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Eternal Tapestry - “Wholeodome” download at INTOTHEWOODS.TV. Heavy, post-weed drone from their new record, out 6/12 on ThrillJockey (Taken with Instagram at Medical Marijuana Clinic).

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Feels Like Home #45: Death Songs

Directed by Hannah Gregg Camera by Hannah Gregg, Rodrigo Melgarejo, Jaclyn Campanaro, and Mike Elliott Audio by Jeff Hylton Simmons Words by Jaclyn Campanaro

Apart from the recording equipment, everything inside the tiny one-bedroom house seems to be decades old and made of wood. Dried flowers hang in garlands from the walls and there’s no computer or TV in sight. The few indicators of modernity harmonize with the rustic milieu: an 8-foot-tall logging saw stands in the corner behind the drum kit, a Rolling Stones record crackles along with the wood-burning stove, someone taps out the first few notes of “Seven Nation Army” on the crumbling ancient piano…

The anachronistic character of the space reflects the music being made within it.Death Songs began as the folksy side-project of The Shaky Hands singer Nick Delffs but has evolved into a louder, more intense full-time collaboration with drummer Justin Power. Their music doesn’t quite feel like it belongs in this era, yet doesn’t sound like it could have come from any other. “I want to make music for the time I’m in, but I don’t really identify with a specific modern genre,” Nick explains. He cites soul and gospel as having inspired a conscious shift in process away from penning personal melodrama toward tackling more broadly-relatable themes.

But “Ophelia,” a song about a suicidal friend showing up in a dream as the eponymous character from Shakespeare, was written in the early stages of this transformation and it remains deeply personal. It’s an ominous procession driven by percussive Wurlitzer with drums marching lockstep behind and lyrics cloaked in megaphone reverb. Low groans of dissonant electric guitar are banged out at the bridge, foreshadowing a break in the tense, ordered restraint. The song swirls into a climactic solo before ending suddenly, its narrator presumably waking up in a sweat.

The music’s tightly-wound energy, all pent-up and barreling toward an unclear resolution, conveys the sense of anxiety and cognitive dissonance Nick feels he shares with its tragic character: “This past year has been the hardest, the most work, the saddest, and also the best, most joyous and rewarding time in my life,” Nick says in reference to the difficulties inherent in balancing a disciplined musical practice with new fatherhood. “[But] it kind of opens your mind up to how much you’re capable of feeling, and I want to try to convey that spectrum of emotion. I’m not interested in tunnel vision anymore.”

It’s little surprise that with the maturation of the man comes maturation of the music, and the ongoing metamorphosis is reflected in the trajectory the song has taken. The version that appears on the self-titled 10” bears little resemblance to the version we’re seeing today. “I recorded it right after I wrote it so I feel like I didn’t really know the song yet… It seems crazy now but it almost had like a Flamenco style to it. But because the subject is so dark I was having trouble playing it even though I was enjoying the lyrics,” continues Nick. “So I changed the tempo and time signature and it kept evolving and we ended up with this great intensity. It’s really kind of folky but it turned into a rock song.”

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Far From Home #23: YACHT

Directed and Edited by Hannah Gregg Produced by Chris Cantino Camera by Hannah Gregg, Steve Wyshywaniuk, Rodrigo Melgarejo, Jaclyn Campanaro Color Grading by Tyler Kohlhoff Audio Mixing by Jeff Hylton Simmons Audio Engineering by Jeff Hylton Simmons, Mike Elliott, Andrew Grosse

Having scouted Beaverton’s Laserport for several months and refusing pitch after pitch to film an artist in that space, we were starting think that a shoot there wasn’t in the cards. But when we found out that YACHT was playing a homecoming show in Portland, everything came together. And better yet, they already had plans to film a special episode for Morgan Spurlock’s new series, A Day in the Life. I emailed Jona Bechtolt, and 48 hours later, the band had flown in from LAX and we were hauling their gear into Laserport.

