Arise Roots Concert Review

Much like the blues, there’s beauty to be found in the simplicity of reggae. While the two genres share many structural and cultural similarities, reggae, unlike blues, is music often borne of both pleasure and pain. Song topics within the genre can range from personal strife to political revolution, but the lion's share of reggae songs center around an almost borderline-hedonistic approach of happiness above all else. 

I’m not one to discuss the history of the genre, it’s origins, or even the people that play it, but what I can speak to is my experience on June 28th at my first ever reggae concert. 

Occurring on a muggy Thursday evening in Portland, Oregon at the newly-renamed Sirens (fka Analog Cafe), headliner Arise Roots commandeered stage of the venue’s lower bar shortly after 10 pm to an audience ready to vibe out.

Opening with a whir of electronic bloops and a single lightly-strummed guitar, we soon heard two cymbal taps followed by a bass that entered with a monumental riff. Smoke filled the air as the other instruments joined one by one, all falling in-synch with the established rhythm. Soon frontman Karim Israel made his way to the mic and crooned “What’s the fighting for?” over the arid soundscape of spaced-out instrumentals. Shortly after this refrain the drums suddenly kicked into a full-speed gallop, and the group fell into an uptempo groove that instantly got everyone moving.  

The next song in the setlist sped things up even faster, engaging the audience with a call-and-response chorus as Rodolfo Covarrubias’ bass bopped and Karim danced emphatically behind the mic. 

Within minutes I found myself hypnotized by the slow, swinging, steady rhythm of Arise Roots. As I stood witnessing the breadth of music on display, another genre-comparison I couldn’t help but make was between reggae music and stoner rock. Both weed-loving genres that worship, love, and chase the groove above all else.

Arise Roots played as a single well-oiled machine, hitting all the right corners of the beat while also allowing enough room for members to wander off and improvise a solo with enough time to return to their original position. Ron Montoya’s tight drumming held the groove down, Chris Brennan and Todd Johnson shared backup vocal duties while also handling rhythm guitar and keys respectively, and the enigmatic frontman Karim Israel performed his heart out.

Late-set “Nice and Slow” is the band’s latest single, a slow-moving love jam that went over well with the crowd and also happens to be one of the band’s most polished and varied tracks to date.

Other highlights of the night included multiple groovy guitar solos courtesy of lead guitarist Robert Sotelo Jr., warm beachy imagery on “Lost In Your Ocean,” and of course the token weed song “So High.”

Overall, the evening cast a genuinely hypnotic spell; Arise Roots are a transportive musical force with the ability to carry you from where you’re standing into the distant reaches of your mind, all without you even realizing it. A force of nature, love, and positive energy.

Suits and Daggers – Frozen Planet | Album Review

Frozen Planet begins with a gentle piano melody and a flash of female vocals that entwine to lull the listener into a false sense of security. Just as soon as these pieces begin to settle in, a heart-dropping scream disrupts the serenity, followed by a catchy guitar riff carves its way into the mix. Accompanied by thunderous drums, a wall of rhythm guitar and bass along with some crowd-pleasing group chants, all these elements combine to make a particularly potent introductory track. 

Frozen Planet is the newest record from Michigan-based progressive metal outfit Suits and Daggers. In a scene that’s fraught with minuscule subgenre distinctions, Suits and Daggers were able to avoid all that discussion by creating a genre of their own: Victory Metal. While this self-ascribed label preemptively dismantles many of the needless genre-based debates that occur between metal elitists, it also serves a more important job by offering a glimpse at how Suits and Daggers approaches their music.  

“Built on the pillars of hard work, dedication, team work and integrity” Suits and Daggers offers a unique spin on the progressive metal sound that revels in a positive outlook on life. Taking queues from some of the genre’s greats like Parkway Drive and Erra, the band’s debut is a life-affirming, confidence-boosting, and powerfully-strong addition to the metal scene. 

Given this uniquely-upbeat approach to a typically-dour genre, the band spends the lion’s share of Frozen Planet’s 45 minutes chasing their dreams and encouraging listeners to do the same. It’s a transitive joy that rubs off on the listener before the first song is over.

