Hometown: Philadelphia, PA and Christchurch, New Zealand
Year Formed: 1995

Personnel:
Joe Culver -drums
John Gibbons -guitar
Michael Gibbons -guitar
Roy Montgomery -organ and guitar
Isobel Sollenberger -flute and voice
Clint Takeda -bass

Related Artists:
Bardo Pond, Roy Montgomery, Dissolve, Dadamah, the Pin Group, the Shallows.

Consider for a moment the beauty of a lava flow - it's a riot of ceaselessly changing colors in inexorable motion. Hash Jar Tempo's music is a lot like that; it flashes with momentarily glimpsed hues and persistently mutating textures that flow with implacable force and radiate an immolating heat.

If you're familiar with the efforts of the group's component's efforts, it might help to know that the seven jams on Under Glass (your CD counter will only list six because "Atropine" and "In the Cells of Walken's Corti" were accidentally combined at the pressing plant) are less sludgy than Bardo Pond's but kick with a harder rhythmic drive than Roy Montgomery's solitary spacial explorations. It's also more focused and coherent than the first Hash Jar Tempo record. I'm especially drawn to the peristaltic organ pulse of "Labiomancy" and the pairing of cascading twelve-string chords and spiraling lead guitars on "Hymenoptera In Amber Crybaby," but this is one glass whose entire contents you'll want to drain.