As Aqualamb Records readies the March 3 release of Hiram-Maxim’s self-titled debut, Steel for Brains has premiered the album’s sprawling, 11-minute lament, “One.” Stream Hiram-Maxim’s “One,” here.
From Cleveland, Ohio, new quartet Hiram-Maxim plumbs the darkest depths of psych, conjuring an experimental, improvisational death-blues that has some critics saying Pink Floyd, others, Oxbow, others, punk rock.
Steel for Brains editor Jonathan Dick calls it “a murky psychedelic venture into a darkness that immediately seems familiar to the Ummagumma days of Pink Floyd… The album’s congruence of spacious ambience and hissing electronics makes for the kind of pulsing abrasion that’s immediately and infectiously rewarding.”
Equally cool is Aqualamb Records, a Brooklyn label owned by graphic designers Eric Palmerlee and Johnathan Swafford, whose releases take the form of 100-page, bound, printed books – essentially, each album’s art and liner notes, traditionally confined to an LP gatefold, a CD booklet, or the screen of some music-playing device, are reconfigured into book form. It is a glorious new approach that might well set a trend.
Pre-order Hiram-Maxim from Aqualamb Records, here.
Hiram-Maxim, live:
Feb 21 – Cleveland, OH  @ Superelectric w/ Goldmines
May 6 – Cleveland, OH @ Beachland w/ Six Organs of Admittance