Hella is the ultimate progressive loud rock band for me. They're so intense, intricate and heady. Their music feels wild and off the rails while being very meticulous in their playing. They're unhinged, yet still so natural, fluid and groovy. When I discovered them many years ago I was fascinated no end. Zach Hill's drumming is so unconventional, relentless and idiosyncratic. Spencer Seim's guitar playing really matches that energy. Watching their live DVDs and seeing them perform the songs, I became even more obsessed with them. It's a mesmerising spectacle seeing them go berserk on their instruments and play off each other.
Amen to that. Heard them for the first time in like ‘06-‘07? Since then don’t think I’ve gone a single week without listening to at least something of theirs. As (mostly) a drummer I can gush over Zach all day but Spencer deserves so much more credit than he receives. I never really get tired of their catalogue and even the stuff I thought I didn’t like as much is now what I consider some of their best music.
Haven’t watched the video yet, but just an FYI Zach Hill is the drummer for Death Grips and I’ve watched him in concert; his technical chops are absurd but I love when he plays hip hop and punk beats and really grooves with his crazy energy. I think the craziest performance I’ve ever seen on video out of him was with the guitarist Mick Barr from the prog black metal band Krallice, where they played in lockstep like they were calculating subatomic particles for an hour. Edit: watched the video, glad someone as knowledgeable as you gets as flabbergasted by this stuff as an outsider like myself lol
Both musicians are nuts. Saw an interview with the guitarist who said they wrote and recorded this album in one day, which breaks my brain even thinking about.
I don't think that zach is "counting" in the normal sense. There is a practiced-until-innate known and established sequence of "ones" that he and spencer have worked out.
There was a brief HELLA reunion where a video was put on RU-vid of them playing two songs from Tripper in a practice space. Far as I know they never toured that album and I’ve never seen any live footage newer than like ‘09(?) the video from late last year is incredible bc it sounds like they never stopped playing together. Zach has had a lot of success since HELLA went dormant. Spencer started a family, apparently works for NASA(?) and still does music but has said he doesn’t like doing things unless he can totally devote himself to it so we’ll be lucky if we ever get to see HELLA tour or play live at all. Their first album was just rereleased by Kill Rockstars and sold out in no time flat.
They only made one album with the extra members (There's no 666 in outer space) and it was an amazing album on par with The Mars Volta's writing and performance level with some of Zach's best drumming. The guitarist went away for awhile to concentrate on his family life but from what I understand they'll be working together again in the near future hopefully. Also, Spencer is a great drummer himself who influenced Zach's style. Hella did a special two album release where each one of them did a solo album for instance (Church Gone Wild/Chirpin' Hard)...as well as his solo album under the name Sbach and being the drummer for the band The Advantage you can hear some of Zach's tendencies coming from him and probably vice versa as well.
The guitarist is credited with both guitar and bass, but there are behind the scenes footage of the rehearsals for this album that show them performing this song with just guitar and drums, so I'd suspect if there is a bass somewhere its probably overdubbed afterwards for effect and filling out the sound.
I've seen people add a separate pick up to a guitar before in order to simultaneously pick up the guitar and a second signal to turn into a bass. Maybe that's what's happening here. Either that or he's pulling some virtuoso trickery to hit all the notes
@@jcfarnham4634 Here's a video with Spencer where he shows off his guitar with bass register, separate amplification for each string and salsa shaker function, so he probably found a way to second signal it! 😂ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-_4D9_ZMfQFc.html
If you're interested, there's a short video on RU-vid of Tripper's recording session. They even play a bit of Osaka in it and it sounds exactly like in the album, it might even be the same take. The video is called "Hella recording new album 2010 RAW RECORDING".
I wrote a tab for this one, and I didn't even bother with time signature or whatever. I just put the notes there and let the player figure out the timing. LOOOVE HELLA
Hello again from New England..This is pretty weird stuff and I like it lol..Its chaotic but musical and I totally dug the vibe..Once again thx for turning me onto a new band 🤘✌️
Mars Volta's Omar and Cedric did an album with the drummer from Hella, Zach Hill called Cryptomnesia and it's absolutely insane!! Worth a listen to for the unique value.
@@CriticalReactions oh yeah it has some of zach hill's most impressive drumming which is saying a lot...it also has two bass players, one being a synth bass so it's quite a chaotic and intense but amazing album...although, one of the lamest band names ever (el grupo nuevo de omar rodriguez lopez)
Love to see you so thoroughly and genuinely impressed by a track. And rightfully so. These guys are insane. Also, the drummer Zach Hill is a founding member of Death Grips
From one Brian to another, I’d love to hear the analysis on this, Magnifiererer by You Slut! - they quite literally wrote the book on math rock entitled “How to be in a Band Your Parents Will Hate: A Guide to Math Rock” - there’s about a million shifts in the song and it’s just good fun to boot.
