John Haughm ‎– 122012 & 042911 (2012)

Agalloch's John Haughm has been (somewhat secretly) been releasing music under his own name since 2011 when he debuted with the '+46 17' 36​.​30", -124 4' 20​.​13"' 7" EP, which was a single track of ambient guitar experimentation's. Collaborations followed with Mathias Grassow and Daniel Menche that (I believe) were in the ambient/drone vein, mean while he's recently released a two-track cassette titled, '122012 & 042911,' which is a bit different.

'122012' is a lengthy fifteen minute piano piece that carries a heavily melancholy vibe and bares some similarities to the brief usages of piano on Agalloch's various albums and EPs. Throughout its duration it doesn't change much nor does the tempo suddenly go faster or slower, though the atmosphere remains high the whole time and it has something of a trance inducing quality to it as well. Somewhat unfortunately I feel like the whole song is entirely too long for its own good and does have that tendency to bore if you're not familiar with that sort of music or the mood John's attempting to set.

'042911' is more in an ambient and post rock-ish vein and similarly to the previous piece doesn't have much variation throughout its nearly ten minute duration, but definitely gets my attention at first. About midway through a rather odd voice begins to speak a passage from Russian poet Arseny Tarkovsky for a few minutes. The voice in question being someone named Pearl Hagan, whom appears to be an elderly woman, though I wasn't able to find out exactly whom she is or was. In any case, the sampled voice seems a little off and with the music barely changing it doesn't really make for a very overall interesting piece of music.

As a whole I wouldn't particularly recommended this release, and not that its bad or anything, but the compositions just seem too long for their own good and don't really come to any big conclusion or evolve into anything during their duration, which is weird considering Agalloch's music does the exact opposite. Either way, this is John experimenting and trying new ideas that don't fit in with his main bands ideas. If he does end up creating a full-length album it should be interesting to see what he comes up with and just how diverse the whole thing is too...