While the Suits and Daggers is obviously influenced by the some of the genre’s biggest names, Frozen Planet also bears an quaint charm of lesser-known acts like Skies of December and Settle the Sky. Interspersed piano adds an orchestral flair a-la In Fear and Faith, and an unabashed love for group chants hints at the style of Burden of a Day. All in all good company to be in, especially for a band this young. 

Influences aside, there are also dozens of brilliant and unique moments scattered throughout Frozen Planet. Interjections of piano throughout “Defender,” unrelenting spitfire vocals on “Velvet Glove,” and a towering riff on “Empathy” are just a few of the album’s many highlights. 

Late-album cut “Tranquility” allows the listener a moment of breathing room before immediately launching into another barrage of brutal screams and punchy riffs. As cymbals crash and guitar shreds back and forth, the track swiftly transitions to the titular “Frozen Planet” which bears the album’s most aggressive instrumentals and hard-hitting lyrics. Centered around a crushing breakdown and Andy Martin’s heartfelt songwriting, the album’s penultimate song speaks for itself as to why it is worthy of the album’s namesake.

Overall Frozen Planet is a fun, heartfelt, and inspirational metal album. For long-time fans of the genre who are searching for an exciting new act, look no further than Suits and Daggers.

June 2018: Album Review Roundup

Vermont is for Lovers, and (apparently) June is for Hip-hop. At the time of writing, we now find ourselves halfway through the year, at the start of a hot summer, and emerging from an absolute barrage of new releases from some of the biggest names in music. I’m not gonna beat around the bush, lots of objectively-fucked up shit happened in June, but for the sake of avoiding politics and leaning into happiness, let’s take a break from that and focus on some of the life-affirming art we’ve been lucky enough to receive this past month.

Just in the past 30 days we’ve witnessed numerous Kanye-produced records, multiple collab albums, surprise drops, and long-awaited debuts from rising up-and-comers. Let’s jump into our recap of June’s best albums and kick things off with one of my most conflicted releases of the year.

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Kanye West - ye

Kanye West likes Donald Trump. There’s no way around it, and it’s an ugly fact that I’d rather ignore, but much like AA, the first step is to say it out loud just to get over the mental hangup. Ever since Kanye’s pre-album political nonsense this spring, I’ve approached his music and persona with more apprehension than ever before. While I already detailed my excited, confused, and conflicting thoughts on Kanye’s eighth album here, I feel it’s worth mentioning in this roundup if only because June was a month dominated by Mr. West and it all kicked off with this album. 

On ye, it seems as if Kanye is fully-embracing his life philosophy of “soon as they like you, make ‘em unlike you,” the only problem is, this is the first time I've ever personally found myself unliking him. I can see where he’s coming from (at the end of the day, Kanye has more in common with Trump than he does with Obama) but his public support remains a massive enjoyment-deterring red flag that lingers in the back of my brain while listening to this album. 

If you’re wondering why I’m talking so much about politics, and controversy, and things outside the music, it’s because that’s exactly what the album itself does. My primary criticism with ye is that it’s mired almost exclusively in the events of the past few weeks. It sounds cool, it’s well-produced, and has some fun moments, but politics aside I fear for how well this album will age. Especially when stacked up against other classics in a discography of records that have only gotten better with age, I don’t see ye standing the test of time. Maybe it will turn out to be a fun time capsule, but I don’t know how much I’ll want to be remembering Kanye’s TMZ interview years down the line. ye is timely, not timeless. All we can do now is wait to see how well it holds up and hope that the damage isn’t irreparable.

Read our full review of ye here.

Dance Gavin Dance - Artificial Selection

Dance Gavin Dance’s debut was bookended by the lyrics “I believe there’s meaning / No I believe there’s nothing,” an anthemic refrain that ended up becoming a sort of mission statement for the Sacramento natives. Active for over a decade, Dance Gavin Dance have inadvertently become old guards of the post-hardcore scene, a single constant among one of the most volatile and ever-changing musical genres. Not to say the band themselves haven't had their share of ups and downs; after a revolving door of members leaving, re-joining, and then re-leaving, the group seems to have finally cemented into a steady line-up that they've maintained for four albums now. After hitting a possible career-high with 2016’s Mothership, the group has returned with Artificial Selection, their longest and most powerful output to date. 

