BETA Records - Your music matters!

Continuities of time and space are disrupted in a heart beat by the weight of a Higher Than Pope composition. One second you are late 60's retro and then next avant-garde progressive rock. There appears to be a genre warp as the HTP black hole collapses genre after genre, with none appear to escape unscathed.

Fans say:
"wow you are really interesting and original sounding. I am listening. you are whacked in a good way....I am listening."
"I think your song "new beast" is some kind of masterpiece. I like the raw attitude in your sound."
"I think you have the leading edge in music..very captivating...even more awesome through the phones took me to a higher plane!"
"'Wow!' I just had my ears assaulted and my mind fried simply by listening to a few tracks of this aural crack. Thank god a soft guitar jumped from the speakers just in time to let me sop up the blood dripping from my brain - very Hitchcockian! Then back into the hunt! Good to find a soul behind the sonic mayhem! And a lovely one at that."

Although primarily a guitar band, HTP have no qualms about snipping bits from multiple genres and splicing the results together. HTP are not big on songs that evolve so slowly you fall asleep between intro and verse. Instead they practice revolution and from one moment to the next you have no idea what may transpire next as you are catapulted from one sonic event to another.


Fans can grab some of their faves by picking up the EO EP (10 songs). Use the link below to grab the EP! http:// www.soundclick.com/pope Play It Like You Mean It! Although the recent cd, Gustav's Guitars, is classical music, Higher Than Pope are a guitar band. They have been vaguely styled in overheard conversations as Beatles meets Neil Young meets The Doors, however that seems misplaced to my thinking. They seem more a mix of rhythmic and often syncopated pop guitar alternative. Being a guitar band, Higher Than Pope are more prone to commiting the usual heinous pop/rock sorts of guitar mischief. However. this go round HTP appear to be paying homage to both Guitars and Gustav Mahler. If you have ever wondered how some of your favorite classical music would sound if you changed some of the instruments in the orchestra out as guitar, bass and drums, then this is the album for you. Gustav's Guitars is definitely more Mahler than Emerson, Lake and Palmer. They did not abandon the strings. They did add some amp. They also added some very delicious sounding acoustic guitars--massively moving electric guitar and some of the bass passages are truly tremendous.

There is a story behind the band. There is a story in front of the band. The band originally went by Pope but someone else released a CD first under that name, so....
Higher Than Pope are primarily a guitar band. Much of their work depends primarily on syncopated rhythms and guitar. Most of the songs are bouncy and musically upbeat. HTP history starts back in the early 60's but gels when Pope took music theory in High School and later at the University of Utah. So much for theory. Gustav's Guitars was released as a side project in mid 2006. Another CD, EO, is expected in mid 2008 since the vocal tracks are not ready at this point. You can get a preview (sans vocals) of the instrumental versions by going to the online store and getting EO (Instrumental Version).