The Helio Sequence / Keep Your Eyes Ahead - SP709

After 3 albums and ten years of touring and recording, The Helio Sequence (Brandon Summers and Benjamin Weikel) have recorded their most dynamic, extraordinary work to date. Keep Your Eyes Ahead marries the Portland duo’s signature layered keyboards and impossibly big guitars with crisp songwriting and a newfound appreciation for minimalism. The finger picking on “Shed Your Love” is backed by exquisite strings and ambient noise, but Brandon’s serene, self-assured delivery remains front and center. While songs from the band’s early releases spanned up to 7 minutes, even the longest, lushest, catchiest track on Keep Your Eyes Ahead (fiery anthem “Hallelujah”) clocks in at 4 and a half minutes, evidence of just how refined their craft has become. Vocals were recorded spontaneously in bedroom closets and living rooms, which may explain the haunting urgency you hear in Brandon’s voice, especially on driving tracks like “Keep Your Eyes Ahead.” The band also took its time on the album. After the bulk of official recording was completed, a listen through all the demos and snippets on Brandon’s hard drive convinced Benjamin there were more gems in the rough (which is how both “Hallelujah” and “Keep Your Eyes Ahead,” as well as the mid-tempo “Back to This” were rediscovered and retooled).

Produced by the band, Keep Your Eyes Ahead confirms in The Helio Sequence an energy and a range that continues to defy narrow categorization. Unapologetic pop and folk meld seamlessly to create songs that are bigger, more epic and polished than anything they’ve ever done. Keep Your Eyes Ahead is the sound of a band and a decade-old partnership that’s been invigorated. And that’s exactly how the songs will make you feel: invigorated.

Spin.com news piece on Keep Your Eyes Ahead
p>. From NPR Music (courtesy of KEXP) – The Helio Sequence: A Two-Man Wall of Sound

Attention! As we have mentioned from time to time here on the Sub Pop web thingy, most of the LPs that we put out come with an enclosed coupon enabling you to download all of the album’s songs as mp3s FOR FREE. The vinyl format for Keep Your Eyes Ahead, for example, includes one of these very coupons.

Released: January 29, 2008

The Helio Sequence / Love and Distance - SP633

It’s been three years since The Helio Sequence’s last album (2001’s Young Effectuals, on Portland’s Cavity Search label): far too long. Finally and triumphantly, the Portland, OR duo of Brandon Summers (guitars/vocals) and Benjamin Weikel (keyboards/drums) return with their third full-length, and first for Sub Pop, Love and Distance. The time between albums has been well-spent, logging several tours(keyboardist/drummer Benjamin Weikel also lends his percussive skills to Modest Mouse, doubling the tour time), extensive hours of experimentation and afternoons spent “listening to a lot of pop, Dylan and Can.” More inventive than ever before, the new record finds The Helio Sequence armed with a surprising new instrumentation palette and buoyed by swift pop undercurrents, with this collision of electric and organic elements. Please welcome the Helio Sequence!

Released: June 8, 2004

The Helio Sequence / Com Plex - CSR41

Track List:
1. stracenska 612
2. just mary jane (calypso)
3. transistor radio
4. my heart
5. sassafras
6. stitches sewing
7. tomorrow never knows
8. big jet sky
9. demographics

The Helio Sequence / Young Effectuals - CSR56

Track List:

1. reh.vuh.lee
2. give, give, give
3. [square] bubbles
4. knots
5. the echo-blomp
6. nothing’s ok: everything’s fine
7. cut the camera
8. fall and winter/ necktie noose
9. kablerium vs. obliviousity
10. take, take, take