If shooting in a dark, blacklight laser tag arena with tons of amped kids running around and top-40 techno remixes bumping between takes wasn’t challenging enough, imagine jamming Spurlock’s entire crew in there with us as they filmed us filming. It was weird and stressful, but that’s the point. For a behind the scenes look at this shoot, you can watch the entire A Day in the Life episode on Hulu.

Follow YACHT (the band, the business, the belief system) through Europe as they continue to tour behind the post-post-apocalyptic utopia that is 2011’s Shangri-La

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Temporarily Inducted at Xhurch

By Alieta Herrera-Train

This week, Portland art space Xhurch is hosting a residency of pilgrims from L.A.’s Signify, Sanctify, Believe (SSB). Blurring the lines between art, spirituality, and individualism, SSB refers to themselves as a “semi-secular artist collective invested in the gentle, temporary, playful exploration of semi-fictional religious technologies.” Now in the middle of a week-long embarkation upon spiritually-directed workshops, sermons, and services, the collective has publicly offered to temporarily initiate visitors into their “order of creative spiritual experimentation and sanctified dabbling.” Sincerely curious, and admittedly a bit of a tourist, I attended Wednesday’s open house in hopes of garnering a genuine experience.

Walking up to Xhurch, I was greeted by two women sunbathing next to a banner inviting the public to attend their open house. I walked into the day-lit church, which is rented by Portlander Matt Henderson and his creative associates. From a small kitchen posted up in the corner of the room, I can see him sitting on a pew in front of Xhurch’s reimagined altar.

As their first guest of the day, Matt greeted me immediately and congratulated me for taking a risk by trying something new, saying that he wanted to reward me for that. I thought out loud in response to him, “Well, isn’t everything a risk?” He smiled, offering me a hair cleanse and scalp massage, which I gratefully accepted. While Matt prepared the water, I laid back on a long bench and tried to make myself comfortable, settling my neck onto the edge of a bowl at the end of the bench.

As he began to let a temperate stream flow back and forth along my hairline, I was asked to think of the last time I took a risk and was rewarded for it. As the scalp massage began, I listened to the music and began to drift off, my mind wandering to the times I’ve taken risks and how they’ve backfired. I thought that this time may have been the first that I was rewarded for the simple act of taking a risk, as opposed to the risk resulting in success or failure by its natural process.

After the relaxing massage, Matt then asked if he could “spritz” me with some holy water from Lake Shasta. He dipped his finger in the water and marked on my face; a line from my nose to my hairline, underneath both eyes and across both eyebrows. As he handed me a towel and I squeezed the excess water out of my hair, I felt very comfortable and at ease. Matt then invited me to do choose from two options: take a cat nap on a nearby bed, or have a 5-10 minute listening session. We agreed to go straight to listening session and sat cross-legged on a pillow across from each other.

Matt quickly got me to talking about who I am and how I am doing. Feeling comfortable sharing with him, I started rambling about how I recently quit four jobs. Assuming I sounded like a workaholic, which I can be at times, I began to explain how the transition has been positive and removed much unnecessary stress from my life. He asked me if I tend to speak up when something is bothering me, or if I wait until I can’t handle it anymore and have outbursts, admitting about himself that “it’s very hard to upset me, so if I do get upset, I assume it’s the other person’s fault because it doesn’t happen very often.” Looking as peaceful as he suggested, Matt talked briefly about some of the “out of body experiences” he’s had since SSB arrived, how their pilgrimage brought new energy and exercises to the group, and the ways in which everyone was learning from each other. Matt then he introduced me to SSB’s Library of Sacred Technologies reading room, containing many “sacred texts” that were on display for the residency.

These texts, zine-style publications of varying interest— having a quality of science fiction in the stories and subjects they discussed— were brilliant, engaging, and thoughtful; as creative as they were inspired. One described electromagnetic machinery with healing powers. Another cataloged various fictional religions and lifestyles, such as a religion of people who just wear high heels and drink red wine, the Bowl-Cut Religion, and even a religion of telling stories that end with “You had to be there!” Skimming through helped me make sense of the environment, idea, and good humor of it all.

