Booking Info

Territory: Europe
Agent: Mark
Touring: March 2012, Europe (Shadows Of Forgotten Ancestors) + July 2012 (festivals)
Links: official site / LM-Duplication

Biography

Started as a solo project in 2000 by accordionist and drummer Jeremy Barnes (former member of indie rock legends Neutral Milk Hotel) and named after a line in Cervantes’ Don Quixote, A Hawk and A Hacksaw became a duo in 2004 when Barnes met violinist Heather Trost. The pair began an adventure that took them to Budapest, Hungary where they lived for two years and met/toured with some of the region’s finest folk musicians, as well as countless US & European tours both on their own and with big names including Portishead, Calexico and fellow New Mexico resident Beirut (whose Gulag Orkestar album they performed on and helped bring to wider attention). Joined by an ever expanding and contracting line-up of musicians, AHAAH seeks to create and document an ecstatic sound much like the village bands of old, with the communal aspect of folk tradition and musicianship the key factor.

Latest album Cervantine is the first release on their brand new label, L.M. Dupli-cation. This is the finest document of this band’s roving spirit yet: the record that gloriously connects their fascination with the folk and gypsy groups of former Yugoslavia, Greece and Romania to their original base in the desert plains of the American Southwest. Upon moving back to the US after their adventures in Eastern Europe, AHAAH recorded Cervantine live at their studio in Albuquerque between two domestic tours. There is a tone and a swagger about these recordings that points to the band’s total fluency within their own special, self-carved musical language: the vibrant sound of an American band whose geographical and cultural travels have come to bear on their already distinctive music, to unique and dazzling effect. Cervantine is where AHAAH really take flight.

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

AHAAH are also currently preparing their first live soundtrack, a brand new rescore of legendary Russian director Sergei Paradjanov’s classic film Shadows Of Forgotten Ancestors. Mixing folklore, sorcery and religious symbolism, the film tells the age old tale of a peasant’s love and loss set high up in the Carpathian mountains. For the last decade AHAAH have immersed themselves deeply in folk culture, with the colour, grandeur and gut-wrenching romance of their music an attempt to eulogise the fragile traditions of Eastern Europe, Russia and the Middle East. Their music offers the perfect complement to Parajadnov’s epic tale.

Press Quotes

“So ebullient and full of character that by the time it’s over you feel like you’ve caught a glimpse of the type of joyful festivity that always feels most rewarding after a long journey” – Pitchfork

“A cheerfully exuberant fusion based around Hungarian instrumental style, but including a bit of everything, from a Greek melody to echoes of Mexican Mariachi brass and what sounds like a rhythmic off-kilter funeral march that would impress Tom Waits” – The Guardian

Tour Dates

Videos