Hull’s debut disc Sole Lord (The End) was released last year but somehow I missed this disc first time around. Getting straight to the point, this disc will be on my ‘End of Year’ best-of list.

Not to start with a diatribe about the music industry but my belief is that weak product and iTunes have done more damage than illegal downloading ever will. If you take a band like the Rolling Stones, iTunes allows you to selectively purchase the one, two or three decent songs from each of their recent releases rather than forcing you to muddle through the other nine tracks of dross on each release. I’m old enough to remember the days when music (like Pink Floyd’s Meddle and Genesis’ Lamb Lies Down on Broadway) required an active commitment. Thanks to iTunes, music is now a lot more disposable and consumed in “bite-sized” three minute chunks. Pink Floyd felt their songs weren’t meant to be consumed on a song-by-song basis on iTunes and Hull’s Sole Lord falls into similar territory.

Sole Lord takes me back to the early Pink Floyd days as the band combines the ambient psychedelic (or perhaps a better descriptor is “psychosis”) of Meddle-era Pink Floyd with the sludgy doom of bands like The Melvins. While some bands release discs that are consistent from start-to-finish, Sole Lord comes across as one body of work that just happens to be divided across ten tracks. Songs seamlessly flow into the next and some riffs are reused across songs which add to the overall impression that this is one 47 minute body of work.

I wouldn’t use the word “prog” to describe Hull but Sole Lord is a rolling opus of gentle instrumentals which segue into groove-oriented walls of distorted guitars before returning back to another instrumental. The ‘light’ and ‘dark’ elements of this disc are pretty evenly balanced as there are an equal number of instrumentals balanced with songs that make use of roared/chanted multi-part vocals. Hull’s use of contrasting tempos across this disc makes for engaging listening so this is the sort of disc that you are going to want to block some time to actively listen to.

Below is a video from Hull’s “secret show” at Public Assembly in Brooklyn. Hull is playing with Pentagram at Europa on Jan. 06, 2011. Tickets are $15.



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