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The Father Road

by Church of Hed

supported by
jonathansegel
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jonathansegel The whole thing is great, and intense travelogue. Favorite track: The Loneliest Highway.
Jed Levin
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Mike Metlay
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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Comes in a lovely Digi-Pak with photography by Angela Williams. What more could one want? Well, there's also FREE CD copies of Quarkspace Drop, Spacefolds 8 and 9, the Debut Church of Hed, and an Autumn Shrine EP download card. While supplies last!

    Includes unlimited streaming of The Father Road via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 4 days

      $11 USD or more 

     

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $8 USD  or more

     

  • Full Digital Discography

    28
    releases

    Get all 28 Church of Hed/Quarkspace releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of The Father Road, Caesar Grinder Salad, The Fourth Hour, Q Ching, All These Suns, Sandstoned, A Cold White Universe EP, Brandenburg Heights, and 20 more. , and , .

    Purchasable with gift card

      $109.72 USD or more (35% OFF)

     

1.
The Sea And Golden Gate 04:20
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2.
Sierra Ascent 1 02:48
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3.
Sierra Ascent 2 02:18
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4.
Sierra Crest 03:49
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5.
The Loneliest Highway 08:39
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6.
Salt And Snow 02:37
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7.
Wasatch Descent 02:16
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8.
Under Wyoming Stars 05:11
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9.
Prairie Waves 03:37
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10.
The Derecho 03:38
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11.
Open Road Illinois LH 02:44
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12.
Plainfield Crossroads 03:38
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13.
Avoiding Toll Roads At Night 03:01
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14.
The Red Brick Road 05:01
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15.
Flying Teapots Over The Alleghenies 04:18
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16.
A Ship In The Mountains 03:53
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17.
The Many Souls Of Byberry 04:49
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18.
Approaching Gotham 02:24
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19.
The Palisades 02:36
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20.
Times Square And The Shining Sea 03:37
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about

Rivers of Asphalt Part 2

24-bit audio, exclusive to Bandcamp. Get those FLACs!

Church of Hed’s new double album, The Father Road, takes us on a surreal aural journey across the United States along the Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental road built for automobiles. It’s effectively the sequel to the band’s 2011 album, Rivers of Asphalt, which traveled the legendary Route 66. The music shifts and evolves in tandem with the scenic backdrop of America from San Francisco to New York City. As with the original release, the sense of a lost era lurks throughout the album.

The music within features Church of Hed’s unique mix of spacerock, psychedelia, prog rock, krautrock, and electronic music. It channels diverse influences, ranging from CAN, Cluster, Brian Eno, and Hawkwind, to YES and The Flaming Lips, in addition to Glass, Reich, and Riley. In the end, it always manages to sound predominately like Church of Hed. Of course, Kraftwerk provided the original concept of combining electronic music with a transportation corridor!

The band’s Paul Williams composed, performed, and produced The Father Road with help from Quarkspace guitarist, Stan Lyon, on bass and guitar. Williams plays an array of synthesizers, keyboards, and electric drums. Surreal ambience highlights the western portion of the highway, while more lyrical instrumental pieces aurally describe the more populated sections of this old road. Check out the expanded liner notes at: churchofhed.com/releases/church-of-hed-the-father-road/

Released both on CD and digitally, The Father Road is available on CD or download from Bandcamp, download-only from iTunes and Amazon, etc., as well as the usual streaming services, such as Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Never forget to support independent music!

credits

released August 25, 2022

Church of Hed

Paul Williams: Keyboards, Synth, Drumming, Beats
with Stan Lyon: Bass, Guitar

Instrumentation

Synths: Yamaha MM8, Moog Sub 37, Korg Z1
Kawai K5000W, Korg Prophecy, Waldorf Streichfett
Make Noise 0-Coast, Modal Electronic Skulpt SE, Waldorf MicroQ, Roland M-VS1

Soft Synths by Moog, Arturia, XILS-Lab
Spitfire Audio, Melda Production, Apple

Beatmaking: Alternate Mode TrapKAT, Roland TD-8
Melda Production MDrummer, Arturia DrumBrute

Photography by Angela Williams

Produced by Lance Starbridge

Thanks to all family, friends, and pets!

Video review from Sea of Tranquility: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKd2pkFDVII

