Daniel A.I.U. Higgs: Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot

D. Higgs/Yggdrasil TarotIf Maryland's legendary Lungfish were humble pioneers, making their way across the windy American heartland in a wagon train, their wooden wheels spinning, growing accustomed to the terrain over their 20 year journey, honing their craft amidst revelations which can only come from long lonely epics, then Daniel Higgs has reached a mountain pass and gone off on his own, finding shelter in warm caves. The things that you dream when you go to bed without any supper embodied in sound and manuscript. Sage to the disaffected, Higgs released "Magic Alphabet", a trance-inducing Jew's harp-based album several years ago. Its hidden overtones and free-form discursive repetition served a sort of sacred sensibility which was perhaps subconsciously forged by Lungfish, wielded on his subsequent albums, and now manifests itself as Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot, a limited edition full-color hardcover book with CD. On first listen the sounds on Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot are hard to place - electronic pulses later discerned as jaw harp, stringed instrument ragas and lightning fast fingering which sound almost like manipulated tapes - sped up and slowed down, paused and unpaused, twisted and crumpled and rewound. Songs which undulate rather than repeat. The album was recorded entirely at home on a cassette recorder giving it a distorted, ghostly quality at once warm, raw, and magnetic. The forms are free flowing; at times a song rears its head only to be trampled by a wailing butterfly of Eastern scales or hissed and crushed by tape heads. Much as Lungfish was at once an acquired taste and adored by an obsessed cult following, Higgs' sounds are for the believer. The realization of this book is further proof of his expanding listenership... and not just "listeners" in the musical sense, but rather a group with their ears tuned to the frequency of the galactic waves Higgs documents. His paintings here mark a departure from his line-oriented and tattoo-situated works in favor of an abstracted totemic subconscious homage to Catalonian artist Joan Miró. They are symmetrical and simple, often muted and evocative of an ancient tribal practice, sickle moons laying belly-up. And somehow, to me, many resemble a grinning octopus wearing a hat. Each painting is faced with a page of words. They take the form of a child's first poem: a short word written vertically, then each letter used to begin a new word: ABYSS becomes "Always Braid Your Silver Serpents". Much like Miró, who many considered a surrealist yet who refused to join any particular art movement,dan higgs Higgs hangs onto the outer-reaches of the surreal, the esoteric, the folk, and the occult without becoming corny or dogmatic and his music is entrancing, old, and prophetic without feeling religious or precocious. In Miró's later life he wrote about his radical ideas for 4-dimensional painting and gas sculptures, pushing the boundaries of thought and art until the moment of his death. A similar evolution, though far more underground, seems to be occurring with Daniel Arcus Incus Ululat Higgs, who in 25 years has gone from punk front-man to tattooed apocalyptic harbinger to interdimensional song-seamstress. May his cone of light continue to spread wide, enveloping all who seek its liftedness :: Daniel A.I.U. Higgs - Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot (Full Color Book with CD) Thrill Jockey/Rough Trade.