Hochenkeit - I love you , 1999

Hochenkeit from Portland, OR, has developed a unique niche with its assimilation of Krautrock, Asian ethnic music, and psychedelic free form. The group does not merely crank out rock music with ethnic music as an embellishment, nor is it neo-traditionalist by trying to resurrect the sound of a culture. Perhaps the closest comparison might be Krautrock legend Can's Ethnological forgery series, another attempt to create a new world of music unconstrained by the rules and where anything and everything is thrown into the pot. Hochenkeit formed in 1997 soon after the demise of the Irving Klaw Trio as Jeff Fuccillo, Jason Funk, and Ryan Poulos of that group decided to shift musical direction from IKT's Captain Beefheart-styled avant rock. Poulos, who had previously lived in Germany, came up with group's name erroneously believing that the word was slang for reaching the highest state of inebriation possible. Poulos was in the band only long enough to name them, so Fuccillo and Funk soon recruited Matthew Arnold, John Vasallo, and Josh Hanson, and they were soon gigging live. Funk, Fuccillo, and especially Vasallo have all traveled to various parts of Asia to find new instruments and explore other music cultures. By the next year and with help from Faust guitarist Steve Lobdell as well as Mike Lastra from Smegma, they started work on their first CD, I Love You, and in May 1999 the album was released on Road Cone. Lobdell occasionally showed up to perform live with Hochenkeit, whereas Hanson had been ousted before the CD came out, though he does appear on I Love You. A second album, Omu4h 4aholab/400 Boys, recorded in 1999 and 2000, came out in November 2000 and was also engineered by Lobdell and on the Road Cone label. Hochenkeit often went on hiatus, sometimes for weeks or even months, when any of the bandmembers were out of town, sometimes on trips to Asia to pick up new instruments and experience new cultures, or in late 1999, when Fuccillo temporarily moved to Burlington, VT.

~ Rolf Semprebon, All Music Guide

This is one of those new bands that have elements which derive from older scenes, (krautrock, acid folk), but which are, with another foot calmly stepping towards to the new, stimulating modern area of well produced sounds, a scene I will promote when a group is able to use its creativity in it, and this group does. The first track, "Ritual Nacirema" (-with acoustic guitars, one instrument I think will be the cumbus, a Turkish instrument, that sounds something like a sitar-banjo or something, but it could be a kind of "oddly prepared" guitar too, and harmonium mostly-) starts off with more or less 'stoner' or stoned Middle eastern mood with a completely acoustic droning sound, with a repetitive pattern, reminding me vaguely of a raga. The third track is more instrumentally worked out with a beautiful (well recorded) "kitchen" middle eastern improvisation, titled "Pios Bori". The track in between, with a fitting slowly evolving vibe, has something of an adventurous, but still very minimal nature. "Smoking the astronaut" starts out in a relaxed mode, but focusses more energy ( by adding drums, and something which sounds like an amplified violin, with mostly (spacey) electronic effects) to a more fantastic psych form, which slowly goes over the top. "Frightning diaspora, drifting cranes" is mixed in a more modern fashion, with semi-acoustic psych effects, harmonium, original melodic percussion, oddly tuned guitar playing with an eastern/middle eastern effect, resulting in a beautiful new form of (minimal and moody) psychedelica ? or whatever this may be, creating a semi-electronic effect, nicely produced withbasically still acoustic elements. "Fuzzy Rumble Face" also shows no limitations in expressions. It's a short experimental track with loop-like semi-distorted (semi-acoustic?) sounds which actually sounds nice. The CD closes like it started off, with two very middle eastern semi-raga tunes, like bedroom improvisations, entitled "I love you" and "Domestic Peace" (with some additional odd "singing" or humming). Last track, "A Roomful of Sun" is a landscape-sound painting, drone like, as a mixture of analog electronics, harmonium and acoustic textures (with again, the strangely tuned guitar). In its sometimes minimal expression Hochenkeit succeed completely in convincing me, (much more than most groups with such aproach do) of every detail.(http://psychedelicfolk.homestead.com/acidfolkreview3.html)