Yeah, really dug this. "Unconventional" was the perfect descriptor for this, but I'm surprised by how well it all works, and I can imagine the long-standing partnership helped be the glue that holds it all together. Kinda reminds me of a more coherent Behold... The Arctopus. Definitely need to hear more from them.
For their first album it's recorded and played with one guitar line, might be some slight overdubbing / doubling in recording (maybe). But this album has some synth bass sounds (or overdub guitar with an octave pedal or something). But for all intents and purposes both these albums are written and performed by one guitarist and one drummer. They had a short period in the middle they did the whole band thing.
Oh boy you're gonna have fun with each Hella track you drive into. The Tripper album is probably the easiest digest for regular rock pallettes, their earlier albums won't hold your hand so much, for the better.
Only started listening to them this year April, but it really honestly feels like to me I’ve been listening to them since the 2000s :( but hey it’s never tooo late. Plus I’m only 20 so Ik I’ll be appreciating this music til I die. ❤ ALLEH
I feel like it’s easier to conceptualize stuff like that in a consistent mixed meter. Easier for me to know where we are. Say I do 4 groups of 5 then every 4th measure add the 3 or however many groups of 3 each time instead of trying to add it altogether just for the sake of a steady time signature. But as a musician writing the music, in my head I would just count it by the riffs. I definitely think about it differently while playing.
Yup, that's the difficulty in transposition: should I write this in an even meter or by grouping the riffs. Judging from riffs and official tab books it looks like most rock/metal musicians prefer the latter so you're in good company.
Zach Hill is a really good drummer/musician. Think Miles Davis meets Jimi Hendrix, but on the drums . Very esoteric style of playing. You should check more of his stuff
I'd imagine Hill (and Seim too, why not) was very tired at the end of their sets because they used to play their stuff faster live and sometimes lengthened segments. For example, their performance of "Been A Long Time Cousin" from a 2004 live show lasts about 6:15, despite the album version (from their first album in 2002) being 3:51 long and running at a lower BPM. From what I gather, Hill has a strange posture for playing (his back looks quite hunched in the performance mentioned above) _and_ a cymbal in a strange angle. I reckon he's also said that he doesn't count beats in his head while playing, but I can't find evidence that those are his actual words. If their live material is any indication, what could seem like overdubbed parts might actually be Seim playing with both hands on the neck -- but then again, being in a studio gives the chance to overdub parts and they might've used that chance.
Complexity through Simplicity? Nuno Bettencourt coined the phrase 'Simplexity' as a way of describing his guitar riff writing. I've never considered the statement 'self-taught'. If it means, never had a lesson from a professional guitarist I'd put myself in that category too. It cannot mean uninfluenced or that they didn't copy things from others... Very impressive music
I'm not sure about Hella specifically, but lots of other bands in this general vein will do something like play a guitar line with a looper pedal running, so basically record a guitar line live as it's being played, then it can loop back, allowing the guitarist the ability to trigger that just-recorded loop with their foot while playing something completely different over top of it to add multiple layers without just playing a backing track.
Live looped stuff is wild! It's like an additional layer you gotta plan for -- compose the music, perform the music, memorizing the order of recording and activate the parts in real time.
@@CriticalReactions yeah I've seen some really bonkers live performances using loopers. It's something I'm sure a lot of musicians think of as a solution to a problem ("how do I do both of these guitar parts from the studio track live?") but then morphs into this whole other complex layer of composition/performance.
A band I didn’t know that I needed to know. I’m getting some cool blackened vibes out of the harmony and playing style on the guitar, but it’s in such an unexpected setting with the drums that I can’t help but be intrigued all the way through. Really missing some vocals though, these guys could easily do with some really cool singing and occasional screaming, if I were in any way talented with a daw I’d kill to write some vocals over this, it could really tie the whole thing together, as it stands it unfortunately just felt like a bunch of cool ideas meshed together. I like to imagine and truly hope that this much sound came out of just two people at once, rather than there being layered stuff, although more power to Hella if they like to expand their arrangements with extra parts that wouldn’t be played live, however their mission statement gives me hope that these two just record live like absolute chads. Ah see, you looked it up before I finished the comment, really cool stuff these guys are doing/did.
So they're an instrumental band, but they have one album called 'There's no 666 in outer space' where they expanded to a five piece. There are vocals on that one, but there's no screaming, just singing. They're frantic in a way, but it's not what you would expect. Still they're very cool if you ask me and they fit the music really well. I think the melodies are contagious, even though it's an acquired taste. But then again, this band is an acquired taste anyway! 😂 I really love to sing along with it and I adore the lyrics on that one too, it gets pretty dark and philosophical!