I hung out for a while and met more of the SSB community and then bowed out before their evening service began. I don’t claim to have received the whole SSB experience, but my time at Xhurch was rewarding, intimate, and not intimidating at all. In some ways its residents are the most normal people I’ve ever met, comforting and openly aware of life’s curious oddities. If you haven’t been down to Xhurch before, I highly suggest you at least get your hair cleansed this week. Or check out their show tonight with Grape God and Pulse Emitter. Tell Matt some secrets, or anything at all, and check out the SSB Library. There is nothing more settling than non-threatening Q & A with a stranger— it’s the sort of thing that can lead to an out of body experience. You know, just very normal things.

A schedule of this week’s events is available at Xhurch.net. Xhurch is located at 4550 NE 20th Avenue in Portland, Or.

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The Donut Man

By Chris Cantino

In the early 90’s, my mother took me to several entertainment events designed to evangelize and indoctrinate kids like me into Christianity. These were full-scale productions, touring the church and school circuit across the country, performing for packed houses of families on a regular basis. There was Colby’s Clubhouse, hosted by a Christian supercomputer, Psalty’s Little Praisers, led by a personified Bible, and, most memorable to me, The Donut Man. The audience was entertained for an hour of feel-good praise songs, but the big surprise came at the end, when we were given the opportunity to invite Jesus into our hearts by joining the “Donut Repair Club.” On the way out, mom made sure to buy a couple VHS’s, and she probably wore them out playing them for me and my brothers.

I’ve long since abandoned whatever belief system the Donut Man intended to teach me, but the memories stuck around, and I couldn’t help but ask after so many years what he was really all about. You know, I just assumed that racket was dead by now, or that he’d at least retired. But it turns out he hasn’t stopped since.

To some, it might seem an unusual career choice; but for Donut Man Rob Evans, it’s a matter of divine fate.

Who is the Donut Man? What do you do and why?

My name is Rob Evans, and I am a donut repairman. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it. Seriously? I am a children’s ministry that writes songs and produces videos with my sidekick Duncan, the talking donut. Children in my videos enter situations with me that require that we help people, sing songs about Scripture, and “repair donuts” to remind people that God sent Jesus to fill up the empty place in our hearts and in our lives. I have been doing this for thirty years and have produced dozens of CD’s and DVD’s that we sell at donutman.com. Come visit, and give it a listen!

It’s interesting—evangelism doesn’t typically incorporate these art forms, so your productions in effect take the forum to another level. What do you think of the interplay between evangelism and art, and how that dynamic affects the audience?

All art has an agenda. All artists do as well, be they comedians, writers, graphic artists, musicians, speakers, etc. Everybody has a worldview and a morality that they advance. I renounce vain-glory that musicians many times cultivate. I simply don’t see music as an end; rather, as a means to an end. When I pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,” I hear that as a call to marshal all of my God-given resources as a pledge to seeing that prayer realized. In my particular case, with my skillset, I use my gifts and resources to present Scripture studies in songs that help children get to know Bible characters and their stories from the first-person perspective. In other words, rather than telling people to have faith the size of a mustard seed, I have the mustard seed sing about it. This approach animates like a cartoon, stimulates the imagination, rhymes, repeats, and invites so that children climb into the skin of all sorts of Bible stories. Hopefully, to enter into a relationship with the God who inspired it in the first place.

Walk us through your creative process. How do ideas get translated from your mind onto the stage? You’ve been in action for many years now, care to comment on what’s kept you going all these years?