To me, Dance Gavin Dance has always embodied the best this genre has to offer; beautiful, emotional, and earnest melodic singing stacked against overtly-goofy but hard-hitting screams all battling for the listener’s attention over hyper-proficient musicianship. It’s a musical Yin and Yang with two sides that are diametrically opposed, yet somehow work together to raise each other. Regardless of the lineup, each Dance Gavin Dance album feels like the band is a cohesive entity working together for one common purpose, clawing tooth and nail toward their greater artistic vision. 

While most of Artifical Selection is precisely what fans have come to expect from DGD, the album’s most impressive feat comes in its closing moments on “Evaporate” when the group runs through a breathtaking medley of eight songs during the album’s final minute. The result is a one-of-a-kind career-spanning highlight reel that encapsulates 13 years of musical highs, lows, phases, and lineups. The 60-seconds are jam-packed with second-long flashes from different bygone eras, each of which unearth long-buried feelings that now feel fresh as ever. It’s an absolutely staggering musical achievement, and one that only long-time fans will fully-appreciate, but this goosebump-inducing outro alone is worth the price of admission. 

Nas - Nasir

Despite claims of album completion in 2016, it took until this month for the public to hear Nas’ long-awaited twelfth studio album. Undoubtedly re-written, retooled, and revamped in the intervening years, Nasir is the penultimate release of Kanye West's Wyoming Sessions. Opener “Not For Radio” throws the listener headlong into a torrent of various political proclamations that let the listener know what they’re in for by immediately baptizing them in the deep end. From there “Cops Shot the Kid” is a unique and poignant track placed over a constantly-repeating Slick Rick loop that bears the song’s title. Other highlights include the soulful “White Label” and the far-out “Simple Things.” Overall, Nasir is a bold, compact, and political release from one of the former figureheads of the hip-hop scene. 

Colin Stetson - Hereditary (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) Spoiler-Free 

Whew. I don’t write about soundtracks on here very often, but Hereditary has hung with me long after my first viewing. I went into the movie alone on a stormy Wednesday as a way to test out my new MoviePass card when I found myself with an abundance of free time. Aside from social media hype and my passive A24 fandom I had no idea what the movie was about or what to expect going in. Hereditary is the first time I’ve ever experienced true horror in a movie theater on a genuine level. I covered my mouth during one scene that took me by such surprise I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing. My heart was beating out of my chest for the film’s final act, and I had to consciously remind myself that this was only a movie. I left the theater speechless, physically weak, and in awe of what I’d just taken in. 

Award-worthy direction, writing, and performances aside, an essential element to the film is Colin Stetson’s reserved score. It oscillates between moments of minuscule almost non-existent instrumentation that then quickly drop out into explosions of unease that coincide with the film’s most disturbing moments. Both as a movie and an album, Hereditary is absolutely dreadful. A horrific march through grief, death, and trauma that has haunted me more than any other film I’ve ever seen in my life. 

Beyonce & Jay-Z - Everything Is Love 

Surprise released on an unsuspecting Saturday night in mid-June, Everything Is Love finds the biggest power couple in music teaming up for a collab album of fashionable flexing and marital bliss. Hopefully the final nail in the coffin of the “Lemonade Narrative,” the album sees both Bey and Jay mending fences following 2016’s embarrassingly-public infidelity. Full of lavish beats, ballads, and bangers, the duo’s joint effort is just as opulent as their previous work would lead you to believe. Most of the tracks see Beyonce pulling double duty as both singer and rapper, occasionally passing the mic off to Jay for him to interject a verse or two of his own. Soulful, holistic, and (fittingly) loving, this record is pure fun, even if it’s exactly what you expect going in. 

