Founded by Marcos Garcia and Geoff Mann, both of whom have been members of renowned Afrobeat act Antibalas, the Los Angeles, CA-based act Here Lies Man received attention here and elsewhere for a song that seamlessly bridges classic Fela Kuti-era funky Afrobeat grooves with classic, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin-era power chord-based rock.
Building upon a growing profile, the band’s highly-anticipated sophomore effort You Will Know Nothing is slated for a June 15, 2018 release through RidingEasy Records and the band’s sophomore effort finds the band refining and expanding upon their sound, and as the band’s co-founder Marcos Garcia explains in press notes “We’re very conscious of how the rhythms service the riffs. Tony Iommi’s (Black Sabbath) innovation was to make the riff the organizing principle of a song. We are talking the same approach but employing a different organizing principle: For Iommi, it was the blues, for us to comes directly from Africa.” Along with that, the album reportedly finds the band writing catchier, more anthemic material with a slicker, crisper production — while lyrically, the band focuses on a more conceptualized effort, focusing on states of being and consciousness. As Garcia continues “We wanted to go deeper with the sonic experience. Even though it sounds more hi-fi than the first record, it was important that it didn’t sound too polished.”
Interestingly, while continuing to focus on the gritty grooves and power chords that first captured the attention of the blogosphere but while being centered around some conceptual mathematics. “There are interludes between each song that are 2/3 to 3/4 of the tempo of the previous song,” Garcia says. “The reason it breaks down to 2 over 3 or 3 over 4 is that everything in the music rhythmically corresponds to a set of mathematical algorithms known as the clave. The clave is an ancient organizing rhythmic principle developed in Africa.” As the band’s Geoff Mann says “We dove deep into the texture of the music, beyond the groove and the riff. Although something might sound like one instrument, there are subtle layers shifting through. It’s definitely a headphone album.”
However, much like the previous album, the duo of Garcia and Mann recorded You Will Know Nothing a their Los Angeles studio on a Tascam 388 8-track recorder. Congas later recorded by percussionists Richard Panta and Reinaldo DeJesus. Then Garcia traveled to New York to record the interludes with former Antibalas keyboardist Victor Axelrod. Mixing took the most time of the entire process, as they had to found the proper sonic space of each layer of musical detail with their first album engineer Jermey Page mixing the drum parts and the band tackling the remainder while balancing a busy touring schedule.
You Will Know Nothing’s latest single is the hallucinogenic yet anthemic “Fighting” which is centered around a blistering guitar psych rock meets Black Sabbath riff, a shout with your beer aloft in the air hook, and a bridge led by propulsive African percussion — and much like the album’s overall theme, the song evokes the sensation of a lingering, half-remembered, anxious nightmare.