I have read the Bible through many times, but before you think I am a very spiritual man, I have also watched the Three Stooges many times as well. I have a very restless imagination, work ethic and angst. I am a child of divorce, with my mother in her fourth marriage. I grew up with extremely happy younger years, followed by a profound sense of abandonment as a result of my parent’s separation. My “clock stopped” at the age of 6 due to the inevitable emotional injury that accompanies parental dysfunction. I must say that our family did attempt to put the “fun” back in dysfunctional, but in my world, that included step-families coming and going in and out of my life. Drugs and rock and roll were inevitable, right? By the time I became a Christian at the age of 19, I was a very old man. That is why I always write and communicate with an emotional urgency. Jesus Christ, worshipping Him in His Church, and meeting the living Saints who inhabit heaven is a matter of spiritual life and death to me. On the surface, I am a large man in a brightly colored repairman’s uniform who sings to children about Jesus in funny ways. Be assured, I am very sober and serious about the importance of reassuring young children of God’s design for their lives and deep love for their souls. My wife and I have been married going on forty years. We have six kids, and eight grandchildren. When my inspiration starts to wane, their love and enthusiasm never fails to re-ignite me. I also feed deeply on classical music, my favorite being Beethoven and Mozart. I go often to the Kimmel here in Philly to hear the orchestra play live.

The song “The Donut Man,” with lyrics like “Life without Jesus is like a donut,” has become a theme for you - what is it that you’re trying to get across here? Are you a big donut fan? Why donuts?

Perhaps I have already answered that question. I would add that I also charge my young friends to consider that now it is their turn to “repair others.” If Jesus has touched your heart with faith, hope, and love, then you are now a member of “The Donut Repair Club.” It’s time to pass it on! Every one of my CD’s and videos amplifies God’s character using a Bible-based word-picture describing God’s indwelling Spirit and agenda. God is a King, a Father, a Soldier, a Farmer, a Shepherd, a Builder… the list goes on and on. When you invite Him into your heart, he not only forgives you for your sinful rebellion that produced the “hole” in your heart, he then undertakes to fill that void with Himself, and all of His wonderful characteristics.

I’m wondering what Rob Evans, the regular guy, does with his spare time. Any hobbies unrelated to your ministry?

I am a builder, plumber, and scuba diver. I just spent a couple of weeks forty feet down in the Caribbean, on an island called Bonaire. Cactus, donkeys, solitude and scuba. My idea of a good time.

You just returned from a trip overseas. What were you up to?

My wife and I met with a French schoolteacher, Jean Pierre Lagnel in the shadow of Notre Dame, Paris. We are helping him translate my work into the French language, as he is quite passionate about sharing Christ in French Guinea. I also love French fries, so I wanted a pilgrimage to pursue that.

Plans for the future of Donut Man?

I am mixing two new albums of songs as we speak.

Finally, the question everyone’s wondering the answer to: Do donuts go to heaven?

Only good donuts go to heaven. Krispy Kreme? Definitely!

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Stand Your Ground #2: Anonymous

In honor of US Student Debt reaching 1 trillion dollars we present Stand Your Ground #2 “What Happens When You Sing In A Chase Bank” For More Information On Student Debt Please Visit FinAid.Org

For more information on Peak Intern, please visit peakintern.tumblr.com

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Directed by Hannah Gregg Audio by Jeff Hylton Simmons

Holland Andrews, Like A Villain, performs at the end site of the PDX May Day March.

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By Bim Ditson

Why do dads even go to Coachella?

Dads mostly seem to be interested in doing three things all weekend: Ignore the show they’re attending, leave the show they’ve been ignoring, or pack in some light reading. Coachella could truly be a dad heaven, but let’s face it, they’re killing the energy with every absentminded check of cargo pockets and fake-wisdom glare.

Yes, Dadchella offers a vast range of dads. This dad-pile can be loosely framed into three major groups. Most dads fit into this first category: Tuckered dads. By 2pm on Friday, these dads have been standing and walking for longer and farther than it takes to play 18 holes, and are desperately in need of some rest. In most cases, Tuckered’s will find safe, shaded reading areas, or expertly plot out the fastest route back to camp using their military training and an enlarged home-printed map of the grounds.