Nine Inch Nails - Bad Witch

Following a detour into ambient, a memorable Twin Peaks appearance, and a (still-ongoing) love affair with film scores, Reznor and Co. are back with one of the darkest and most disintegrated releases they’ve ever recorded. Both a return to form and a bit of a curveball, Bad Witch is a dark, distant, and delightfully-distorted vision of a bygone future. Simultaneously jazzy and machine-driven, NIN’s latest record finds inspiration in David Bowie’s near-death Blackstar, so much so that I actually mistook album closer “Over and Out” as a posthumous feature from the Goblin King himself. Technically the third entry in a trilogy of EPs following 2016’s Not the Actual Events and 2017’s Add Violence, this record’s Bowie emulation has led fans to believe this grouping of EPs is Reznor’s approximation/interpretation of the Berlin Trilogy. A bold comparison to draw, but Bad Witch is so strong, I don’t think that many could begrudge it. There are long-winding instrumental stretches, far-off intermittent vocals, and even an unexpected sax interjection at one point. The singing is sparse and drowned-out in ancillary noise, but the end result is a potent and impactful release that will likely be vaulted up with the decade-old classics of NIN’s long and storied discography.

Father John Misty - God’s Favorite Customer

I don’t even know where to begin with Josh Tillman anymore. His extra-musical antics range from clever to tiring, but primarily because they’re never-ending. While I enjoyed 2017’s Pure Comedy enough for it to end up on our 2017 AOTY list, that record was still a draining, exhausting, downer of a listen. In contrast, God’s Favorite Customer offers almost a polar opposite: a hyper-specific depiction of Tillman’s life on a micro level that still manages to retain some of the grandiose musicality from his last release. 

If I Love You, Honeybear was an album about his wife, Pure Comedy was a record about all of humanity, and now Pure Comedy is an album about himself. Stark and introspective, Tillman balances the balladry of Comedy with the more ornamental musicality of Honeybear for a record that ends up feeling like the best of both worlds. It’s an album written mid-breakdown while holed away in a Wes Anderson-esque hotel. There are pangs of paranoia, depression, and crippling self-doubt, but the important thing is that both the narrator and the listener emerge from the experience as better people.

Snail Mail - Lush

At the risk of echoing already-hyperbolic publications, I flat-out adore Lush. I’ve previously written quite a bit about Snail Mail, even going as far as to call this my most anticipated release of the year, and I’m now proud to write that Lush is everything I’d hoped it would be.

I first discovered Snail Mail last year when they were opening for Girlpool. I had already staked out a great spot for the main act one or two people away from the front of the stage in a small 200-some capacity venue here in Portland. I’d never heard of Snail Mail, but once they started playing my jaw just dropped, and I was rapt for their entire set.

There’s something pure about “discovering” a band like that, especially in a live setting just a few feet away from the music. It has been weirdly-affirming to watch Lindsey Jordan blow up since then. Between the Matador signing, her Tiny Desk concert, and all this recent press, it’s been wild to watch her soar so high so quickly.

I guess I feel a microcosm of the “I liked them before they were cool,” but at the same time, I’m goddamn happy for her. I’ve been spinning Habit and her (now deleted?) Sticki EP endlessly since that concert last year, even going as far as to manually rip the Tiny Desk performance onto my phone just so I was able to listen to “Anytime” at any time. This record has been a year in the making for me, and I couldn’t be happier.

Lush is somber, morose, and personal. Built around heartfelt tales and personal drama, each song features Jordan’s voice front and center, often working itself up to an explosive and passionate melody over her own jangly guitar-work. It hurts to listen to, but it also helps the ease the pain at the same time. It’s a beautiful contradiction, an awe-inspiring exploration of growth, and the exact kind of record I need right now.

Kids See Ghosts - Kids See Ghosts

Bookending this month’s roundup we have Kids See Ghosts which is the collaborative project of Kid Cudi and Kanye West. Practically the polar opposite of the hyper-timely slice-of-life lyrics found on ye, Kids See Ghosts is a psychedelic and ethereal release that feels much more refined and long-lasting. The album ranges from anthemic (“Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2)”) to absurdly-confident (“Cudi Montage”) but everything circles around a central theme of mental health which both men have publicly struggled with in recent years. Having emerged from the other side of their respective traumas (and even beef), Kids See Ghosts is both celebratory and affirming, a joint effort to be better, happier people. Both artists provide spectacular counterpoints to one another, and the entire collaboration feels like an equitable, vibrant, psychedelic journey to the higher self.

