HUG—the trio of Devendra Banhart, Gyan Riley and Noah Georgeson—is thrilled to announce their debut self-titled collaborative album out September 11th via Luaka Bop, and in conjunction, share its lead single, “Cow With Half Moon Parasol.” HUG was written and recorded organically, without a grand plan, and is full of the childlike wonder that these three bring out in each other. At times ambient, at times enigmatic, each song flows into the other, moving across folk traditions and genre, as Devendra, Gyan, and Noah take turns leading. From the opening frogs on today’s single, “Cow With Half Moon Parasol,” the natural world takes center stage. Discrete places on this planet—places, we can infer, hold some significance to these composers—color the soundscape: Sounds from one sacred hill in India, sounds from a river running through Venezuela and Colombia.

The three musicians who wrote and recorded HUG are not related by blood, but they sure act like it. Whatever it is that connects these three, you can hear it in the banter as much as you can in the music. The record is almost like a bait and switch: you read the spine and—especially if you’re familiar with the work of Devendra or Gyan or Noah—you think, this is a guitar trio. But HUG doesn’t particularly sound like any of these artists, and if it’s a guitar trio, then it’s one without too many guitars. HUG is more than the sum of its parts—because these artists know how to play with each other.

For Gyan and Noah, the tether goes back to childhood itself. They both grew up in the same remote, hippie town in Northern California, Nevada City, which was once one of the epicenters of crystals and all things New Age culture. Gyan spent his youth surrounded by experimental and minimalist music (clock the last name), and as a boy gravitated toward the guitar. “Being thirteen and completely obsessed with classical guitar,” he remembers, “there were few people I could bond with over that… Basically just my teacher and Noah.”

Noah remembers being amazed by Gyan’s skill, even as a kid. He was just as relieved as Gyan to have a friend with whom he could share his passion for classical guitar, a fringe obsession in their fringe hometown. 

After they left home, their lives moved on parallel tracks: Gyan continued on as an artist and touring musician, releasing several albums of his own, and collaborating with musicians as various as Arooj Aftab, John Zorn, Paul Simon, and his father, Terry. Noah, meanwhile, moved to San Francisco where he established his own experimental music bona fides, studying with Fred Frith, Pauline Oliveros, and Alvin Curran. From there, he helped create much of the music that defined the aughts, including several albums with Devendra, who first crossed his path when he was a teenage art school dropout. 

Devendra may have come into the picture later, but he fit in with ease. Much of Devendra’s own childhood rhymed with Noah’s and Gyan’s: he grew up in Venezuela and Southern California and took to guitar early, busking on the streets instead of going to class. It would be many years before Noah’s two friends—two influential poles of his musical life—would meet. But by the time they did, years later in Brooklyn, they were primed for it. “Everything was sparkling and I felt like a little kid,” Devendra remembers, “and so I knew—we must play.”

Though the album itself came together in three weeks, there are hints scattered across the tracks that they’ve been working towards this collective for much longer. The final song contains a loop that Noah and Devendra first created twenty years ago, back when they were living together in Venice Beach, a fragment of a song they never knew how to finish until now. And in the album’s final moments, voices can be heard, just barely, crying out, “Well I went down…!” They leave us with another unfinished fragment—perhaps a signal of future projects to come.

HUG Live:
Thu. Oct. 8 – New York, NY @ Le Poisson Rouge
Fri. Oct. 9 – North Adams, MA @ MassMoCA
Sat. Oct 11 – Frenchtown, PA @ ArtYard
Wed. Oct. 14 – Minneapolis, MN @ McGuire Theater at Walker Art Center
Thu. Oct. 15 –  Chicago, IL @ Constellation
Wed. Nov. 18 – Grass Valley, CA @ The Center for the Arts
Fri. Nov. 20 –  San Francisco, CA @ Bimbo’s 365 Club