Heavenly Bodes, The - Green Hills

Green Hills is the sun-warped debut album from Cornish four-piece, The Heavenly Bodes.

Recorded on reel-to-reel in a friend’s living room between trips to the beach, it features a collection of lo-fi garage-psych numbers that vary in feel – sometimes twisting and erratic, sometimes sedated and meandering – but all drenched in tape hiss and left out on the pebbles to dry. These are salad-days dreams of escapism melting under the summer sun, evoking the clammy rooms from which they came.

Emerging from South Cornwall’s grassroots psych scene – through various chance encounters at Kernowbeat (formerly Kernow Psych Society) shows in Falmouth – The Heavenly Bodes channel a shared love of classic 60s acid-garage into something immediate and intimate, and specifically rooted in the here and now of the West Coast cornucopia they call home. Fully self-produced, it captures the band’s loose, unpolished spirit – landing somewhere between scrappy garage-rock abandon and woozy Velvets cool. It’s the sound of jangly surf riffs, hard-hitting bass grooves and hazy organ dissolving into the salty sea air.

On the record, the Heavenly Bodes write: “Green Hills was lovingly recorded during the infamous Swanpool heatwave of July 2025. Live tracked into an 8 (occasionally 7) track whilst clad in straw hats and tanning oils, the album is a testament to the clearly adequate cooling systems of the Fostex R-8. Recorded and mixed by our very own Fin Wilson, resident caretaker of central Penryn. With thanks to Eggland and neighbours, Jack & co. at Fuzz Club and countless others. Please enjoy responsibly.”