

Discover more from DESTROY ALL DESTROYERS
Summer is here. The kids are out of school and laying around the house like there is a carbon monoxide leak. My wife and I are both working from home (she’s in grad school too), and now we are are passing Covid around like it’s a candy dish at a holiday mixer. Three out of five of us have it as of this writing. Other than being unusually tired and congested, we seem to have a pretty mild case and are grateful for our vaccines and the fact that we’ve managed to dodge it until now.
When only a couple of were testing positive, I had been isolating for a few days in my basement sleeping on the floor next to my music gear. I figured I’d take time to design an album cover for a track I’d been sitting on for a while. I had intended on this one being part of a full album I’ve been slowly chipping away at. I guess I’m feeling impatient and found some visual inspiration that made me want to see it go out into the world.
I actually created this track pre-pandemic. For a while I was using a Roland RC-505 loop station (which I no longer own), using it to make my own samples and recording other sounds around the house. I pulled in a drone loop from a cassette I had made and some short wave radio sounds and did a few improvisational takes.
For a while I actually didn’t like it. I think I could hear myself trying to figure my process out, and didn’t like how exposing it felt. After putting it away for a year or so, I stopped hearing whatever it was I heard before. I don’t even remember now. I had also been listening to a ton of other experimental music and now it just sounded like music I already wanted to hear. Maybe after more time I’ll have more insight, and perhaps can articulate the connection between the album art and the audio. For now I just like the juxtaposition of the sounds and textures, and that it’s a bit disjointed and somehow it still all works together.
They say that comedy is merely tragedy plus time. Art often follows a similar dramatic arc, and the maker just needs to get away from it for a while in order to see it for what it is.
You can download the track here:
Visual work for sale
I have a few pieces available for purchase that were just shown in the PhonoMorphoIdiot exhibition at ANTI-AESTHETIC back in May. I’ve not put these up on my shop just yet.
These are pretty small works and the panel is actually mounted on a natural wood frame about 1.5” deep, so they sit off the wall a bit. I made these during the winter and spring of 2022. I wanted to create a set of small objects that contained pretty simple drawings around the idea of communication that gets muddled, confused, mispelled or relies on image in place of text as language.
If you are interested in any of them, please shoot me a reply and we will handle the transaction via Paypal. If you are local to Eugene, I will hand-deliver (after I’m Covid-free). If you are out of town I’ll tag shipping onto the cost.