Ben Greenberg of Zs and Pygmy Shrews Releases New Hubble Record on Northern Spy

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***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE***

Pres Contact: Derek Meier, Solid PR derek@solidpr.com, Label Contact: Adam Downey 949.300.2691 press@northern-spy.com

When Ben Greenberg brought us the master for the new Hubble album, we were absolutely mesmerized. The pattens of sound on this recording are hypnotic as hell and we just can’t stop listening to it. The album hits stores November 8th on vinyl and CD so prepare yourself by downloading or streaming the digital version below. Physical promos go out in a few weeks so hit us back to reserve your copy for review or airplay. Enjoy!

The Northern Spy Staff

“At once heady and visceral, psychedelic and intensely lucid, Hubble‘s mesmeric guitar webs are laser-etched incantations to the sublime. At the luminous crossroads of John Lee Hooker and Philip Glass, this is virtuosic and visionary sound-sculpture that kicks the concept of what is music just a little further down the road. There is something new under the sun. Just listen.” - Michael Azerrad

ARTIST: Hubble
TITLE: Hubble Drums
CATALOG NUMBER: NS 015
GENRE: Psychedelic
FORMATS: CD, LP, MP3, FLAC
DISTRIBUTION: Allegro NAIL & Carrot Top in North America, Cargo in the UK & Europe and Super D & AEC worldwide
BARCODES: 670541194089 (CD), 670541194072 (LP)
STREET DATE: November 8th, 2011

Planned since Hubble‘s first live performance in September of 2010, Hubble Drums is an inspired record of new guitar music. Equal parts shred-fi, cyber-dread and fried psychedelia,Hubble Drums marks Ben Greenberg’s first full-length recording and debut for Northern Spy. Recorded at Python Patrol and lovingly mastered at Bonati Mastering, the CD and 150g LP features original artwork by Michael Yaniro and Ben Greenberg.

“Hubble’s Hubble” serves as the soundtrack for a video of NASA sanctioned cosmic imagery captured by the actual Hubble Telescope. Possibly the most minimal track, Ben produces sheets of sound that circle through 3 channels, panning left to center to right, creating an aural environment that reflects the space and movement of deep space. “Nude Ghost” is based off the first tapping riff that Ben wrote when creating music for solo guitar. The glacially emerging beat mixed into the track came from two days of hazed studio jamming with Joe Williams (White Williams), Jon Leland (Janka Nabay, Skeletons) and Matt Papich (Ecstatic Sunshine). “Glass Napkin” highlights Ben’s mastery of both guitar tone and hypnotic rhythmic patters, as well as his energetic patience in the face of a void of his own devising.

FEATURED ARTIST
Ben Greenberg: electric guitar

TRACK LISTING
Nude Ghost; Glass Napkin; Hubble’s Hubble

FOLLOW HUBBLE
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WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT HUBBLE

“Hubble’s euphoric wheedlechurn is where the measured precision of downtown minimalism meets the unhinged aggression of Brooklyn loft noise–truly hypnotic and truly New York.”
- Christopher R. Weingarten

“I’m fairly floored by this extended solo-trance-out from Zs guitarist Ben Greenberg, who seems to have invented a device that halts time (musical, actual, and meta-physical) ; its use is put to great effect across this 60-minute blast of cycling “stereo” chord progressions and assorted haze(s) that approaches the fervour of MBV / Belong’s filtered-out high-gain wash while retaining the minimalist patina of Charlemagne Palestine piece … awesome.”
- Keith Fullerton Whitman

“[Ben] has been channeling his formidable guitar chops into distortion-drenched, loop-based compositions that lovers of distressed ambience will be more than happy to zone out to.”
- Emile Friedlander, Altered Zone

“His new instrumental solo project, Hubble, finds Greenberg maniacally noodling through celestial, finger-tapped riffs with little more than a guitar and a basic loop station. It’s a touch more accessible than his past work, and allows his well-honed virtuosity to shine through.” - The New Yorker

“When you watch [Hubble] perform…one of the most striking things is realizing how excited you are to watch someone play guitar that can really fucking play. And makes rad, new music!!!” - Terroreyes.tv

TOUR DATES

September 24th @ Freedom Garden, Bushwick, New York
October 2nd @ The First Annual SPY MUSIC FESTIVAL, Zebulon, Brooklyn, NY
October 19th @ SUNY Purchase supporting Memoryhouse

MORE ABOUT HUBBLE

Since the inception of his new solo guitar project Hubble, Ben Greenberg of Zs and Pygmy Shrews has sought to exploit the guitar for its ulterior qualities, simultaneously displaying a true love for the instrument while redefining how guitar music is understood. Whether distortion-drenched or achingly clean, Ben describes painstaking result as “cyber-dread”, an apocalyptic, beat-less quasi-electronic music, conjuring Terry Riley’s pulsing minimalist structures and Gregg Ginn’s aggressive, avant-garde rock.

About the Hubble live performance, Ben expounds, ”Every Hubble set, on a stage or in a friend’s basement or in my bedroom, is a concerted effort on my part to change the air in the room, to push it towards a state of greater resonance.” Using mesmerizing guitar mastery to create extended rhythmic patters of note groupings of varied tempo, dissonance, and harmony, Ben hypnotizes the audience with slowly developing, subtle variation, until the listener is lulled into a highly vivid dream state. The set varies between a versatile and simple set-up and the more ambitious Hubble Superposition, a quadraphonic experience that splits the guitar signal into four different singals which are routed through four seperate amplifiers.

Ben’s first release “Hubble Linger” (NNA Tapes) brilliantly utilized the cassette format by distilling a live performance into two side-long pieces of stereo-panning guitar. The tape was well received inciting electronic musician Keith Fullerton Whitman to claim “…I’m fairly floored by this extended solo-trance-out from Zs guitarist Ben Greenberg, who seems to have invented a device that halts time (musical, actual, and meta-physical) ; its use is put to great effect across this 60-minute blast of cycling “stereo” chord progressions and assorted haze(s) that approaches the fervour of MBV / Belong’s filtered-out high-gain wash while retaining the minimalist patina of Charlemagne Palestine piece … awesome.”

HUBBLE VIDEO PICK