In 2003, The Hanging Garden were sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These four beings, built by the United States Army, promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the New York City underground. Today, still wanted by the government (and the INS), they survive as soldiers of fortune, with the sole purpose of bringing good music to the New York City streets.
A GUILTY PLEASURE
THROUGH THE EYES OF NEW YORK WRITER, WESTON BERG
In early March of 1799, while enjoying breakfast in a cozy Parisian bistro, immortal French dramatist, Pierre Augustin de Caron Beaumarchais was challenged by a friend to employ the clumsy, restrictive shackles of the English language in describing the eclectic musical stylings of Brooklyns The Hanging Garden. As the story goes, the withered old sage opened his mouth, dipped his head pensively to one side, shuddered in disgust, stammered something loud yet unintelligible, and then went silent for several minutes. When asked again by his persistent companion, the playwright contorted his face violently, as if attempting to wrap his quivering lips around a volatile thought that had long been imprisoned within his prodigious skull but now yearned for freedom. Beaumarchais collapsed in a paroxysm of emotion, rolling across the floor in a silent rage, and spit percolating from the pursed corners of his mouth. His body eventually stiffening like dried Play-doh, save for some isolated twitching. As he lay there on the dusty floor of the bistro, unable to move, the stricken writer had this to say about The Hanging Garden: "I'd sooner devour my own grandchildren than suffer their heretical ravings." Hours later he died of consumption, but not without The Hanging Gardens debut album, Animated Machines thrumming softly from a rusty phonograph on his nightstand, just inches away from his cold whiskered eardrum. Though some question the veracity of the famous story, arguing, correctly, that it would be a century before Thomas Edison even invented the phonograph, Beaumarchais didn't care; his furtive love for The Hanging Garden was far too great.
THE HANGING GARDEN: AN ABSTRACT
The origin of The Hanging Garden and the tale of its coalescence are no less remarkable. The Reverend Johnny McAuliffe, a Nerf-skinned, C-section baby, born out of wedlock to Irish immigrants, ran away from home at the tender age of 2 in what originally had been intended as a clever suicide attempt. Sometimes even something as simple as lighting oneself on fire and climbing into a propane-filled kangaroo pouch doesn't turn out exactly as one would expect. One large explosion and countless fiery hops later, Johnny was lost in God's Country, hawking his sonic wares to whoever would listen, but finding only overstuffed scarecrows and second-generation sock puppets. One night, in the infinitesimal dark quantum of space, two electrons collided while, simultaneously, at some other equally nebulous point, Johnny met Phil Gold; a fuzzy eunuch with a head full of sparkling ideas but born, tragically, without a tongue. Magic was proliferated; moderate success was won; but fame eluded the precocious troubadours.
On one of their habitual Sunday evening crusades through the Nutmeg State, a jeweled chalice was found. The disembodied soul of Derek Morse could be seen hovering through a pumpkin patch, sustaining life by ingesting the flesh picked off of the skeleton of something once large but now dead. In between bites of the fetid carcass, Derek would run a wooden mallet across the ribcage of the expired animal to amuse himself. It sounded good, and showed promise. Phil and Johnny put their heads together and found the soul a body, in more ways than one. Thump! Pow! Crash! Pupils fully dilated, the triumvirate deemed themselves The Hanging Garden, as was the fashion at the time; but kept a sharp eye out for the final cable that would tether their cumbersome bones to the clouds. This wasn't your average everyday drum & bugle corp, and no one else seemed to appreciate this fact more than the curvaceous Samy Astolfi, bass player to the stars and keeper of the Necronomicon. The ground shook, the sky opened up, thunder, lightning, and so on and so forth.
The foursome's debut album, Animated Machines, released on NYC indie label Go For Broke Records, offers a high-energy, philosophical excursion of emotion and art; drawing inspiration from the DIY ethic, and blending the old scene with the influences of Brooklyn.