The second dadagory: Cool dads. Cool dads are just that – they’re people who go to Coachella to see shows. They know good music and rarely purchase hype. Usually you can pick cool dads out of the crowd by their semi-clever joke shirts, and their knowing goofiness.

The last category of dads brought their fucking infant kids. I will need a full research team and many more years of intensive study to feel comfortable making any assessment of the motivation behind these dad’s actions.

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Stand Your Ground #1: Anonymous

What Happens When You Sing Inside Of A Wells Fargo.

Demand A National Moratorium On Foreclosure

We shot this session a month ago in SF but we’re releasing it today in honor of the 300+ citizens who stood up and disrupted the Wells Fargo Shareholders meeting on April 24th, 2012.

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B-Sides #2: Joggers

This is the last song Joggers played together before frontman Ben Whitesides moved back to Massachusetts, putting the band on hiatus.

It’s a cover of Television’s “Marquee Moon.” Somewhere around 2:45 it rules. And then it falls apart. And then it rules again.

From the same session as our Feels Like Home episode with Joggers, back in September 2010.

Somewhere after the 7-minute mark we get a glimpse of Duke the dog (aka Duke Loyale), owned by bassist Darrell Bourque’s wife Celeste. Darrell explains, “Celeste has a tattoo for him because she had to give him away once, but got him back. She originally found him abandoned in a park in Columbus, OH. He was sitting by a pay phone for four days in a row. So she took him on a cross-country road trip that ended in Portland. He was famous around Irving Park. He died in the kitchen that we filmed in, about a year ago. We guess he was between 12 and 15 yrs. old.”

Rest in peace, Duke.

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B-Sides #1: Damien Jurado

Words by Matt Stangel

We recently shot dark-folk pioneer Damien Jurado at a Burgerville in Woodland, WA.

After the shoot, one of our cameraman’s cars was broken into outside of Rontoms in SE Portland. His cameras and gear (including all of our footage from the shoot) were stolen, and have not been recovered.

All we had left were some behind-the-scenes iPhone footage, the audio files, and captures of the thief from Rontoms’ security camera.

Catch Damien live at Holocene on Sunday, April 22nd.

First there was paradise and then a thief walked through it.

He cased the place. Saw the open fires and fruit trees. Houses without doors. Porches and families. A town where long decades of perfect weather were the only dogma to live by, where the livestock had names like Hamlet and Lunchable, and a lawless benevolence was the unspoken duty of the commonwealth.

It’s how I see Maraqopa, the imaginary town upon which Damien Jurado’s album of the same name is based. To be fair, I brought the thief in, but the village is all Damien.

The singer-songwriter sits two stools down at a Burgerville in Woodland, Washington, telling me about Maraqopa’s geodesic domes and the valley they sit in; that he never set out to make a concept record about this place.

Maraqopa is a fictional town that most of the record is set in,” explains Damien. “It’s a concept record, but I didn’t know that until we sequenced [it].” Like the concept, Damien says the recording process came in easy first takes– the foundation for a pain-free collaboration with producer Richard Swift.

Everything he plays at Burgerville sounds just as effortless: Earlier, him and his band worked through an outtake from Maraqopa called “We Are What We Dream.”

“To me, in my mind, [‘We Are What We Dream’] didn’t fit on the record,” he explains.

Speaking less to the contrary and more out of honesty, the song in question isn’t that far off from those that made it to the official collection– lyrically, Maraqopa is a contemplative, Old Testament thing: Ribs removed and people as the light in the world, gardens grown and the freedom to stray from them, times “when I believed you” and others “when in doubt.” In the context of Maraqopa, “We Are What We Dream” is a sort of antidote for this ‘believer’s doubt.’

But, be that as it may, it’s hard not to project an Edenic narrative onto Maraqopa. It’s hard not to stand in the apple’s second bite; to anticipate the inevitable corruption awaiting Damien’s utopian township.

Though, I didn’t see it that way the day of the shoot. When we got outta Dodge, leaving behind the band and the hamburgers and the low mountain fog, I was fully on board with Maraqopa– that, at the very least, we can imagine idyllic places.

