Amps For Christ

Henry Barnes, based in Claremont, California and previously a member of sludge metal/hardcore legends Man Is the Bastard plus their harsh noise offshoot Bastard Noise, spearheaded the electronic primitivist project Amps for Christ. The endeavor served as a vehicle for Barnes’ fascination with polyethnic folk traditions and faux-Celtic mysticism while distinguishing itself through reliance on custom-built guitars and electronics, often with help from occasional collaborators such as vocalist Tara Tikkitavi, percussionist Joel Connell, and Enid Snarb, who may have been an alias for Barnes himself. A handful of early cassette releases on the lo-fi tape label Shrimper in the mid-’90s marked the beginning; thereafter the project continued issuing new volumes of sound and staging sporadic performances across the following years. Standout recordings from the first decade or so comprise the 1995 debut Plains of Alluvial, 1997’s Thorny Path, 1999’s Circuits, 2000’s Electrosphere, 2001’s Oak in the Ashes, 2004’s People at Large, and 2006’s Every Eleven Seconds. By the middle of the 2000s, leading figures in the burgeoning freak folk meta-movement hailed Amps for Christ as an obscure yet pivotal forerunner to that period’s damaged folk textures. Animal Collective selected Barnes and associates to open a short West Coast tour in 2006. Recognition from a later generation persisted via Amps for Christ’s appearance on an RRR Records box set of California noise artists in 2008 and a collaborative split LP with Brooklyn communal folk-rockers Woods in 2012. Shrimper released Canyons Cars and Crows in 2014, Barnes’ first collection of wholly new, exclusively Amps for Christ material in over seven years. A limited vinyl reissue of Plains of Alluvial followed in 2017.