Lantern Recordings & Reviews
Lantern Reviews & Articles:
"Judging by Joseph Henaghan's blog, he is something of a musical-project slut, lending a discordant guitar to assist and enable any and all comers. What makes Henaghan unique, in my eyes, is that downloadable evidence of his every creative entanglement surfaces on archive.org, that steadfast outpost of random modern obscurity and ubiquity. His motto—“I will make sounds that melt your head”—should tell you everything you need to know, though it is recommended that you give his oeuvre a test drive to get a cursory sense of what he’s capable of.
If you don’t have time for that, just grab the 30-minute long “Pupa,” which Henaghan cut with Bryce Brushnefski, another guitar interrogator of unusual sensitivity and tenderness, as Lantern. The discordant fruits of the duo’s musical union are blowtorch subtle, with a great deal of atonal parry, holler, and heave: sometimes the point seems to be cock (rock)-measuring blunder, sometimes there are wonderfully wrongheaded and tinnitus-enabling attempts to escape Earth’s orbit, sometimes they appear to lose consciousness altogether, and then sometimes both determinedly uncouth axmen seem to be feeling their way blindly through a cruel, unforgiving world free of guideposts, mood stabilizers, and clean amplifier tone."
What I enjoy, though, is that as much as Henaghan and Brushnefski are making “Pupa” up as they go along, there’s a self-cannibalizing hook/motif at the core of this white-hot navel gaze that offers the listener something of a sonic signal light to follow through to the light at whatever k-hole they’re leading you into. I stop just short of using the phrase “idiosyncratic sonic signal” because either these dudes are serious mid-career Dead C. stans or I stumbled into the mother of all coincidences.
-Review of Lantern - Pupa on Splicetoday.com
"New Yorkers Bryce Brushnefski and Joseph Henaghan feed codeine to their de-tuned guitars and stage a prolonged death match so epic, unrelenting, and crude that it'll help you get over the lack of Dead C product this year. These dudes make tons of noise in a slew of other bands and projects that are worth exploring, if this sort of thing is your jeweled chalice of lye."
-Lantern-Pupa rated #2 Noise track 2012!! Village Voice
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2012/12/ten_best_noise_tracks_2012.php?page=4
Noise rock is a niche genre to be sure, but the genre is home for some really outstanding musicians. For the familiar, standout names include Sunn0))), Lightning Bolt, Swans, Zeni Geva, Boredoms, and many more. It is no small feat to be inspired by such musicians and then find yourself included among their company, but that is just what happened to Bryce Brushnefski and Joe Henaghan in 2012 when they made the Village Voice Top Ten Noise tracks of 2012. Under the moniker of their project, Lantern, they not only made the list but came in at number two!
Bryce and Joe have been recording as Lantern since 2003. I was fortunate enough to have recorded one of their early albums at the Granary in 2004. As far as I know it is the only one with vocals (performed by Leta Gray). Christened "Twilight," it is a record that I am proud to be associated with as a producer. It actually honed my heavy guitar recording skills on the eve of recording Tides.
Many of my posts have been focused on history, but for this one, I wanted to shift a little toward philosophy. The body of work that Lantern has produced is tremendously large. This is not because they play fast and loose with their material. Far from it, Joe and Bryce are master craftsmen of their art. However, their art is about language. Lantern is a dialog between the two of them and the mystery that lies behind the veil of our constructed reality.
Musicians who have made a disciplined practice of improvisation can attest to the peak experience of this practice feeling more like channeling than instant composing. Where does this music come from that is being voiced through us? In a very real sense, the improvisers feel like instruments themselves rather than commanders of there own instruments.
During a conversation at the Man Man concert at the Waterhole in Saranac Lake last month, Bryce and I shared our thoughts on this sense of channeling. His engagement with the music of Lantern is a practice of spirituality. Not in a sense of religiosity, but in terms of disconnecting with music as a material commodity (the pop song or any structured song for that matter) and connecting with that which is beyond our understanding. Every session is, in a certain sense, a spirit quest. Each journey undertaken with his traveling partner Joe. In this regard, they share a mutual spirit that is expressed through their creation.
It is no surprise that they would then give their music away for free. In the words of my good friend Dr. Kevin Dann, the only essential is that the gift must always move. This is their motivation, to move the gift they have received to those who connect with it, hear it, and feel it.
From their initial experience the gift moves on. That is the idea of Lantern in thought, practice, and sound.
-Drones for Peace, by Lawrence Dolan
-Doomed Souls (German Doom-Metal Forum)