And things stayed that way for a few days, until the news came: Our lead shooter’s car was broken into, his gear was swiped, and our footage of Damien’s performance was long gone. A few Instagram posts and an iPhone video of the second take were the only remaining visual documents of the day.

It was then that the version of Maraqopa that sat in my head gained a thief. I could no longer imagine the lawless benevolence without an antagonist. A snake, regardless of its distance, was always waiting in the grass; just as thieves are a social imperative when the economic norm is a differential of dysfunction. Chalk it up to those moments of maturity that come with empiricism and acceptance.

The above video reflects that empiricism and acceptance. Rather than attempt a reshoot or make other efforts to cover up the break-in, we worked with what we had to tell the story as it happened. The video is composed via two sources: security camera footage of the guy who broke into Rod’s car while it was parked behind Rontoms, and the iPhone video of Damien’s performance at Burgerville.

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Carsick #4: Young Magic

Directed by Jordan Kinley Additional Camera by Tyler Kohlhoff

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Don't Quit Your Day Job #11: Matt Sheehy, Lost Lander

Shot and Edited by Hannah Gregg Audio Mixing by Mike Elliott Color Grading by Josiah Marshall

Matt Sheehy of Lost Lander and Ramona Falls takes us along on his day job as a Forester for Northwest Forestry Services.

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By Chris Cantino

Strike 1: Owned by major labels, artists get paid shit 18% of your shares are owned by the biggest majors around: Sony, Universal, Warner, EMI, and Merlin own approximately 18% that they paid just $14k for in 2008. Now you’re worth $1 billion and artists get paid shit—by most accounts, about $15 per 100,000 streams, with the amount varying from artist to artist. Is that much, or any better than piracy? And isn’t it a conflict in itself when you work out different deals with individual labels and artists? What you’re implying when you do that is that Lady Gaga deserves more money than my friend’s underprivileged band. At least with iTunes we know that Apple keeps .29 per .99, but with you it’s a total smokecloud. How are real artists supposed to survive in an industry you’re designing to stilt increasingly in favor of the most privileged musicians with the most corporate backing? Do not set this precedent for music; I love it and I swear to god, I won’t have you pissing on it like this.

Strike 2: Ads everywhere, low quality streaming No, I’m not used to ads by now. And apparently you think you can put audio ones between songs? Oh, but you’ll remove them for just $5-10 a month; that way I can stream uninterrupted music! What a concept… Oh, you know what else is cool? How after the first six months, I can’t even listen to a track more than five times a month without getting charged for it. Just one of those little tricks where you suck consumers in and then forget to give us a reacharound. All at the bare-minimum bitrate of 160 kbps. Shit. Spotify, you’re on notice—stop fucking up people’s listening experience. Seriously can’t believe people put up with it.

Strike 3: No substance, no ownership I can’t just listen to my favorite music, the stuff my friends make. There’s no access to the music my community is making, or method for discovering rare and obscure records of the past. It’s all a bunch of crap on labels that signed with you. The truth is, you sell yourself as this platform for unlimited access to music, but in all actuality, you’re restricting our capacity to discover new artists, and your system is designed to prioritize ad space over music content and the listening experience. Maybe it’s a hoarder’s mentality, but I don’t trust for a second that I’ll be able to rely on digital databases for the remainder of my lifetime. I want to control my own access to tunes, on my own terms. If we all made Spotify the norm, our default players, not only would we forfeit ownership of our music—we’d also be cutting ourselves off from troves of undiscovered treasures.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Spotify, you’re clearly full of shit. However—and don’t think I’m letting you off the hook here—the bottom line is, you’re not the only one to blame here. In the end it’s on us as listeners to know what we’re signing up for when we use the services of companies like you.

