CATALOG

NEWS

"NYC’s Hi Red Center avoids the trap of equating musical innovation with a painful listening experience by maintaining a certain playfulness and exuding a sense of joy through their creations. Their latest effort, Assemble, has both these qualities in strong supply... they traffic in irregularly abrupt stops, unexpected time shifts, occasionally cacophonous (but controlled) breakdowns, and often perplexing lyrical phrasings."
Tiny Mix Tapes

"...a band with a clean, focused, bright and melodic sound that, through complex and unpredictable arrangements, manages to stay on the same step and keep things light and playful... It’s accomplished, sophisticated and light-hearted post-rock that manages a herky-jerky groove through all the changes."
Nuvo

"Hi Red Center force you to listen as their rhythms jump all over the place and their chords move from normal to dissonant and back to normal again all in the space of a few seconds... That's what makes Assemble so amazing. They take a simple track and then break it up and (dare I say) assemble it back together again. Hi Red Center is like an audio Picasso. Picasso could paint beautiful realistic works, but chose not to. The same goes for Hi Red Center (who also have some beautiful cover art as well). They are too smart for formulas, so they make their own, brilliantly."
Ink 19

"The New York-based six piece have an extensive amount of ideas up their sleeves, the most obvious being their penchant for juxtaposing seemingly oppositional sounds and demonstrating how well they can work together... Although the sheer hyperactivity and stop-start nature of Assemble can make it a somewhat uncomfortable listen at first, it is worth rising to the challenges Hi Red Center present. Their experimental noise rock is frequently defined by a deceptively disheveled structure that is in fact highly restrained, much like the SKiN GRAFT label's 1990s catalog. While it takes a bit of patience, this energetic, rhythmic approach combined with moments of unabashed, childish glee makes for some highly adventurous pop. Score: 6.8"
Mia Clarke, Pitchfork

"Hi Red Center funnels prog-rock eccentricity into tight, uplifting tunes. The band's latest, Assemble, features enough brainy harmonies and jagged rhythms to please the egghead set, but it also plays just fine as a left-field pop record."
Time Out New York

"For those of you who dig Tortoise, The Bad Plus/Happy Apple, Soft Machine, Hot Rats / Grand Wazoo era Frank Zappa & The Mothers, and Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, you are hereby urged to delve head first into Assemble, the HRC's ambitious sophomore effort... mind-blowing. "
Amplifier Magazine

"...their songs are so complicated in terms of layers and time signatures... The closest comparison I can think of is Pattern Is Movement... Assemble is a well-written and sonically pleasing record that I plan to put into heavy rotation."
Skyscraper Magazine

"Melodies refract, arrangements self-destruct and congeal... The shards of glockenspiel, clarinet and bassoon that teeter-totter through "Symmetry Chameleon" and "Pipe Dream" register with the same lushness that marks Sufjan Stevens's most ebullient tracks -- albeit smashed and glued-together. There is a whole lot of room for pretense in a record of such calculated construction, and perhaps the most wondrous thing about Assemble is that Hi Red Center sidestep it completely."
Prefix

"It's stunning and so, so much fun. This sort of geeky musicianship usually never has time for hooks, but the band's deadpan playfulness is, really, the trump card. It hits me hard where it counts, and you know, maybe that's just me. But I don't think so."
Flagpole

"A chaotic, cacophonous, yet creative mix of rock, prog, and noise results in a unique album that may provoke a different reaction on every listen... always interesting."
Delusions Of Adequacy

"Keeping a delicate balance between bubble-gum pop and noisy experiments... Fractured and unpredictable songs"
Chronic Art

"Hi Red Center walk a very fine line between abstract and accessibility... this New York City band is still balancing pop and noise masterfully. They are truly creating something new and interesting here."
Two Way Monologues

