We know, we know…it’s been a long time coming, but just in time for summer, Deception Island is back in the game with four immense jawns from some of our fave going concerns!
DI35: Quicksails Silver Balloons in Clusters c40
Few artists have played a more central role in the recent explosion of high-quality, chops-posi experimental outfits in Chicago than Ben Billington, jammer’s jammer, chinese takeout connoisseur, and member of Tiger Hatchery (with Mike Forbes and Andrew Scott Young) and White Prism (with Josh Burke). With Silver Balloons in Clusters, his most fully realized solo outing since last year’s brilliant Madison Lakes (Cylindrical Habitat Modules), Quicksails has completely fused the finest aspects of everything Billington brings to the table in his other projects, and his highly idiosyncratic synth style finds its natural and inevitable foil in his own drumming.
Tracks like “Must Never Catch It” and “Home in Trees” evoke an alternate history in which time ran backwards for just long enough to permit Milford Graves to blast Departure from the Northern Wasteland on headphones while tracking drums for Black Woman, while “Constant Air Reservoir” and “Deep Creak” stake out a thoroughly subterranean aesthetic turf, filled with the humid whisper of microorganisms describing their favorite hollow earth haunts to buried Lee Perry reels and the hypnotizing throb of jeweled pipe organs encircling a hypothetical ideal pineal gland. On the far side of the core, the unreservedly beautiful closer “A Million Knots” unspools like an impossible Spiegel/Dinger sesh on an infinite subway platform. Silver Balloons in Clusters is a bar-raiser from one of the most deeply rewarding projects going in the contemporary post-electroacoustic underground. It’s majestic in its scope and dazzling in its intricate patternedness, at once liquid, gestural, organic, and absolutely essential.
Hand-numbered edition of 200.
DI36: Night Burger What Happens Next? c36
Since he landed in Philly a couple years back, Noah Anthony of Social Junk has participated in a dizzying number of warped units, including Mirror Men, Mindless Attack, the late Form a Log, and of course Night Burger, solo vehicle for his virtuosic command of postdub/postjunk technique in the service of a stunningly bleak, utterly forlorn, and eerily refined agenda. That this project, which has cultivated a well-earned reputation for prolific and mind-erasingly intense live performances remains sparsely represented in terms of studio recordings makes an immaculately structured album-length release such as this one particularly special.
What Happens Next? gets lurching with a slo-mo jackhammer riff that hits like a thousand telephone switchboards getting sucked into a neutron star. Anthony’s vocal persona is hollowed-out and resigned, a terrifying shell of the dosed everyman angle worked in SJ. The A side progresses through dessicated combo organ perc of “Profligate”, wrapped in tick, melt, and whisper, to the keening rust belt-style reedwave, iq-annihilating bass drops, and bucket brigade gurgle of “As Always,” “You Drive” and “My Turn to Hide”. On the reverse, “What Happens Next (Dross)” transforms the numbing bonecrunch impact of the original into a sick thud/clatter beneath a frigid organ riff, while “Settlement” stretches into epic territory, an unintelligible interior monologue dissolving in a stiff bleach solution amid a hail of highway flares, giving way to a muted psychedelia of the hyperclean factory sort, surprisingly not unrelated to a plausible interpretation of, say, early Chain Reaction recs. Phenomenal.
Hand-numbered edition of 200.
DI37: Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman Advanced Dungeons and Dragons c30
Ryan Kuehn is as total an enigma as they come, and is probably more responsible than any other individual for the persistence of Cleveland’s status as a hub of utter strangeness, between his long-term stewardship of “The Record Exchange”, a nosebleed haven for human/audio fuckery and deep afterhours gurgle on WCSB, and Thursday Club, his collaboration with Brian Detrow, which spent the early oughts mapping much of the territory within which an ensuing wave of northern Ohio fuckups, from Fragments to Moth Cock, would operate. In that sense, Thursday Club’s DNA is woven every bit as deeply into the Cleveland aesthetic as that of Skin Graft or Tusco Terror, and despite the name, Ryan’s solo recordings as Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman hew much more closely to the psychedelic free electronics and mossy synth throb of TC than, say, the righteously pointed misanthropy of Hot Air Balloon Ride (with John Elliott), the thousand-yard-starin’ tape zonkery of The Reel Deel (with John Elliott and Chris Madak), or the negative-wavecrust hose blast of DPI (with Wyatt Howland, Amanda Howland, and J Guy Laughlin).