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Far From Home #21: Guantlet Hair

Directed by Matthew Gamlen Camera by Hannah Gregg and Rodrigo Melgarejo Audio Engineering by Jeff Simmons, Miliken Gardner, and Trevor Oatts Audio Mixing by Miliken Gardner Produced by Dawndae HK Hamilton Words by Matt Stangel

Soundcheck cuts my chat with Gauntlet Hair short and it’s probably just as well: only moments into the band’s warm-up take, the cops arrive to give us a 30-minute curfew, launching the shoot into “get shit done” mode, posthaste.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Our original location fell through, we scrambled to find a new one, and here we are, under a bridge.

A clover-leafing transit ritual called rush hour traffic happens in every direction: the freeway easing into view on our left, cars/trucks/busses converging in five different ways to our right, and the on-ramp continuously rumbling above us.

Somewhere in there, someone saw us under the bridge and called the police.

Earlier the band talked about themes of masochism and living in the same clothes, opening for Deerhoof and seeing friends in faraway places– highlights from their past month on tour. A story about playing a show with McLovin from Superbad provoked buttrock poses and Creed Shreds references. That stuff feels like a moot point now that the cops have us on a stopwatch.

The band starts in on “Lights Out” like so many jumps from a diving board: 808-style hand claps, overblown chunks of bass, and bouncy, flanged guitar riffs.

Gauntlet Hair’s superdome reverb is attenuated by the acoustics of the on-ramp, and the sharper teeth of live drums pull the song from the dreamier digital percussion of the band’s self-entitled debut record. It’s music that works as the soundtrack to our standoff.

When the final take starts, we have roughly ten minutes left, at which point the cops will make good on their promise to return and help us load out. It feels like somewhere a rubber band is tightening to its maximum elasticity. Like a celebrity freakout is getting too close to a mirror and a brake pad is thinning at a high pitch and whatever comes next will come with an immediacy like big games ending in long passes– moments best described as adaptation meeting preparation. Leaps.

The band doesn’t fuck around. Camera speeds.

Once more off the diving board.

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By Officer Harvey Gibbs

White Gourd, Ella St Social Club

I’ll always feel a total responsibility to protect and serve. I’ve done so for the last twenty-three years, two ex-wives, and one unappreciative piece of art-shit sixteen year old.

Recently, I was relieved of my duties as a detective and reassigned to the Sonic Regulatory Department (S.R.D.). Forget to read one damned deadbeat his rights and the rest of your career consists of shit like citing kneeling kids pressing on loop pedals with their hands for “Flagrant Pedal Misplacement” (F.P.M.). Bull.

Here I am, a damn Music Cop. If you ask me, it’s bull. If you ask my son’s mom, I got fired and lost it. Bull.

SRD assignments are all goddamned child’s work but the way I see it, if I don’t do this shit-stinking job nobody else is going to. Tonight I’m in this dirt trap of a venue just off Burnside in SW. Places like this one, I’m most likely to take someone in on either an F.P.M. or “Indecent Exposure to a Lack of Rhythm” (I.L.R.). I’ll take anything I can get convicted at the end of the day, anything to make it worth tolerating this show. White Gourd is on stage. An insane woman clanging two machetes together over an endlessly-looping vocal track, hiccuping and fucking up the timing at the end of every second measure. Over and over. I’ve heard rumors some call this woman “Witch,” and it’s obvious enough why.

Witch brough a dirty patchwork-clad crowd of future burnouts along with her, all of them stinking and violently twisting to her machete clangs and wicked shrieks, keeping close eyes on their equally-stinking patchwork backpacks.

I can see a dirty sweat-crusted yoga mat peaking out of one of the packs, saying, “Hey, there’s illegal drugs in here with me. I’ll help you bust this kid if you promise you’ll just get him to wash me.” But sadly, drugged fans and the contents of their backpacks don’t make it on my docket anymore. I’m an S.R.D. Agent now. I don’t have time to fuck with what these bong-folk do to themselves, or their yoga mats. My duty lies with the bummer waves jetting down my listen-holes.

