Half-Handed Cloud – Gathered Out of Thin Air

Description

Gathered Out of Thin Air, sub-titled A Second Decade Collection of Non-LP Tracks: 2010-2019, is a double disc compilation album by the American indie rock combo Half-Handed Cloud (fronted by singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist John Ringhofer), independently released on Asthmatic Kitty Records in November 2019. The tracks on the album was recorded, mixed, and arranged by John Ringhofer, except track B4 written by Frode Strømstad, tracks B6 and B7 written by Sufjan Stevens, track C9 written by Charles C. Converse and Joseph Scriven, and tracks D14 and D16 written by Georg Friedrich Händel.

The reason that you haven’t heard anything else like Half-handed Cloud, a.k.a. John Ringhofer, is that there isn’t anything else like Half-handed Cloud. Sixty selections, 50 of them ditties under two minutes, almost every lyric straight from the Bible (the New Testament mostly), melodies that sound like sped-up Gregorian chants transposed into major keys, a clatter arising from banjo, organ, bells, glockenspiel, melodeon, omnichord, piano, loops, stylophone, synthesizer, tambourine, triangle, trombone, trumpet, ukulele, wood block, and what the credits call “sounds” – it would all be too silly if the infectious joy that Ringhofer radiates weren’t so obviously sincere. [Arsenio Orteza, Spin, October 31, 2022]

> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/gathered-out-of-thin-air/1481995630)

2LP tracklist:

Side One
A1. What Are You? Surprise Us!
A2. Nests In Chests
A3. Peoples With Rubbed Out Steeples
A4. Slip Through The Cracks
A5. Gentle Instrumental
A6. Turntable Turntable
A7. Bathed In Palms
A8. Gentle Perception
A9. Here We Go Transformation

Side Two
B1. The Conscience Of Cortés
B2. Foiled By Captain Landecho
B3. Francis Drake Dreaming
B4. California
B5. Roald Read The Passage
B6. He Woke Me Up Again
B7. Naaman
B8. Needy Ones Hold Out
B9. Intro
B10. Mystery Of Godliness
B11. Tapes
B12. Let The Mind In You
B13. Someone Pops Up
B14. Train Yourselves In Godliness
B15. Reminding
B16. Anything
B17. The Road I Took For Granite
B18. Grace Be With You

Side Three
C1. Waltz
C2. Deity Dwelling Bodily
C3. For Our Sake
C4. Reconciliation Grows Today
C5. Your Outer Nature Wastes Away
C6. All The Fullness Of God Pleased To Dwell
C7. Running Off With Balderdash
C8. Frankly Corinthians
C9. Let’s Hum This Song Right Now
C10. What Large Letters
C11. We Wear The Path
C12. Sleeves Of The Forest
C13. Branches Crowned Your Brow
C14. Stumbled On A Holiness
C15. Doing Battle With The Edge
C16. Viscous Shadow Of Cleopas
C17. Tracing Circuits That You Tread

Side Four
D1. Gathered Out Of Thin Air
D2. Song For Different Eternities
D3. I Heard The Sparks
D4. We’re Giving It A Chance
D5. Backwards Through The Grate
D6. Fingerplay On The Ribbon Waves
D7. Antennas Extend
D8. You Came To Disappear
D9. A Favorite Christmas Gag Gift
D10. Öh, It’s Christmastime Again!
D11. The Cloud Became A Baby To Be With Us
D12. Nativity Play Time Travel Tunnel
D13. It’s Advent! Let’s Open The Calendar!
D14. And Suddenly [from Handel’s Messiah]
D15. Nativity Costume (2000 Year’s Eve)
D16. All They That See Him Laugh [from Handel’s Messiah]

Note: Track A1 from The Business Select Vol. 1 compilation, A2-A8 from Dove EP, B1-B5 from Blood Brothers EP, B6 from the Seven Swans Reimagined compilation, B9-B18 from Foiled EP N°1, C1-C10 from Foiled EP N°2, D1-D8 from Jiminy Circuits EP. Available at Bandcamp: https://half-handedcloud.bandcamp.com/album/gathered-out-of-thin-air

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