Quick Hits

• Oneohtrix Point Never - Age Of: Medieval psychedelic rock beamed to earth from an abandoned space-station that grows increasingly-schizophrenic with each passing minute.

• Natalie Prass - The Future and the Past: Funky hip-swaggering indie rock with heartfelt vocals that pierce through your soul.

• Anthony Green - Would You Still Be In Love: The Circa Survive frontman takes a rustic acoustic detour to wax poetically about love and life.

• Joan Of Arc - 1984: Collaborative indie rock that give a voice to those that are hungriest.

• Get Up Kids - Kicker: A four-track EP and the first material in seven years from the forefathers of pop-punk. A warmly-welcomed return to the genre.

• Pllush - Stranger to the Pain: Blissed-out and dreamy emo rock with siren vocals, swirling soundscapes, and heartfelt lyrics.

• serpentwithfeet - soil: Smutty lower-case R&B that gets progressively more depraved as it goes along.

• gobbinjr. - ocala wick: Hyper-personal bedroom indie rock that bleeds rawly over bouncy electronic bloops and gorgeous guitar work.

• Würst Nürse - Hot Hot Hot: Balls-out fully-female punk rock. A quartet of hot tracks that shred, rip, and thrash their way towards triumph.

• Flasher - Constant Image: Blissed-out grunge-influenced tunes for lovers of the Pixies and similarly-sharp alternative.

• Jorja Smith - Lost & Found: After vaulting to fame thanks to a 2017 Drake appearance, Jorja Smith is now fully-ready for the RnB spotlight.

• Petal - Magic Gone: Throwback grungy tunes with a voice like a bell and emotions like a shark.

• Protomartyr - Consolation: Crushing post-punk with rolling drums and charging bass. A wall ready to be defaced.

• Melody’s Echo Chamber - Bon Voyage: Ever-changing and dreamy French indie rock.

• Jay Rock - Redemption: Reformed gangster tales from the TDE mainstay. Well-polished and hard-hitting, this is the hip-hop dark night of the soul you need at 2am.

• SOPHIE - Oil Of Every Pearl's Un-Insides: Shiny, polished, and clean electronic pop from the renowned and enigmatic producer.

• State Champs - Living Proof: Happy-go-lucky pop-punk with more group chants, anthemic choruses, and maudlin sentiments than you can shake a stick at.

• The Sloppy Boys - Lifelong Vacation: Comprised of indie comedy legends Mike Hanford, Tim Kalpakis, and Jefferson Dutton, Lifelong Vacation is a hilarious, fun, and rockin’ outing that I can’t get enough of.

• Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - Hope Downs: Sharp and surfy tunes from the Australian indie rockers.

• Culture Abuse - Bay Dream: Unrelentingly-joyous and fast-moving, Bay Dream is a textbook pop-punk Summer album.

• Death Grips - Year Of The Snitch: 👄

• Freddie Gibbs - Freddie: Hard beats and hard bars, all delivered in under 30 minutes.

• Drake - Scorpion: After getting publicly-owned in one of the decade’s most high-profile rap beefs, Drake is back with an exhausting 25 tracks of rap-singing and Drive-inspired outerwear.

• Jim James - Uniform Distortion: The fourth solo album from the My Morning Jacket frontman with just as much distortion, charm, and good vibes as fans have come to expect.

• Florence + The Machine - High as Hope: Sweeping, ornamental, and theatrical, High as Hope captures slowly-building slice of life confessions.

• Spencer Radcliffe - If I Knew How: Earnest as ever, Spencer Radcliffe’s newest EP contains a handful of early recordings that showcase the development stages of the songwriting process.

• Self Defense Family - Have You Considered Punk Music: The newest stark and emotional journey courtesy of Run For Cover Records.

• The Milk Carton Kids - All The Things That I Did and All The Things That I Didn’t Do: Slow-burning and fast-smoldering country tunes.

