SUPER HI-FI Turns Classic Christmas Songs Into Reggae!

A Christmas album for people who hate Christmas albums? Maybe, but we're guessing that even those who take their holiday cheer without a dose of irony will find plenty to love here as well. Brimming with analog tape delays, echoing trombones, and dubbed-out reggae and ska beats, Yule Analog is Christmas music like you've never heard it before- dressing the soaring melodies of classics like "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" and "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" in shimmery new clothes.

Super Hi-Fi's second album after 2013's widely acclaimed "Dub To The Bone" (Electric Cowbell Records), "Yule Analog" (November 25th, 2014) might seem like an odd choice of material for a follow-up. But cue up the first track, a rollicking and reverb-drenched ride through "We Three Kings", and it's immediately clear that the Brooklyn-based band has brought the same brash creativity that led the New York Music Daily to call their first album 'Reggae Album of the Year' and the New York Daily News to pick it as the #1 album of the week. Where last time the five piece, trombone-centered band updated the sound of Jamaican dub and reggae with original compositions, this time Super Hi-Fi has updated classic Christmas songs with their own sound. "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" gets a loose, New Orleans-by-way-of-Kingston groove, "Go Tell It On the Mountain" twists a UK steppers vibe around some percussive twists and turns, and on "Little Drummer Boy" Jon Lipscomb's searing guitar solo nods toward Jimi Hendrix's classic version before blasting firmly into outer space. "Yule Analog," the album's lone original song and the title track, is described by bassist and bandleader Ezra Gale as a musical depiction of the yule log burning on TV.

In addition to Gale and Lipscomb, Super Hi-Fi is rounded out by trombonists Rick Parker (9 Volt, Little Worlds) and Alex Asher (John Brown's Body) and drummer Madhu Siddappa (Dub Is A Weapon). A fixture in the fertile and creative Brooklyn music scene since 2010, the band has shared stages at New York venues like Brooklyn Bowl, the Mercury Lounge and Zebulon with bands ranging from Rubblebucket to Beats Antique and John Brown's Body. Gale says the idea for a Super Hi-Fi Christmas album quickly morphed from a lark to a creative endeavor. "As soon as I started digging into these songs I realized that while we've all maybe heard them too much in our lives, they're all beautiful melodies. So I really got into writing arrangements that brought something new out of them while being respectful at the same time," he says. That challenge was met, and then some, on "Yule Analog"- and the title's 'Vol. 1' is perhaps a hint that this won't be the last time, either.

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