Photo by Frank Correa. Click to download print-size version.
Photo by Frank Correa. Click to download print-size version.
Known for dramatic performances as well as subtle, varied recordings, Seattle multimedia ensemble Midday Veil combines haunting, intense vocals and kosmische synth work with Middle Eastern-influenced guitar tones and driving, hypnotic rock grooves.
The band began in 2008 as a collaboration between vocalist and visual artist Emily Pothast and analog synth head David Golightly (whose studies in composition and electronic music included courses led by Karlheinz Stockhausen), however the broad palette of Midday Veil's characteristic sound owes much of its shapeshifting audacity to the addition in early 2009 of Timm Mason—a multi-instrumentalist obsessed with modular synthesis, musique concrète and Omar Khorshid—on baritone guitar. In 2011, the band added Jayson Kochan on bass and Sam Yoder on percussion. In 2012, original drummer Chris Pollina left the band and was replaced by Garrett Moore.
Eyes All Around, Midday Veil's 2010 debut LP on Translinguistic Other, garnered high praise from a handful of tastemaking blogs, however it is the band's ecstatic improvised cassette releases Subterranean Ritual II (2011) and INTEGRATRON (2012) that have created the biggest ripples in the experimental underground. The latter—recorded in a geodesic dome built with "extraterrestrial guidance" on a magnetic vortex in the Mojave desert—inspired one reviewer for VICE Italy to speculate as to whether the band was actually a psychedelic sex cult, and another writer for UK's Classic Rock Magazine to describe Midday Veil as "mood music for terminal weirdos," nevertheless listing INTEGRATRON among his favorite releases of the year. A new album titled THE CURRENT has been recorded with producer Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Wolves in the Throne Room, Akron/Family) with a release scheduled for June 2013.
A strong live act, Midday Veil has toured the Western US regularly since 2009, notably opening for krautrock legends Faust on a Northwest mini tour in 2012. The band completed its first US tour in March-April 2012 with appearances at SXSW, 35 Denton and LA Psych Fest.
"Midday Veil consistently produces some of the best experimental psychedelic music I've ever heard, always bending genres and minds at the same time."
"Midday Veil make music the way this kind of music ought to be made."
"Sensual and mystical...the rhythms of a world gone completely mad for all the right reasons."
"...possess the spirits of the greats of psychedelic rock (Ash Ra Tempel, especially)..."
"Midday Veil have the art and authenticity of good psych rock, with none of the grimy regret of that genre's gummy-headed next day awakening."
"Eyes All Around is an album of perfect balance - a meditation on life and death, light and dark, ambient, near-subliminal blankets of sound and loud, jaw-clenching power. It is an album in the truest sense: oversized, vividly illustrated and providing an anthology of distinct, yet distinctly intertwined, songs, sounds and emotions."
"Eyes All Around is one of those 'take you on a journey' recordings; it's a sensational round trip that's both exceptionally harrowing and blissful, mystical and earthy, cerebral and sensual. Mind expansion rarely is this sexy."
"...gorgeousness wrapped up in song..."
"...feels a bit like watching the birth of humanity from space."
- Best Of
Midday Veil: Horse With No Mane. Seattle Weekly, 10/19/11
Interview with Emily from Midday Veil. Revolt of the Apes, 1/1/11
Asymptotes Epic: Midday Veil's Oracular, Spectacular Psychedelia. The Stranger, 11/9/10
INTEGRATRON. Redefine Magazine, 12/21/12
INTEGRATON. Alterity 101, 8/18/12
INTEGRATRON. Foxy Digitalis, 8/1/12
INTEGRATRON. Guide Me Little Tape, 7/3/12
INTEGRATRON. Sound Colour Vibration, 6/1/12
INTEGRATRON. VICE Italy, 5/24/12
Subterranean Ritual II. Tiny Mix Tapes, 10/15/12
Subterranean Ritual II. Cassette Gods, 1/4/12
Subterranean Ritual II. Weed Temple, 11/18/11
Subterranean Ritual II. Foxy Digitalis. 9/2/11
Subterranean Ritual II. The Stranger's Line Out, 7/26/11
Eyes All Around. Terrascope, 8/1/11
Eyes All Around. Three Imaginary Girls, 3/1/11
Eyes All Around. Redefine Magazine, 11/3/10
Subterranean Ritual CDR. Foxy Digitalis, 4/10/11
Faust, Midday Veil, Von Bingen. BeatRoute (Canada), 10/29/12
Faust, Midday Veil and Dull Knife at the Comet. The Stranger, 10/16/12
Midday Veil at Rhinoceropolis, 5/13/11. Denver Westword, 5/14/11
Midday Veil and the Arrington de Dionyso Experience. Seattle Subsonic, 11/15/10
LIVE REVIEW: Escalator Fest II - Night 2. Seattle Rock Guy, 11/3/10
Midday Veil Arranges "Garden of Earthly Delights." The Stranger's Line Out, 7/23/10
Midday Veil's Psychedelic Wonderland at Sunset Tavern. Seattle Rock Guy, 4/6/10
Midday Veil, Moon Duo, Du Hexen Hase. Redefine Magazine, 2/18/10