Singles from St. Vincent, Mezingers, Saba, Asking Alexandria, Charli XCX, MadeinTYO, IDLES, Interpol, Manchester Orchestra, Mom Jeans, Death Cab For Cutie, Alt-J, The Kooks, Nicki Minaj, Mogwai, Yo La Tengo, Mitski, Sheryl Crow, Angelo De Augustine, Rubblebucket, 2 Chainz, Grimes, The Mountain Goats, Tyler, The Creator, Deafheaven, Meek Mill, Thee Oh Sees, Smashing Pumpkins, and BROCKHAMPTON.

Rewind

Finally, here are some 2018 records from earlier months that I missed, but wish I hadn't.

• Deeper - Deeper: Bouncy indie rock that keeps time like a well-oiled machine.

• Bonny Don - Longwave: Laid-back, jangly, and jaunty indie rock with a tasteful tinge of country. The perfect album for a porch beer.

• The Fearless Flyers - The Fearless Flyers: Someone this passed me by (despite receiving multiple emails about it) but the latest spinoff from the Vulfpeck collective is irresponsibly funky.

• Harrison Whitford - Afraid of Everything: Heartfelt soul-prodding folk with a jangly country bent.

James Li Explains 'Life, Death and the Perpetual Wound' Track By Track

Last month, UK-based musician James Li released his expansive ambient album Life, Death and the Perpetual Wound. The second record released under the Ministry of Interior Spaces moniker, the album is a soul-searching 39-minute meditation on depression, beauty, and life in the face of obliteration. 

While we caught up with him earlier this month for an interview, each track of the album is a multi-faceted work that’s deserving of its own analysis. Luckily James was willing to give us the details of what went into each song’s creation on both a technical and spiritual level. Here is his track by track guide to Life, Death and the Perpetual Wound.

Track 1. Katie’s Apartment WA

The opening track was meant to be recorded live guerrilla-style at the Tate Modern. The London museum holds these repurposed oil tanks with an incredible fourteen-second reverb. But when I finally got there to record they’d just put in a new installation, so I recorded it at home instead. This was probably for the best.

After making a scratch track, I asked my incredible Seattle musician friend Katie Kuffel to send me vocal parts. I stayed at Katie’s apartment in Seattle when I went cold turkey on my SSRIs. It was a really dark time in my life but I think going out to visit her and other kind friends helped me stay alive. This is what I thought about while writing this track - a starting place of peace amid great turmoil overlooking Puget Sound.

Julianna Barwick was the biggest inspiration for this piece. There was a whole other version of Katie’s Apartment that was three minutes longer and more noise-based with samples of Seattle boats and foghorns. I was committed to it for a long time, but it didn’t work well as an introductory track.

Track 2. Hoyt Arboretum OR

I talked about its story extensively in this premiere - but on that same Seattle trip I took a bus to Portland alone, staying with a fan I’d never met before. It was raining, I was getting bad withdrawal symptoms, and listening to a leak of Carrie & Lowell.

At the crux of it I got lost and found myself in a nature preserve on a hill overlooking Portland. It stopped raining, the sun shone, and everything sort of came together at once. I felt the most incredible pain and joy at the same time, which is also a withdrawal symptom. That experience is what this track is about.

Hoyt Arboretum OR is made mostly from warbly guitar pushed through two delay pedals, and an improvised upright piano recorded from a significant distance (an SM57 six meters away). The OP-1 fills in the rest, while the reversed sample is a Totally Legal recording I took during a Sufjan concert in Cincinnati. It’s from the outro of Blue Bucket of Gold.

Track 3. C64 Falls ID

This particular piece was inspired by Bing & Ruth. I wanted to create a flowy piano-based piece with post-rock guitar as an ethereal undercurrent, representing the sensation of being carried underwater. The growling underneath is my electric guitar being fed into a granulator - I was scratching and scraping the strings while tapping the body. The broody trombone parts are by a Liverpool musician called John Denno - I love how mysterious and bodily they sound. The Montana river sample I used here is actually the last recording I made on my first TASCAM before losing it later that day (more on that next).

C64 Falls kind of looks like Lower Yellowstone Falls, except there are streams of code running down it if you look carefully enough on a sunny day.

Track 4. TASCAM Mountains MT

This was one of the first tracks I made for this album. The bulk of it was recorded in Japan during a work trip. 80% of it was done on the OP-1 and mixed on its inbuilt DAW. Denno plays the trumpet here which I think really completes the track, giving it its lyrical voice.

