STARVING WEIRDOS
Seance at Luffenhulz
01. Red Crescent Moon (13:09)
02. Seance at Luffenhulz (19:59)
03. King Radness on His Royal Swim (18:10)
format:
CD-R
edition:
150
packaging:
Hand-made envelopes,
typewritten inner sleeves,
individual hand-drawn inserts
by Nathan Pyewacket
&c:
To anybody with even the vaguest
interest in the goings on of the
underground psychedelic drone/folk
world, the name Starving Weirdos has,
over the past six months or so,
taken on an almost mythical significance.
On this, their fourth ever release,
Brian & Merrick (along with
some of their friends) create
three dark, slithering tracks of
dense, foggy dronepunctuated by
distant percussive clangs &
what may or may not be
the keenings of animal species
long thought extinct.
press:
The duo of Brian Pyle & Merrick McKinlay have been broadcasting
sprawling organic tapestries from their home on North Carolina's lost coast for the last eight years,
But their recordings have only recently begun to emerge on labels like Root Strata, Jyrk
& their own Atheistaregods imprint. Their infusion of ramshackle tribal workouts &
cosmic caterwauls, all coated in a sticky reverb, mirror the works of blissful soul surgeons like
Double Leopards & Birchville Cat Motel.
Seance at Luffenhulz (named for a beach in Humboldt county much beloved of the duo)
opens & concludes with two epic tracks, "Red Crescent Moon" (where they're joined by
Steven Lazar & Monica Chavez) & the wonderfully titled "King Radness On His Royal Swim",
which sees the Weirdos further refine their primitivist soundscapes. Rattling chains
coil themselves around the death knell of a thousand miniature bells, while the scattered debris of
a No-Neck Blues Band boozy dance & searing string shimmers merge to create
a disturbingly meditative atmosphere. Sandwiched between is the title track,
built around a slow-burning violin drone, for which the duo take a different tack,
trading ferocity for restraint, in the process creating a sense of real beauty in the eye of a turbulent storm.
-Spencer Grady, The Wire
New limited edition CD-R (hand-numbered run of 150 copies) from the Starving Weirdos duo of
Brian Pyle & Merrick McKinlay, joined on one track by Steve Lazar & Monica Chavez.
The usual absolutely cavernous sound-space with sky-arching drones, muzzy tone of
stop-motion depth charge & percussion that sounds like the hinges on the vault of heaven
slowly giving way to years of entropic assault. Hard to think of anyone outside of Double Leopards
who does this whole starfield-trapped-in-a-warehouse drone ritual better.
Packaged in the usual wax-sealed envelope w/flier S&F style.
To be totally honest, when we first heard the name Starving Weirdos,
we definitely weren't expecting to like it. It was a strange name, that didn't seem to suit
their strange abstract sound. The name seemed goofy, while the music was dark,
& ominous, & fucked up. But then something strange happened, like it has
so many times in the past, the Flaming Lips is a prime example, something just clicked
& suddenly they couldn't bee called anything BUT the Starving Weirdos.
& that music, could not have been made by anyone BUT those same Weirdos.
We never had any sort of qualms about the music though. From the very first note,
we realized these guys were on to something. Something pretty, & something really strange & unique.
This latest missive comes to us from the sound&fury label in
the Weirdos' continual quest to explore & get lost in their music.
It's hard to sound totally unique, especially when you're trafficking in the overpopulated world of
abstract free noise or whatever, but the more we listen to these guys, the more distinctive
their sound becomes & the more fascinating their approach to making it seems.
These three lengthy tracks show three distinct sides of the band, each one drastically different,
but still inexorably linked to the others. The first track sounds a bit like the Dead C setting up
& tuning up in some giant airplane hanger. Clatter & clanks, crashes & thumps,
reverberate into the ether, every sound wrapped in thick layers of natural reverb,
while floating delicately around these strange percussive occurrences are keening streaks of high end,
that just sort of shift an shimmer, while all around chimes & bells ring out. Like walking though
some big empty building made entirely of metal, while all around you the bits & pieces of
the building spontaneously ring & chime & resound. The second track is less clattery & abstract,
instead, thick thread of warm vibration runs through the track, some sort of buzzing bombinating string,
that stretches into forever, while all around it, various other instruments vibrate sympathetically,
building to a frenzied ur-drone, before the vibrations begin to taper off until it's a barely there afterimage,
hovering in some nether world before blinking out completely. The final track is a return to
the metallic l& of the first track, but now that huge metal structure is crumbling all around you,
like the sound of metal raindrops, clang & clatter, a percussive free for all, while beneath,
a gentle lilting minor key melody is stretched into a longform drone, that continues to drift dreamlike
even after the metallic clatter has died down, eventually becoming shimmering sheets of singing metal,
ringing out brightly & then slowly fading away.
Packaged in a red textured paper sleeve, held shut with a black wax seal.
The cd is housed in a printed inner sleeve, each disc with an individual piece of band made art.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES, each disc is hand numbered.
