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All the shades of green. Plants. Water. The absolute necessities of life. Music, too, is an absolute necessity. To capture both color and sound in a bottle to put atop a piano like a houseplant. A clock. A fern. Synesthesia. This music is meant for that. To close your eyes and see green. To drown in the color of piano. A melancholic covey that pulls hard on the heart strings musically and lyrically, brushed over with a plethora of improvisation in smooth watercolors.
With Tim Hill’s new trajectory, we are offered a fresh neuron sprawl, branching beyond lyrics in interrupted pieces of sound. He takes our reptilian brains and welds them to our unborn futures, placing us inside of his droplet. Here, we're forced to reflect out, something singular multiplies, nature brings her face in, something shifts, our speed changes, the Self refracts and what's left jumps on sustained lines that eventually arch into meditation milk. It becomes a karmic cleanse of the amygdala, a launch from normal feeling life. Tim takes the risk, committing to diving deeper into his own bottomless pool of art, gifting us with sensory treats that dilate our old perimeters. It's sky as theatre, handing out everything but answers to questions. And where do we go? Where starlight mingles. Where minds never land.
A seasoned musician in all forms, Tim Hill has toured the world as a keyboardist, guitarist, saxophonist, and drummer, with a long time stint with LA group the Allah Las, and well known acts such as Nick Waterhouse, Curtis Harding, PAINT, and others.
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"Whittier, California-based ranch worker and known as the touring keyboardist for Allah-Lahs, Hill continues to brew his own craft of cowboy originals rooted in worn and dusty standards." - Aquarium Drunkard
"...the Southwestern cowboy, who hums songs of simpler times. A storyteller at heart, the Americana multi-instrumentalist’s music hits you right in the feels" - Buzzbands LA
"Mournful pedal steel pairs with Tim Hill's perfectly exhausted delivery... I’m a sucker for an album that’s pushing aside serenity in favor of simply finding solace..." - Raven Sings the Blues
Pre-order the upcoming Shades of Green LP.
And order Tim Hill's acclaimed 2019 release Payador newly reissued on vinyl in Translucent Pink.
The Allah-Las perform highlights from their recent release, Zuma 85, on a KCRW session Live from Apogee Studios.
The Los Angeles-based Allah-Las have announced a North American tour that kicks off on April 12 in Nashville, TN. The band will make a stop at Webster Hall in New York City on April 17 and in Toronto, ON at The Concert Hall on April 23 before concluding the run in Chicago, IL on April 27. Additionally, the band will co-headline this year’s Atlas Obscura Festival on April 7 in Hot Springs, AR. All announced shows are listed below and tickets are on-sale Friday, January 19 at 10am local time and will be available here.
The band recently visited the studios of Seattle’s KEXP where they performed songs off their recent critically acclaimed album Zuma 85 - “Right On Time,” “The Stuff,” “Jelly,” and “The Fall.”
This tour will mark Allah-Las first trip to the East Coast since the release of Zuma 85 which was released last fall via their own label, Calico Discos, in partnership with Innovative Leisure. The band teased the LP with several videos - “Sky Club,” “The Stuff,” and Dust,” The Fall,” and “Jelly” - and they saw support from Under The Radar, Brooklyn Vegan, Austin Town Hall, Buzzbands LA, The Big Takeover, MOJO and Ghettoblaster, among others.
“...while the group make much of this being a 'new era' there are still plenty of moments that conjure nostalgic, dreamy biss.” - MOJO
"The album brings us back to their sun-kissed California psych sounds once again, but this time with equal twists of clipped electronica and field recordings" - LOUDER THAN WAR
"embraces the pugnacious monotony of late ‘80s Lou Reed ... and reassures that they have not altogether lost interest in sun-splashed psychedelia" - UNCUT
“Surreal” - MXDWN on “Right On Time”
The Los Angeles-based Allah-Las released their new album, Zuma 85 via their own label, Calico Discos, in partnership with Innovative Leisure, which issued earlier defining statements from the band. In 2020, following the release of their album LAHS, the band members stepped away to refocus on their individual lives and interests, leading them to reimagine their creative processes. When they eventually regrouped, they adopted a more flexible approach. Instead of bringing fully finished songs to the studio, they entered the idyllic Panoramic House Studio in Stinson Beach armed with sketches, ideas, and riffs. Working with co-producer Jeremy Harris (White Fence, Devendra Banhart, Ty Segall) they shaped and crafted the new songs in real time over three sessions, which were then mixed in Los Angeles by frequent collaborator Jarvis Taveniere (Woods, Avalanches, Purple Mountains). The end result, Zuma 85, finds the band embracing the influences of late-era Lou Reed and John Cale, the ‘70s mutant pop of Peter Ivers and early Eno and Roxy Music.
In ten days the Allah-Las will kick off their first U.S. tour in support of Zuma 85 with a show in Phoenix, AZ on October 23. The tour also includes a two-night stand with Reverberation Radio at Lodge Room in Los Angeles on November 15 (with Mirror Tree and Kolumbo as support) and November 16 (with Tim Hall and Sam Burton as support), as well as stops in Denver, Dallas, and Seattle before concluding November 18 in San Francisco, CA. Following the U.S. run the band head to Australia in December. All announced shows are listed below and tickets are available here.
Leading to today’s release the Allah-Las teased the album with videos for four of Zuma 85’s singles, “Sky Club,” “Right On Time, The Stuff,” and Dust” and they saw support from Under The Radar, Brooklyn Vegan, Austin Town Hall, Buzzbands LA, MXDWN, The Big Takeover, MOJO and Ghettoblaster, among others. Today the band revealed two additional visuals - “The Fall,” music video which was animated and directed by Mark Neeley and “Jelly,” visualizer which was created with help from Farmer Dave. On his animation for “The Fall” Mark writes, "the video includes a lot of watercolor and fresh ink directly on paper, it's a juxtaposition of abstract and animating some of the song's narrative. I have always admired the careful curation of visual art that accompanies the music of Allah-Las, and I hope my analogue animation adds another dimension to that".
“...while the group make much of this being a 'new era' there are still plenty of moments that conjure nostalgic, dreamy biss.” - MOJO
"The album brings us back to their sun-kissed California psych sounds once again, but this time with equal twists of clipped electronica and field recordings" - LOUDER THAN WAR
"embraces the pugnacious monotony of late ‘80s Lou Reed ... and reassures that they have not altogether lost interest in sun-splashed psychedelia" - UNCUT
“Surreal” - MXDWN
Los Angeles-based Allah-Las have dropped “Dust,” the latest single off their much-anticipated album, Zuma 85, being released on October 13. With an ear-worm fusion of psychedelic rock, jangly guitars, and progressive rock, “Dust” exemplifies the new direction the band have taking on the LP as they depart the familiar beachy territory for off the map expanses, embracing the influence of late-era Lou Reed and John Cale, ‘70s mutant pop, and textures borrowed from Japanese pop and loner-folk obscurities. Allah-las tapped frequent collaborator Bailey Elder to craft her visual interpretation of the song. With her signature animation style, she captures the cosmic and transitory nature of the track with a mesmerizing procession of patterns, shapes and designs that morph and melt into one another in a choreographed dance through space and time. Of “Dust’ the band say, ‘the song turns the lens onto the past and the path that must be taken to achieve a desired outcome. A crisp high hat clicks along in perfect time, driving a soft but certain vocal atop a bed of undulating synthesizers, leading us comfortably along before the chorus hits, punctuated by harpsichord hits and tambourines that crash against the otherwise soothing soundscape. A fuzzed and bowed guitar solo leads us out into the place we had hoped to be.”