"Boasting rock solid rhythmic contrivances, paired with cascading spasms of synthesizer, and shockingly precise vocal melodies... Hi Red Center never have time to rest on the laurels they undoubtedly deserve for this syncopated, digitized, unabashedly bold fusion of electro-pop and post-rock aggression... Polyrhythms abound in this slightly schizophrenic musical amalgamation, and at times the only anchoring point becomes the spot on vocal harmonies."
Stereo Subversion

"These folks play unconventional rock music bolstered by dense, fuzzy synths. The formula is sometimes spastic and sometime mellow, but always interesting... they've cemented their position as notable purveyors of unusual rock music."
Indieville

"What if you took math rock and played around with it a bit? Cut it up, spliced in some lush passages that sound a bit like Sufjan Stevens? Well if you did, you will have created HRC who are a kind of MGMT only with more ideas and musical and mental dexterity..."
Americana UK

"[Hi Red Center] throws the kitchen sink (including a lot of vibraphone) at invigoratingly complex arrangements (poppy Jim O'Rourke meets frenetic but consonant contemporary classical)"
Nuvo

"Hi Red Center's music is a bit out there, with wild guitars, barbershop quartet-like compounded vocals, and seemingly randomness when it comes to instrumentation, these guys have a very interesting but equally refreshing sound."
FensePost

"...hypnotic bass lines into careening shards of electric guitar, faint chiming bells and monotone voices that sound like the work of a lobotomized choir. To say that Brooklyn-based Hi Red Center unites these sounds would be inaccurate. Instead, it's a constant collision, like someone repeatedly trying to put that square peg in the round whole. Is it good? That depends on one's threshold for the odd."
Bradenton Herald / Orlando Sentinel

"This album glitters and sparkles. It's a hall of mirrors where you occasionally get pissed off, tripping up, but ultimately exhilarated by the jarringly fun tour. Track six it grew on my like the rash on my neck: give me Chicken Gorlet anytime because this song is brilliantly addictive."
Diskant

"Assemble isn't just another generic pop album... it might be best described as...calmly schizophrenic. Some of the band's instrumentation is herky-jerky to be certain (involving some peculiar time signatures)...but at other times the music is extremely smooth, soothing, and melodic.... Modern art pop from a different perspective."
babysue

"Hi Red Center's new album, Assemble is either genius or atrocious depending on your state of mind... When dosed to the gills on an excess of dextramethorphan, [Hi Red Center] are awesome and the most inventive band you will ever listen to."
Have You Heard

"Grinding finely experimental pop, math-and art-rock in an intriguing cha know much of organized chaos, the band stars and stripes ventures between syncopated melodies, harmonic changes and sudden conclusions about thirty-five minutes of almost musical territories of Captain Beefheart and Deerhoof."
Kronic (Finland)

"Take an instrumental quartet, mash it up and you'll get the vibrating strings of an electric guitar, a vibraphone, unpredictable drums and elfen chorus vocals. This is Hi Red Center - a band touring its second album, "Assemble," with a trunk of songs about Frisbees, obscure addresses and contracting cars. It's quirky as hell with harmonizing vocals and layers of mathematical, electronic sound that weaves in and out of coordination; while staying in control, the music seems often on the verge of falling apart. In such instances, it cools, slows down a little, and then again explodes in a playful crescendo."
New City Music

"Due to the nature of what Hi Red Center do, it's easy to recognise that they are a team of likeminded souls, who clearly have an interest in doing something different. The reality is, however, that sadly no matter how many attempts you give it, Hi Red Center's Assemble simply sounds horrible. In fact, it borders on unlistenable."
Wireless Bollinger (Australia)

"Coming across like a post-rock Beefheart, Hi Red Center, play spiky difficult songs, with stop start middles and weird lyrical twists, the fact they also have a melodic heart only adds to the fun to be had on their latest album "Assemble" which features nine compositions amongst its infectious grooves. Think Todd Rundgren jamming with Deerhoof and you may be somewhere close."
Terrascopic

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