Witch and her grinning yoga mat abusers call those aforementioned sonics, in context, “experimental drone music.” Kind of like how a drunk driver might “experimentally” crash their car into your yard: shrieking tires, and the clanging noise your lovingly-decorated mailbox might make as it explodes upon impact with the hood. Art? Bull.

I hold tight ‘til the end of Witch’s eternal twenty minute set. Then I move in fast, my adrenalin pumping just as hard as it did on my first arrest. This is the thrill I joined the force for decades ago, and it’s goddamned invigorating. As I steam across the room, Witch is quickly packing away her disgusting, crusty musical contraband. I need to get to her as she leaves the stage with her gear if I want the D.A. to have a shot in hell at taking her down for any real time.

I shoulder past one of the patchwork-clad kids, readying my cuffs. I’m thinking I’ve got this witch, but as I round the pool table that sits in the middle of the room I catch one of the attending bong-folk in my periphery. Yanking his yoga mat fast from his backpack, he’s staring right at me. Shit—he knows what I’m about to do. I start to sprint, but next thing I know, I bite the floor hard, my legs tangled around that foul roll.

I see another patchwork kid through my floor-haze, running to Witch on stage, telling her to “jet, no gear.” I get up but Witch has already passed me and is halfway down the long dark hallway entrance to this rat hole. I can’t make any charges stick if she makes it outside without having loaded any of her own gear. Goddamned legal loophole bull.

I scramble after her, the room spinning with a patchwork of stars and dark spots everywhere, I taste and smell the metal of my gushing lip, smashing past tables and chairs in pursuit. Reaching the back of the hallway as Witch is opening the front door at the bottom, just twenty feet away from me, I yell, “Freeze Witch! PDX S.R.D.!” Witch turns and shrieks back at me with an almost confused and frightened look, “Go fuck yourself creep!” She turns back to run, and my years of training on the force kick in harder than ever as I chase her out the door, the memory of past pursuits flashing in front of me so vividly I’m unsure which arrest is happening right now. I tackle Witch and take her down on the sidewalk out front, grabbing hold of her right wrist and yanking it hard toward her left shoulder blade as I bring her to the pavement.

Witch cuffed and moaning bull like “I’m an artist!” and “Who are you?” from the back of my van, I bring her in and get her booked for “Fleeing the Scene of a Sonic Crime” (F.S.S.C.). After filing my report, I go home and sleep like a damn baby.

Witch will most likely get a slap on the wrist, with restitution paid and daddy’s lawyer smiling. Back to her reckless pleasure. Even if I get her percussion license suspended, she’ll be in wait, clanking for the day she can shlink those machetes in basements and living rooms outside my jurisdiction.

Can’t touch Witch there. What a bull system. Some fucking justice… Well, just got a hot tip from a patriotic neighbor about a theremin situation at Slabtown. Fuck the system. I’m doin’ this one on my own time…

[intothewoodsnw-blog]

By Emil Amos

1991//Chapel Hill//Carrboro, NC::

I dug this footage out recently and edited it up for my 2 best friends Jim Mahorney and Alex Protzman who skated with me daily when we were 13-14 yrs old. It’s hard to estimate if this has any relevance to anyone else, but as a time capsule its a pure illustration of our small-town life during an arguably quintessential transformative time in the underground culture. No matter how hard I could try to escape this phase’s relevance, it would still penetrate every record/video I make now.

Skating and hardcore as actual community-based cultures existed largely outside of our world as we were isolated out in the middle of North Carolina at the time. We had pictures in magazines and videos to go on, but were totally alone in our interpretation. For anachronistic reasons, that makes this time + place more unique and made our obsessions that much more fervent and burning. The clothes and music being dated have become more beautiful as we look back on them now… and these two songs by ‘Faith’ and ‘3’ are perfect examples of a style of music that existed in an isolated crease that was mostly abandoned by the larger progression. I’m not trying to imply that things were better then in any way… but on some level, these songs make a decent argument for that.

-Emil Amos, Lilacs & Champagne/Holy Sons/Om/Grails