Bear in Heaven have trapped echoes, tremors, winds, and fading light. They’ve redefined time, and folded it. They’ve unbuttoned sound, and realigned it. Growing from a seed planted in the Southern US years ago (all members hail from Georgia or Alabama) Bear in Heaven began as the musical arm of Jon Philpot in 1998. Time eventually brought in a slew of players, like rickety scaffolding, that grew the sound and guided the group to morph from a 6-to-5-to-4-piece. Freely acknowledging the importance of the number four, the album Beast Rest Forth Mouth (think “East West North South”) was a conscious product of the four compass points, of the four makers, and the mixing crossroads. Preceding Beast Rest Forth Mouth is 2007’s Red Bloom of the Boom, a 7-track, 43-minute exploration that crosses the streams of psychedelia and prog. Pitchfork called it “a true cohesive work in an era when the album-as-art form appears to be slowly dying” (7.8), and The Onion found it “a powerful, functional mix of This Heat, ’70s soft rock, early Genesis, and oddly, later Pink Floyd.”
