Search - Hannah Marcus :: Black Hole Heaven

My Favorite Album

10/14/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I've been a big fan of Hannah Marcus ever since I first heard the track "Demerol" on a compilation of San Francisco musicians. I had a tough time tracking down more of her music, but I was really rewarded when I found it. Hannah has produced an interesting and evocative body of work which (to me) reaches it's peak on "Black Hole Heaven". The album is dark and swirling and takes the listener on a fascinating journey. I view the disc as something of a "concept album" with a particular structure and story, but that may just be me. In the course of finding more of Hannah's recordings, I had the opportunity to get to meet her and set up the first web site devoted to her music. I haven't asked her what the songs on "Black Hole Heaven" meant when she wrote them -- I prefer to enjoy my own interpretation :) The production on this album pushes further in the directions she started going on her previous album, "Faith Burns", incorporating multi-layered arrangements full of interesting sounds and textures. To me, each song stands out as an interesting piece on its own, but each is also an integral part of the whole."

An album about listening

09/21/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This album taught me a new way of listening. Every time I listened, there would be a new alignment. Sometimes the songs seemed depressive and circumscribed by circumstance. Other times they seemed luminous and limitless. Then they seemed like a play of limitation and vastness, where the play itself was at the heart of it all. Rich, very rich, honest, tugging, releasing. An intense Dionysian celebration. Sometimes a tone of burial, with the integrity of Antigone. Rootedness of long-known myths combined with weird new sounds -- when I listen to Los Alamos I'm not sure if I'm hearing ancient gods mourning for us in advance or future electronic gods having a good retrospective giggle at us all."

Black Hole Heaven rates a rave

L. Marcus | New York, NY USA | 09/06/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Hannah Marcus's album is passionate and intensely heartfelt. Black Hole Heaven is one the best albums I've heard in years. Hannah Marcus's lyrics are passionate, poetical and evocative without being pretentious. Her voice and music are intense. It's an album that deserves serious attention. It is in the school of Leonard Cohen and Patti Smith, but it's an original voice all her own."