Hammock on purevolume™

Ambient / Experimental / Indie

Raising Your VoiceTrying to Stop an Echo, the sophomore full-length release from Nashville, Tennessee-based duo Hammock, is vivid, cinematic listening music. These songs come in waves, cresting in bursts of slow-burn intensity and rolling slowly into moments of whisper-soft minimalism. At "Raising's" heart is Hammock's hallmark: thick curtains of cascading electric guitars that merge into pure expressions of hope, stillness, joy and loss. But these eighteen newest tracks, and the conviction with which Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson deliver them, take that signature approach to new heights. The thick swells of electric guitars in Hammocks previous work are here in full force, but are heard melding more often with words, acoustic instruments, and percussion. The sheer range of the music makes this unlike anything Byrd and Thompson have done to date. But at the center of all of these pieces, the common thread that pulls them all together, whether its songs like the driving title track, the spare, dark baritone guitar washes, or the fragile piano explorations, is a beautiful melody. Simply put, "Raising" captures some of Hammock's most musical moments yet.

"There are times when the need to create a thing begins to interrupt your life. And if you don't give in to it, everything else begins to suffer," says Marc Byrd. That need would eventually have a name: Hammock.

With no agenda, expectations, label, or even plans for a release, Byrd and Thompson began getting together periodically in 2004 to let the sounds inside of them find their way out into the open. After realizing that they had thirty pieces of music, and more importantly, after hearing the strong theme of an album, Byrd and Thompson chose the sixteen pieces that would become their self-released debut, 2005's "Kenotic". "Kenotic" managed to find acceptance among tastemakers and fans across many genres ranging from Indie Rock to Ambient and received wide critical acclaim. James Mason of the All Music Guide wrote, "Kenotic is in every way a contender for classic status in the Shoegazing genre" and that "Hammock continue their ascent to godhead status among the drone-rock underground." Byrd says, "We were always hopeful that because we didn't have any presuppositions about what the music should be, that people would listen in the same manner."

They were listening. Kenotic charted for over two months in the College Music Journal (CMJ) Radio 200 and made high profile appearances during NBCs 2006 Olympic Coverage and on NPRs All Songs Considered, Hearts of Space, Echoes and Musical Starstreams. A subsequent EP, Stranded Under Endless Sky, met with similar acclaim and was named by Echoes listeners as one of 2005s Top 25 releases alongside artists like Brian Eno, Sigur Ros, Album Leaf, Harold Budd, and Moby.

Ask Hammock about their musical influences and be prepared to get a list that's as long as a country mile. But there's one influence in particular that informs and defines their music: the Southern landscape. "My nickname in Arkansas was 'Marc Marc Marc' because I used so much delay on my guitar," Byrd says, laughing. "But this was just an attempt to capture what I felt and the beauty and space of the landscape." Thompson adds, "We were both born and raised in the wide-open, rural South. We were communicating spacenot undefined, but uniquely Southern spacemountains, stars, cropland, trees, endless sky and wide-open dirt roads." Byrd says, "The scenery of the South is idyllic and picturesque, but desolate at the same time. There are stretches everywhere that are nothing but miles of shacks and burned-out barns overrun with kudzu. So we were expressing the melancholy of the South as well."

It took a long time for all of these cultural influences and experiences to surface musically. "To be a lover of poetry, art and beauty growing up in the rural South, and to be comfortable with that, was hard," Thompson says. "You feel like a bit of an alien," Byrd adds. "And though we were constantly surrounded by incredible beauty, it was often difficult to find ways to communicate that." But in Hammock, they found their voice.

"Our philosophy has always been capture the sounds inside you and see where they want to take you," Byrd says. And if you're making an honest record like "Raising Your Voice...Trying to Stop an Echo," those sounds will take you to every place and through every emotion. This music, like the world outside, overflows with beauty and tension, melancholy and hope. All equally abiding.