While prior DQMW jawns have flaunted their opacity and insiders-only scruples, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons simply shrugs, pulls back the curtain, and takes out the trash. As effective and consistently surprising a cereal box decoder ring as any in Kuehn’s vast ouerve, it’s a rare opportunity to stagger your way across a hypercube tumbling through the ether, sipping nectar through a straw in a storm of mercury droplets (“D20″), passing out on the deck of a heavily filigreed hovercraft (“Soloflex”), wrapping your head around Salvia Jaws (“Vin Diesel”), spraying tar from a whipped cream can (“Suburban Blaster”), and waking up on a screwy plateau on the edge of time, where a drop of water takes eight hours to roll down your face (“Keyless Entry”). …and that’s just side A, with the reverse taking in the GRMmy hamminess of “Fortune Cookie”, the zonked/dissociated lesswave of “Coin Toss”, the glassy, celestial glide of “Sub-Zero”, and the bleary, tumbling wool-fi minimalism of “Room Temp Beer.” Extra fucked classic rust belt basement tapecult aesthetic. One for the true heads.
Hand-numbered edition of 150.
DI38: Alterity Problem / Outer Space split c26.
Bonkers split concept: Alterity Problem, the Montreal-based duo of lifer oddballs Alex Moskos (also of AIDS Wolf, Drainolith, Thames, and The Medicine Rocks) and cryptic associate Joel Taylor turn in a suite of extra-damaged jams about kids, heaters, and problems, these titular concerns reflecting a certain noirish surrealism and a slightly outre pose–both very much present in the audible payload–that distinguish Alterity Problem from their most obvious contemporaries. Sometimes it’s like a Matra 12″ heard through a wheelbarrow of pills and six miles of bulletproof glass; other times it’s like spinning d-beat recs under general anaesthesia. Sometimes there are oddly, immensely satisfying syndrums in all the right/wrong places.
The flip finds John Elliott (of Emeralds, Mist, and many others) back on DI with a fresh side of Outer Space tracks that work a polished, high-impact aesthetic angle very distinct from the decaying hyperabstraction of last year’s massive Lightyear Demonstrations while continuing to radiate the same throughgoing trippiness and post/antihuman drive. First, “Aspartame” materializes from a glowing sandstorm of synth and vocals, coalescing into one of the most dazzling and aqueous examples of Elliott’s signature endlessly unfurling klein bottle riffstyle to date. The ensuing nine minutes of this piece display a mastery of the “Dusseldorf style” of building deceptively intricate, episodic tracks on metronomic backbones, as claustrophobia and a sense of awakening to the reality of being chased by something superfucked gradually dawns, only to give way to an epic sunrise over a desert of ash and bleached bones. The finale, “USA Endless” (dark commentary?) has hung around long enough to see all inclination toward propulsion surgically removed. We’re floating six inches off the ground, in the driveway with the doors open, engine running, and wheels spinning endlessly, far too fucked to do anything other than sit back and watch the dash boil while sunlight falls like iridescent jelly on the seats. Extra weird.
Hand-numbered edition of 300.
Materials:
DI35-38 are pro-dubbed on the same BASF chrome stock used for every Deception Island release since DI15, with imprinted clear/clear shells, packaged in crystal polys with pink glitter spine detail and full-color prints on 80# matte coated card.
Pricing and Ordering:
DI35-38 are available for $8 postpaid in North America, $10 rest-of-world. Retail orders are filled on a first-come, first-served basis and shipped via USPS First Class/First Class International, typically within two business days of cleared payment. PayPal (to orders@deception-island.com) is currently the preferred means of payment.
Please email to confirm availability prior to ordering; an emailed inquiry secures your place in the queue as orders are filled. Also, please try to avoid submitting inquiries via a message board or social network; these may not be factored into the queue in a timely fashion.
Wholesale rates are, of course, available. Please email for terms.
Contact:
We’re in the midst of changing up how we handle this stuff, so as some of you may have observed above, the preferred address for payment and order-related inquiries is now:
orders@deception-island.com
For the time being, payment may also be sent to bee.mask@gmail.com as in the past. The mailing list is still being sent from that address to avoid some sort of hypothetical spam filter trainwreck.
If you’re not on a mailing listy tip, you can also get new release announcements via:
http://www.twitter.com/editions_DI
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Thanks!