Host Skull

Mark Mangini

When David Bernabo sent some tracks to Chicago label Antephonic on a whim to see if they would be interested in releasing a 7”, he received an uncommon reply.  “They asked if we would do an entire album,” Dave recalls.  This isn’t a response most musicians are prone to hear, but his new project, Host Skull, isn’t really prone to doing anything in a common way.

For instance, Dave’s primary collaborator, Santa Fe-based Will Dyar, will run his own West Coast chapter of Host Skull.  Operating independently, the two groups will exist as one, playing the same songs.  Kind of.  With the act of choosing the musicians for each performance being a facet of the compositions themselves, each performance is individualized by the space, players, and audience.  Songs shift contexts and shapes, with performances recorded and projected as a visual image, while the players change locations throughout the room to emphasize the tonalities of their instruments.  Songs will blend together, repeating again as different versions with motifs recurring each time in an altered state.

Additionally, Host Skull will exist as an installation art piece in March 2012 at 707 Gallery in downtown Pittsburgh.  This piece will include photography, video, performance, and an audience participatory box where visitors can record small pieces of sound that will be edited together and featured on a follow-up release, effectively including all of those who want in.  With all of these conceptual underpinnings running throughout Host Skull, the primary foundation on which they are justified is the quality of the recorded music.

The first thing that stood out when Dave played me a few tracks was how meticulously mixed and balanced the recordings sound.  Complementing his and Will’s avant-pop compositions are a plethora of nationally known and Pittsburgh-based musicians, including vibraphonist Jeff Berman, saxophonist Brandon Masterman, vocalist and bassist Liz Adams, and flutist Kerrith Livengood, amongst others.  To Host Skull they bring a wide tonal palette that flutters above and weaves through the traditional guitar-bass-keys-percussion levels, sometimes saturating the mix and at other times leaving it barren of everything except acoustic guitar and voice.  The result is nothing short of captivating, the sound of two prolific and eccentric musicians pooling their resources and creating something bigger than the sum of its parts.

The lyrical strains running through the album touch on natural history, religion, politics, capitalism, and particle physics, to name just a few, but are second to the interplay of Dave and Will’s voices.  Both singers share a common underlying tone but have distinct timbres, Will’s being slightly cleaner and rounder, mixing and separating with Dave’s simultaneously.  The end result is a sound that shows affinity for mature Wilco, “Blue” Gene Tyranny, and Eric Dolphy while forging a unique and uncompromising path of their own. 

Look out for the Host Skull LP Totally Fatalist on the Antephonic label in September.  Also, check out http://hostskull.drupalgardens.com/

Mark Mangini is the TiNYart editor at The New Yinzer.