All I can say about this band is that I have never seen anything like this since I last saw them and I don't really expect to ever see anything like them again. I equate the experience to actually meeting real Space Aliens and told the secrets of the universe. Similar to the experience I had the first time I saw The Holy Mountain. Light Bright Highway cannot be explained in words. There sound is so cosmic that it cannot even properly be captured onto tape by any technology that exists on this planet. The recordings are good, but just not the same. For those that remember them this is a major highlight of the festival. Before there was Mogwai, Bardo Pond, Mono or even Godspeed You Black Emperor there was Light Bright Highway. everyone else is still trying to catch up.
Expansive and evoking almost hallucinatory concentration, the guitar/drums/bass trio achieve a seemingly effortless feeling of anti-gravity at times, with excursions off into heads-down to the pedals, soaring stratospherics, though also thankfully free of grandstanding or guitar solo histrionics. The break between sides/parts one and two comes quite naturally too, with effects feedback providing a suitable break point, a pause for breath before the gradual uphill climb into sweeping guitar slides, heart-stretching major chord filigrees and the outgoing flow into phased/flanged feedback conclusion.
Unpretentious and obviously recorded with both feeling and extensive knowledge of when to exercise restraint, Moon Glory… satisfies those parts which require a pleasurably intense listen, whether contemplative or idly daydreaming on a landscape. Ambling along a fine edge between purposeful meander and shimmering effects-pedal exploration, it's a definite head-trip into the eternal possibilities of what remains an evocative form in the right hands.
Formed in '91 these Texans've slogged their way round local environs. Live performances seem to portray the band scything through one looooong instr. Piece that's stuffed to the gill-flaps with colossal peaks ‘n' troughs sandwiched ‘tween ambient thrum, the band's minds hopelessly lost meanwhile in the mire they've created. So… starting from near silence a vast outpouring and slow and eerie codas seep forth, unfolding in their own time – which they have the ability to stretch at will. Light Bright Highway are truly marathon in isolation.
- Steve Pescott - terrascope.org
Moon Glory And The 7th Sun begins with several minutes of barely audible guitar-and-bass murmuring, creating agonizing suspense. The players trace the silhouette of a gorgeous tune: most majestic, poignant and blessed-out. When they finally up the volume and intensity, the music's surging momentum will have your eyes doing 360s. Dwyre's guitar both spangles pastorally and soars in spaciously flanged arcs, evoking vast swathes of starry void.
LBH realize that restraint often works better than all-out assault. When they do explode, it's with amazing finesse. But rather than exhibiting any new-age stigma, Moon Glory has the air of a solemn ritual.
One critic said that LBH have but one song; But when it's this monumental, one song is quite enough.
- Dave Segal – Alternative Press Magazine
The journey you are about to take begins with an assuming slab of sugar white vinyl. Moon Glory… is not so much an album as an aural light trip fantastic, with swelling highs, rolling lows and everything in between, all embedded in an ambient pool of feedback and fuzz. It was recorded live, with no overdubs. The album is loud but not aggressive, spacey but not excessively frilly, and symphonic but not math-rock jazzy.
- Stefanie Kalem – Weekly Planet
Nominated for: Avant-Garde/Experimental
On the surface, Light Bright Highway sounds cold and dark. They can play two-hour long shows that seem like exercises in stasis. Band members seldom look at the audience, much less go near the mike. Light Bright Highway captures the essence of inertia, the ambivalence that precedes movement. They play ultra-ambient music that happens to be loud. Like true ambient, it is not meant to suggest anything or induce any kind of mood. Rather, it gives you time to think, as the sound engulfs you in its slow dirge, until latent emotions start to surface. It may sound self-indulgent, but it is actually user-friendly-non-specific and open to countless interpretations, giving you the choice of mood. Repetitive and as effective as a mantra, their pieces go through peaks and valleys (mostly valleys) with sweeping guitar washes, glum bass lines, and busy drumming, coalescing in a seductive walls of sound that encloses you in a meditative haze-a wall painted with the shapes and colors of your choice.
- Philip Chrissopoulos – Dallas Observer
Light Bright Highway plays songs that last a little longer
Denton's Light Bright Highway is not so afflicted. A typical “performance” – for lack of a better term – by the trio consists of a single piece filled with dramatic de- and crescendos that could give any epic poet a run for his money. Lasting anywhere from 45 minutes on the short end to three hours or more on more adventurous evenings, their “songs” explore territory familiar to artists or more concrete, visual mediums. LBH's pieces recall that narrative aspirations of symphonic composers in scope, those who strive to capture the rich texture of life in sonic landscapes.
That Light Bright Highway arrived at such an extent with its sound independently of a direct set of influences only adds to the credit of the band's intense performances, making a musical allusion particularly difficult. The experience of watching LBH for the first time may be better compared to an experience outside the musical realm. Maybe something akin to watching time-lapse photography of a landscape slowly blooming into its full, color-saturated brilliance, before winding down to its previous dormant state. Maybe not.
The crowd sits silent, scattered across the floor, and the lights are dimmed. A mural of white, blue, purple and green shrouds the back of the stage, while colored lamps illuminate the three members of Light Bright highway. Swirling lights from a disco ball overhead.
The music crescendos form a whispering guitar drone and chimes to an eardrum-buzzing double forte. Guitarist Robbie Dwyre, tells a story with sounds instead of words – waves crash over rocks, birds screech as they fly overhead, and a piece of metal taps on a pane of glass. In an instant, the gentle percussion transforms into a pounding, thrashing frenzy.
Just when it seems like they're improvising the flowing sounds, they unite for a sudden mood change. The music whirls in time with the shapes from a projector and colored lights. The song synthesizes with the lights like the band members merge with the images from the projector, which are distorted by the different angles and shapes of the instruments and bodies on stage.
Someone once said that if a band needs special effects and gizmos, then it must lack something in the musical talent department. However, Light Bright Highway fuses both sight and sound. Eighty-five minutes into the experience, the first, and only song ends.
Nowadays, they don't announce themselves when they begin playing or talk to the crowd during the show. Never the less, the audience plays a part by being at the shows and reacting to the music on an individual basis. The band creates an experience for the audience whose reactions influence the band's creation.
In this way, the audience plays its own part in the music. Not telling listeners what to think keeps the experience in their own hands. Instead of standing, yelling or dancing at shows, the audience sites reverently on the floor, transfixed with sights and sounds. There's a rare amount of respect shown toward the band during the show. Some might whisper quietly, but no one talks loudly. An hour into their 90 minute set at the Argo, the bar was practically deserted. Even the bartender was sitting on the floor watching the show.
One critic said that LBH have but one song; But when it's this monumental, one song is quite enough.
There sound is so cosmic that it cannot even properly be captured onto tape by any technology that exists on this planet.
Moon Glory & the 7th Sun
Tears From The Mountain of Truth 2012
Thee Quickening of Time & the Seers of Change
The experience of watching LBH for the first time may be better compared to an experience outside the musical realm.
© 2018 LIGHT BRIGHT HIGHWAY
