Bull of Heaven
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Okay, so... for this one, you'll want to change the .mp3's extension to .rar, then extract the new .mp3, change its extension to .rar, and so forth. You'll have to extract and rename something like 50 files altogether. Possibly more. I stopped counting. They're kinda big, too, so it'll take a while. Make some cocoa. Eventually, you'll come across a password protected .exe, whose extension you'll need to change to .mp3, once you guess the password.
—Clayton Counts, on some newly released material
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Bull of Heaven is what might loosely be called a noise band, a duo consisting of Neil Keener and Clayton Counts, the latter of whom maintains the band's Facebook page. The band is notable for producing songs of epic length as well as for the varied output they produce (up to and including releases minus music).
Bull of Heaven provides examples of the following tropes:
- Deadpan Snarker: Clayton is, if his Facebook postings are any indication. The fans join in, too.
- Did Not Do the Research: One article referred to them as "Bowl of Heaven".
- Doing It for the Art: To the point where the band releases their material into the public domain.
- Epic Rocking: There really is no other way to say it when pieces of over an hour constitute their shorter material. Bull of Heaven holds the record for the longest released song[1], namely "n" (song 287), which runs for 87,708,958,333,333 hours, 53 minutes, 20 seconds. That song's filesize is 1.3 zetabytes.
- Hidden Track: In spades. In the directory for downloading files, there are several folders listed as untitled# where # is a number. Inside these are tracks not listed on the main site player.
- Indecipherable Lyrics: When there are lyrics at all, they're usually this.
- Long Title: The duo likes to do this to much of their library, e.g.:
- "I Watched You Enter Your Home from Inside a Dumpster"
- The aforementioned "Like a Wall in Which an Insect Lives and Gnaws"
- "A Strife of Interests Masquerading as a Contest of Principles"
- The untitled pieces, with alphanumeric filenames.
- Playing Against Type: While Of What Far Sea Upon What Unknown Ground is less than five minutes long, it still fits the Bull of Heaven drone rock theme. However, I Watched You Enter Your Home From Inside A Dumpster is not only short (at 7 minutes), it's a simple piano piece. While the band is best known for their extremely repetitive, stripped-down, unproduced sound, A Feeling for the Order Lying Behind the Appearance is an intricate avant-garde jazz piece using many instruments and production techniques.
- Spoken Word in Music: A Beautiful Dog, Become Smaller and Smaller, For Idle Dreams of Things Which Cannot Be.
- Textless Album Cover: Usually averted, but played straight starting with "And the Bones and the Sinews Were Polished by the Wear".
- Three Chords and the Truth: Well, more like just three chords and some variation, with Return of Ghost Sheriff (Werewolves Are Chasing Me). However, it doesn't quite fit, as it's still 43 minutes long.
- Voice of the Legion: Be Not Daunted Thereby, Nor Terrified, Nor Awed.
- ↑ While there are some longer songs, e.g. "Longplayer", these are not downloadable or otherwise obtainable songs, but rather live performances.