Reviews with Words

You mean The Farther Road, correct? No, it’s not a typo, it’s The Father Road, as in the granddaddy of them all, taking us on a coast-to-coast journey on The Lincoln Highway, the first highway to traverse the entire USA. It ran from Times Square in New York to Lincoln Park in San Francisco, long before the interstate highway system, even before highways were numbered — the sign for the Lincoln highway just had a big “L” on it. Established around 1913, the US highway system didn’t start using numbered routes until 1925, after which all of the component parts of the “L” started adopting numbers, most of which are still there today a hundred-plus years later, although some stretches of the original highway are almost forgotten, snaking through near-ghost towns whie the busy interstates now parallel them a few miles away. Church of Hed is of course the solo project of Paul Williams, composer, drummer, and keyboardist, originally of the band Quarkspace, and here he is joined by Stan Lyon of Quarkspace on bass and guitars. The Father Road is a companion piece to the Rivers of Asphalt set from a dozen years ago, where Williams traced the route of old Route 66 across the country from Chicago to Santa Monica beach in California. This time the journey goes west to east, starting with “The Sea and the Golden Gate,” through the melodic grandeur of the two part “Sierra Ascent” to the stark beauty of “Sierra Crest,” all the while walking the line between purely instrumental electronic music, explorative 70s krautrock, and progressive rock, with a touch of space in the mix for good measure. From there we go across “The Loneliest Road” that stretches across Nevada and about half of Utah, a captivating near-nine minutes of stirring ambient sounds that perfectly capture the mystery and barren loneliness of the western deserts. “Salt and Snow” and “Wasatch Descent” take us through Utah and into Wyoming. Originally the Lincoln just skirted to the north of Colorado across southern Wyoming, but later a loop was added branching south to Denver. “Prairie Waves” takes us into Nebraska with a catchy song that’ll get stuck in the listener’s head, followed by a head-on encounter with “The Derecho” as we cross Iowa, a classic slab of powerful progressive rock adorned with spacy electronics. The swirling “Open Road Illinois” and “Plainfield Crossroads” gets us through Illinois towards Indiana and Ohio with another memorable melodic encounter. “Avoiding Toll Roads at Night” is a short piece that takes us from near-floating ambient to a busy keyboard mayhem. The ensuing six vignettes take us through Pennsylvania and New Jersey, one of the highlights being the ferocious “A Ship in the Mountains,” until we arrive at the journey’s conclusion, “Times Square and the Shining Sea.” If you’re still planning a road trip this year, you might well want to consider giving The Father Road a spin, the fuel bill will most certainly be a lot less expensive, and you can travel the route over and over again. It’s available as a 2CD set or download. - Peter Thelen, Expose

Primarily the work of Paul Williams, with occasional assistance from Quarkspace's Stan Lyon on bass and guitar, this is an instrumental album across 20 tracks ranging from 2-8 minutes in length and in many ways, it's a follow-up to the 2011 release “Rivers Of Asphalt”, as it continues the musical depiction of a road trip across the USA, using a wide array of synths, electronics, keys and guitar, taking its cues from the likes of Kraftwerk and Cluster, but going way beyond that commercial idea.
The first 4 tracks revolve around rhythms, with the opener possessing an almost Scottish quality as the synths spread out like some massed army of bagpipes but sounding like synths, as the layered anthem spreads its melodic flow right across the horizons, where as a track such as “Sierra Crest” positively shimmers and drives its way forward, somewhere between Harmonia and Kraftwerk.
The longest track on the album is the 8 and ahlf minute “The Loneliest Highway” and here, everything slows down as a wellspring of amorphous cosmic synths rises up and fills the airwaves, while all around there's a kind of shuffling percussive restlessness, amid dark electronics that shimmer like musical beacons from the depths below, the whole thing gradually going from light clouds to dark skies as the travel continues, occasional glimpses of sunlight shining through from the synth ripples that come and go.
“Salt & Snow” kind of flows organically on a river of organ, guitar drones and shards of electronic space melodies that break off as the track shines, while “Wasatch Descent” enters on a shuffling sdea of dramatically slow percussive strength as this lone synth soars above the marching undercurrent and what sounds like a squealing treated guitar, but which could be either that or synths, weaves a top layer-cum-melody, on top of the slowly shuffling rhythmic flow.
“Under Wyoming Stars” shimmers and shines as a multi-textured layer of synths and guitars provides an unnervingly spacey soundscape, a bit like something you might have got in a more rhythm-free “Zuckerzeit” only more cosmic, and altogether darker, the layers building and revolving to form this mesmerizing electronic vastness.
“Prairie Waves” is introduced with piano and is an unashamedly melodic melange of piano and synths that flows merrily along, truly making you feel like you are on a road trip, and lasting way too short for the wondrous anthemic quality that it possesses, while “The Derecho” continues this theme with piano and synths only this time the rhythms are slower and stronger, with swoops of space synths soaring all around the central theme but always evolving as the trip continues, the main melody cycling up and down to great effect.
At this point, you're half way through and it's true to say that if you've enjoyed it and stuck with it up to now, that the next half is going to have you in its spell as much as the first. Throughout, you'll find a different scene set in synths as every track twists and turns, much of it rooted in rhythm, but more a slow motion ride through a variety of musical scenery, with the body of it well rooted in the darker side of electronic melody making and rhythmic undercurrents, as textures, layers, leads, cosmic electronic universes, the folding of time-travelling keyboards and the swirl of synths and fx, all combine with a melodic heart, to provide a musical travelogue like no other. - Andy Garibaldi, Audion

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Church of Hed/Quarkspace Columbus, Ohio

Church of Hed is the solo electronic space prog project of Quarkspace drummer/synthesist, Paul Williams. RIYL: Floyd, the Orb, Stereolab -- Quarkspace is an American band together since the mid 80s. Known for combining spacerock and electronics with folk and progressive songwriting, their influences straddle the American and English psychedelic scenes of the late 60s with more modern influences. ... more

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