Musically it’s very inspired by Disasterpiece as I’d been playing Hyper Light Drifter a lot, an indie game that he’d soundtracked. I love how Disasterpeace uses entirely virtual instruments but degrades them until they sound undeniably physical. Destruction is also a recurring theme on this album, and you can hear it clearly in this track - the way the synths crumble and tailspin at the end of every sequence.

The sample was taken in the California desert with an airplane flying overhead. The gross wet sounds at the end are the “Paint Pots” at Yellowstone. I also utilised the same guitar-granulator method I used on “C64 Falls.”

I refer back to this narratively in the very last track, but I lost my first TASCAM and hundreds of hours of audio in some Montanan foothills. I went back looking for it many times, sometimes somewhat recklessly, before finally giving up. It symbolised a lot of unexpected grief I was experiencing at the time.

Track 5. Cassettelands ID

This is the album’s William Basinksi piece. I took a John Adams composition (with the label’s permission) and slowed it down dramatically, ie. “screwed” it. After that, I ran it through a guitar amp with lots of distortion to create this crumbling tape effect.

Narrative-wise this was inspired by Craters of the Moon National Park in Idaho and the drive back from it. I describe it in better detail in the zine, but basically, I was riding shotgun with a very quiet, very conservative professor called Cheryl who only listened to Christian music. By the end of the night we were driving through Montana dancing and singing along to Queen and New Order in our seats. I wanted it to go on forever. It was perfect.

Track 6. Platonitudes National Park WY

I don’t know how to play piano, so this piece was written in the key of C. Inspired by Max Richter - in particular “On the Nature of Daylight” which is a lucidly gorgeous and melodramatic work. It’s basically a poor man’s Max Richter piece, but I’m fond of it in the same way that I’m fond of my own dubious cooking.

The violinist on this track is a high school friend who’s now the CEO of his own Korean-American pharmaceutical company. Platonitudes National Park doesn’t exist, but in my mind it’s a perfect combination of Yellowstone and Glacier. I recorded this during my worst week of 2017 when both my mental and physical health was failing and I literally couldn’t speak. So I guess this spoke for me at the time.

Track 7. VHS Valley WY

The guitar part is a recording I took in 2014 of my old roommate, Andrew and I messing around on guitar and two delay pedals in my bedroom late at night. It’s honestly one of the coolest things I’ve heard from my guitar, and I’ve tried to recreate it since with no success. I’m grateful I recorded this at the time though, not knowing that I’d use it in an album four years later.

Narratively this is actually about Timber Canyon in Montana. I had a magical walk there with a friend I had a stupid unrequited crush on. It was great. Unfortunately the night turned disastrously bad soon afterwards, and we had to escape death via angry moose.

Track 8. Raton Pass Number Station CO

This song is actually the very first thing I ever made on the OP-1, a month before my first Ministry album Dying Towns of the Midwest. The .wav sat on an old hard drive, and I’m glad I rediscovered it.

After rescuing and mixing the levels on the .wav, I added a few more tracks. The radio chatter is from a Montreal police scanner. The woman counting numbers is my ex (mapped to my OP-1 and triggered by hand). The really heavy distortion is from an electric cello I borrowed. I fed it through an octaver, a reverb pedal, overdrive and a delay pedal which I fooled around with in real-time while playing. Which is a really difficult yoga balancing act to do with a cello.

The piece is inspired by a solitary Amtrak trip I took in the Summer of 2016 after graduating. It was 28-hours each way (actually a bit longer on the way back) from Chicago to Albuquerque. Raton Pass is a mountainous train tunnel by the Colorado-New Mexico border. Going through it feels like a rite of passage.

Track 9. The Needles UT

This track is fairly straightforward and was very linear to make: Swell guitar via volume pedal, very distorted feedback guitar, OP-1 for a recurring synth line passed through a distorted reverb filter, and then two appregiators. I wanted to keep it simple yet beautiful through growing repetition.

