Bull of Heaven is an American experimental/avant-garde group. Originally consisting of Neil Keener and Clayton Counts with help from various contributors. After Counts' death, Keener remains the only member.
Bull of Heaven is best known for their infamously long pieces of music led by Counts, with pieces sometimes reaching extreme lengths, varying from a few years to many millions of years long.
Bull of Heaven's first piece, 001: Weed Problem, was released on their site on January 31, 2008. The same time the following year, the band had already released more than fifty pieces, totalling nearly three hundred hours of music. Nearly all of Bull of Heaven's song titles are sourced from (sometimes obscure) literature.[4] Even at this early stage in the band's history, they were already becoming known for their incredible song lengths; 019: Hypnosis, Drugs, and Mind Control (The Beginning: A Touch) is eight hours long, 028: Even to the Edge of Doom is twenty-four hours long, 044: A Corpse in My Arms on Awakening breaks the one-day mark at thirty-seven hours long, but is surpassed by 045: The Wicked Cease From Struggling which is one hundred sixty-eight hours long.
2009–2010
Bull of Heaven in 2009
Between April and May 2009, the band intermittently released a series of one hundred new songs, all named and numbered in Roman numerals. Pieces I – C were the first of several breaks from the band's standard three-digit numbering system of releasing music.
From September 2009 to January of the following year, the band also started releasing another new series, known as Alephs. The first ten of these contained roughly 1000–1100 pieces in each sub-folder. Aleph10 and Aleph11 contain one million and ten million pieces respectively.
The band gained some acknowledgement in December 2009, when they released 118: The Chosen Priest and Apostle of Infinite Space, a piece that is over two months long.
In January 2010, Clayton Counts talked to The Fly about long players,[5] discussing the various musicians that also delved into extremely long lengths of music, such as John Cage, Robert Rich, and even Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. With this, the band continued creating pieces of equally extreme lengths; pieces 145–152 all range from fifty to one hundred fifty hours each.
In June 2010, the band created another new set of pieces different from the numbered, Aleph, and I – C pieces; this was a set of ten untitled folders, each containing thousands of short pieces, named as 32 digits of hexadecimal code. These pieces were not made public, and were only posted in the band's media sub-directory of their website.
In July 2010, the band released three very long pieces, the third of which gained them notoriety online,[6][7] mainly in communities and discussion boards focused around finding the longest piece of music ever made. 208: As You Etch on the Inner Window of Your Eye is nine hundred sixteen hours long, 209: Blurred with Tears and Suffering Beyond Hope four thousand, seven hundred twenty-three hours long, but both are beaten by 210: Like a Wall in Which an Insect Lives and Gnaws, a piece lasting exactly fifty thousand hours.
2010–2013
Between the end of 2010 and 2011, the band started creating pieces that were not posted on the website. These include pieces with negative lengths, puzzles that, when solved, grant access to new songs, password-protected files, pieces embedded within other formats such as PDF and EXE, and infinitely looping SWF files.
In March 2011, the band released a series of pieces of extraordinary lengths. This series, ranging from their numerical ordering of 238–260, is similar to the Longplayer idea – each sound is the length of a prime number, and each subsequent piece creates near-infinite lengths of time before they're synchronized. The final in the series, 260: lcm(2,3,5,7,11,13,17,19,23,29,31,37,41,43,47,53,59,61,67,71,73,79,83), would last 8,462,937,602,125,701,219,674,955.2362595095 years before all the pieces synchronized.
In December 2011, two more extremely long pieces of music were released by the band. 286: 0 and 287: n, the first lasting over twenty-nine million hours, and the latter lasting more than eighty-seven trillion hours.
During 2012, the band only released three pieces of music: 288: Four Years Ago? Opium., something of an experimentalhip-hop track; 289: CALCULOR, a calculator that doubles as a music generator; and 290: Two-Legged Tigers and Crocodiles, a sound collage piece. In July, the band's site had many downages and 404 errors, leading to it eventually crashing completely. After a few months, however, the site returned and functionality resumed for the most part.
The band took a long hiatus until July 2013, at which time they released several hours of psychedelic rock. It was announced via their Facebook page that more new music would be made available within the year. In September they released a number of drone and post-rock tracks, and in November 299: Self-Traitor, I Do Bring the Spider Love, an hour-and-twenty-minute-long jazz fusion arrangement. By the end of 2013, the band had uploaded most of their music to a public domain Internet Archive collection,[8] where all of their newer works reside as they continue to rebuild a new website.
2014–present
In early 2014, the band released a fan-made compilation of love songs, 300: Songs for Girls, followed by 301: Weed Problem II–V, and another extremely lengthy piece, 302: It is Part of Space and Time, which runs for at least 86,370,000,000 years. Clayton Counts was interviewed by Vice in the Netherlands,[9] discussing a range of topics related to the band and their sonic approach.
On April 24, 2014, psychedelic rock band The Flaming Lips included a reference to Bull of Heaven in the liner notes of the vinyl release of the condensed version of their 24 hr. long piece 7 Skies H3.[10][11] The Flaming Lips mistakenly call the band "Bull in Heaven," but refer to their pieces 118: The Chosen Priest and Apostle of Infinite Space and 210: Like a Wall in Which an Insect Lives and Gnaws specifically.
On July 10, 2014, the band released 305: Hostages are Human Beings. On July 12, 2014, 303: n(k), 304: 0(2^18x5^18) and 306: It is Not a Lack of Love were released. On the very next day, they released several other tracks of various lengths. By the time, 310: ΩΣPx0(2^18×5^18)p*k*k*k is their longest release, and lasts for 3.343 quindecillion years.[12]
On December 4, 2016, Bull of Heaven made a post on their Facebook page announcing the death of member Clayton Counts.[16]
After Counts' death, Bull of Heaven remained inactive, however on September 12, 2018, Neil released the first new Bull of Heaven piece since Counts' death, titled "Fight Night for the Ghosts of Heaven".[17] Neil has continued to make releases under the Bull of Heaven moniker, focusing on musical styles akin to progressive electronic and post-rock.
Musical style
Bull of Heaven is mostly known for its slow, lengthy, unchanging music. Usually the focus is around dark ambient, minimalism, and drone; however, the band is not limited to just these genres. 237: Disordered Before the Naked Picture of Despair is an avant-gardejazz loop. Similarly, 261: A Feeling for the Order Lying Behind the Appearance is a more traditionalprogressive rock/avant-gardejazz song. There are elements of spoken word, post-rock, harsh noise, modern classical, drone doom, and many more throughout the band's discography.
