Listen to Hippies Wearing Muzzles ‘Plants in Combination’ LP

Listen to Hippies Wearing Muzzles ‘Plants in Combination’ LP:

Hippies Wearing Muzzles is the work of Denver-based electronic musician Lee Evans and today we listen to several tracks from his newest LP Plants in Combination out now on the French label Tsuku Boshi. Evans uses a modular synth set-up and creates a music that blurs the distance between organic instrumentation and synthesized electronic sound. With tones that often echo nature or the sounds of indigenous instruments, Plants in Combination is filled with the beguiling atmosphere of some alternate Fourth World.

What immediately comes to mind is Edgar Froese‘s (Tangerine Dream) 1975 release Epsilon in Malaysian Pale, two ambient pieces based on the musician’s travels thru Malaysia and Australia recorded on Mellotron and synthesizer. Like Plants in Combination, Froese’s work mimics the sounds and moods of nature, and though one probably wouldn’t mistake those elements for field recordings from distant places, the music is still transportive in dream-like ways. Witness Evans’ track “Ruedi” from the collection above, possibly a reference to Colorado’s Ruedi Reservoir, but a name that seems to conjure even more far away locales as it bubbles with singing drums and communicative whistles. Meanwhile, you’d be forgiven to mistake the chirping of birds from outside for Evans’ modular synth, or vice versa, as you attend to these never before heard rituals of an ancient tribe from another galaxy. Each of the seven tracks on Plants in Combination has that magic ability to transport the listener to unknown locations, ultimately sending you back home with an earful of cosmic, yet somehow familiar sounds.