and performing as one half of A Hawk And A Hacksaw. She has also played with Neutral Milk Hotel, Beirut, Josephine Foster, and most recently Thor Harris of Swans. She has arranged and performed with the BBC Concert Orchestra, as well as conductor Andre De Ridder and his Stargaze Orchestra, and toured throughout the world. In 2014 she released her first solo project, a 7-inch on Ba Da Bing Records, followed in 2015 by Ourobouros, a limited edition cassette of expansive electronic ambient compositions influenced by Basil Kirchin, Terry Riley and Angelo Badalamenti on Cimiotti Recordings. These two projects propelled a full length album: named after a Greek Island, Agistri is a song cycle of freely formed pop songs touching upon soul, samba, and pop music of the ’60s and ’70s, with a subtle shade of psychedelia. Ambient and melancholic sounds interweave with hammond organs and ’70s Italian synthesizers, reflecting the desert landscapes of New Mexico, and the sparse shrubbery and turquoise water of the Aegean sea and its islands. Bolstered by contributions from Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeremy Barnes on drums and bass, Deerhoof’s John Dieterich on guitar, and Drake Hardin and Rosie Hutchinson of cult New Mexico band Mammal Eggs, Trost’s talents as a songwriter and arranger explode on this wonderful, often surreal album.

Trost, Heather

Ouroboros

L.M. Dupli-cation / Cimiotti

Ouroboros was first imagined in the fall of 2014. Inspiration for the sounds include driving in the mountains during a rainstorm, the Tarot, infinite reflections in mirrors, dreamlife, cats and dogs, bees, the natural world, the martyr Santa Barbara, and introspection.