During Sophomore year of college six guys from my floor and I drove 24-hours straight to Canyonlands National Park from Grand Rapids. Those few days in the wild transformed my life for good. I didn’t know how nature could be that powerful or make one wish to live forever. I also didn’t know how gross it was to walk behind your friends’ massive shit swinging in front of you wrapped up in a plastic Meijer bag.

Track 10. Island in the Sky UT

I thought of this track singing in the shower and quickly ran out to write it down. I’d been listening to a lot of Erased Tapes Records artists at the time, so I used Nils Frahm’s Una Corda VST as the key instrument. This was definitely one of the hardest tracks to mix because of the violins.

This track is about the healing, almost other-worldly power of nature - you know, the sublime. Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey is in this track’s blood. It also serves as the spiritual sequel, or second half, to The Needles UT.

Track 11. White Sands Chapel NM

Tim Hecker’s Ravedeath, 1972 inspired this piece, which is probably the most straightforward track on the album after Cassettelands. I used the OP-1’s FM engine to create the bulk of the song before placing a simple appregiator on top of it. I then reversed the track and added Valhalla Shimmer reverb and guitar pedal distortion which, for some reason, made it sound like a live church organ. About a third of the way in I fade the original unreversed track in but with a very heavy phaser. That’s it.

The field recording is from the Stockholm Public Library, sitting there quietly with my old roommate Anna. I tried to create a fictional cathedral setting in the desert by including hushed whispers. I think the illusion works.

Track 12. House of Eternal Return NM

Since the album starts at a home, I wanted it to end at another. A place of safety, creativity, and rest. The House of Eternal Return is an incredible interactive installation in Santa Fe. The concept is that it’s a house with multiple entrances to other times and dimensions, and I liked the idea of being free of this world’s physical constraints. Basically heaven.

However, when I listen to this track, I honestly think of the New Mexico desert more. I explain it more in the zine and also somewhere in this Imgur album. I was in a car with two strangers when we were so, so close to running out of gas in the middle of the New Mexico desert at night. We stopped the car in the desert and let the vastness of nothing sink into us for a while. And that’s what I think of when I listen to this track. Driving into an unknowable eternal darkness. Stopping the car. The ultimate ending.

Musically I lucked into this one. It’s two improvised synths (the Organelle) panned left and right, then screwed down quite a bit slower/deeper. Fittingly my buddy from Albuquerque, Audrin Niema, plays some percussion in the background which I mixed really low and cut a lot of the high ends on. He basically helps add a subtle human element.

Track 13. The Perpetual Wound

Out of all these tracks, “The Perpetual Wound” probably went through the most changes. I want all Ministry albums to end with a song with words that summarise the thematic intent of the record, like the songs that play during the credits of a movie. It’s a nice way to gently wake someone up after their Ministry of Interior Spaces floatation tank experience and to restate the album’s mission.

Here are the ideas that I started then scrapped:

• Recording the traditional folk song, “Hang Me Oh Hang Me,” live at an open mic. I liked the idea of ending with something live and human, like entering the album’s universe in a body for the first time. I made a few attempts, including drastically changing the lyrics to a New Mexico UFO encounter, but there were always too many uncontrollable factors, and none of the recordings turned out to be usable.

• A repetitive mantra song, like “Driving” by Smog or “The Wounded King” from Dying Towns of the Midwest. As much as I tried, I just couldn’t crack this one.

• A folk song I made up about a crust punk saving his boyfriend from an Idaho conversion therapy camp (I have no idea where I got this idea from - probably a crust punk).

I finally settled on a strange folk/Americana song to represent an ongoing personal struggle. It was largely influenced by Bill Callahan - I’d been playing Supper heavily around its writing. The idea of a recurring acoustic guitar hammer-on and the instruments interacting with the lyrics came from Our Anniversary. In Callahan’s song a panned electric guitar represents the chirp of crickets, while in The Perpetual Wound the snare drum represents the crack of distant fireworks.

The drums are by this very talented high schooler, Josh Frenier, who I met in line during Pitchfork 2016. He also helped give me the idea of reincorporating the vocal melody from the opening track, thus making Life, Death and the Perpetual Wound perpetually cyclical.

Stream Life, Death and the Perpetual Wound here, or pick up a copy on Bandcamp.