Dissonant Plane

Today’s guest blogger is yrs truly, Jim Evans of Sparkle Girl Thursday, May 21st: 7:00pm …Wind…Swept…Planes Thursday, May 28th: 7:00pm Simon Wickham-Smith and Jonathan Way As we approach one of my personal favorite holidays, May Day. We thought we would send out a new blog mentioning some of the cool things we have going on here at Dissonant Plane for the month of May.First order of business is to mention the cool instore performances we have coming up soon at the Plane.On Thursday, May 21st we’ll have ….Wind…Swept…Planes. Wind Swept Planes is the solo project of Chad Allen who also performs with Forrest Friends and Hellgrammite. Utilizing everything from scrapes, rattles, vocals, drums and guitar Chad manages to conjure up some bleak desolation in sound. What personally attracts me to the sound of WSP is the rugged mix of instruments with dark slow vocals. Listening to his great cd “The Rose, The Prickliest of Thorns” on Debacle Records I could hear elements of rough Tom Waits experimentation, the magnificent clatter of Finland’s Avarus as vocals delivered like Michael Morely.This should be a treat and you don’t want to miss out because Chad doesn’t often play out as Wind Swept Planes.Speaking of not missing out. One week later we have another instore. This time it is none other than the multitalented musician, translator and astrologer Simon Wickham-Smith! If you are not sure who Simon is this performance should open your eyes a little. Getting a handle on all the music Simon works with can be daunting. Starting with Richard Youngs in the A-Band (great stuff) his musical career has encompassed avant folk, electronic as well as truly experimental  music in a variety of releases on a multitude of labels. What is amazing is that along with a extensive discography of lovely challenging sound work  Simon has also traveled quite a bit, spent time in a monastery, is working on an astrology text focusing on intersex and transgendered people and if that is not enough to interest you he is also a leading translator of classic Mongolian literature. Whew. Come down to the store on May 28th to hear Simon perform with Jonathan Way. As for music, well, we’ve got lots. Speaking of Wind Swept Planes we not only have his cd on Debacle but also a couple of very limited cassettes handmade from the artist himself. We also have quite a few selections from the extensive catalog of Simon Wickham-Smith.Let’s not forget about the other killer shows we have going on our fair city. List courtesy of Mr. A. Moses.  

Apr 29 2009 9:00P

threat

@ THREAT feat. The Genitals & Emergency Hand Puppet

IRON LUNG, AMERICAN CHEESEBURGER @ squid and ink Seattle Occultural Music Festival @ The Art Church Logic Probe, NDCV, noisepoetnobody @ the abby Sparkle Girl/Shining Ones/Hemingway/This Blinding Light @ at the Josephine Seattle Occultural Music Festival @ Gallery 1412 100PIECES & Dar Sirena @ The Mars Bar Seattle Occultural Music Festival @ The Chapel Hunab Ku , B/foot Barnacle, one car per green @ el corz Seattle Occultural Music Festival @ Jewelbox Cum on feel the boobiez @ the barnhouse Abiku, J/and the Groadies +++ @ Josephine Seattle Occultual Musik Festival @ rendezvous ChickenHed Church: PLASMATONE, SOUNDS LIKE MUSTARD, SLATES, OWL DENT @ Mr Spots Chai House FORREST FRIENDS, My Empty Phantom & Derek M. Johnson @ Rendezvous Threat w/ goly grim & in the age of terminal static @ merc Seattle Occultural Music Festival @ Gallery 1412 nofun nyc Blood Fountains, Hemingway, Mamiffer, Blowupnihilist @ josephine Seattle Occultural Music Festival @ Jewelbox nofun nyc At the head of the woods, shining ones @ funhouse MELVINS Alda, FoG, @ josephine [metal] Yokia no Uta @ FULLTILT MELVINS ChickenHed Church wolf eyes / black dice @ holy mountain Blue Sabbath Black Cheer / Blue Sabbath Black Fiji @ Josephine

Thank you everyone for coming down to the wonderful Demian Johnston in store last Friday.    For those of you who missed it, it was great heavy noise drone.  Demian made a special CDR entitled “Coal Lung” for the in store in an edition of 13!  Several lucky souls picked up a copy Friday night, but for those of you that didn’t Demian left us a couple copies to sell in the store.  The music is pretty fantastic noise doom with some guitar picking and each cover is a little different.  This one is released on Demian’s Dead Accents label from which he also brought us the Shining Ones CDR.  This is a live recording from their debut show (I think) at the Rendezvous Jewel Box Theater on February 20 of this year.  Shinings Ones features Demian on vocals and manipulations, Dan LaRochelle of Lesbian on guitars and Andy Crawshaw of Broken Press on percussion and Alesis Micron 1 keyboard.  Their sound is heavy doom with ambient drone intro and outro.  Andy did an amazing job on the covers with a two-color screen print on nice paper with an obi, but there are only 100 of these made.  And since he was bringing us stuff, Demian also left us with one more Playing Enemy title, this one a CD by the name of “Accessory“.  From outside appearances, this might look to be another 2 song EP, but the disc runs a full one hour and eighteen minutes.  Most of the disc is the epic “To Her, To Thank Her” which finds them in much slower and trancy form.  The disc is capped off by a cover The Beatles’ “She So You” which find them in more heavy form, albeit with a more experimental middle section.  It seems fitting that Sam from Debacle Records also brought his latest release that night as it is likewise heavy and noisy.  Not part of the Emerald Debacle series, this 18 minute CDR is by Brent Landon of Brooklyn and is between power electronics and intense metal, or as Sam put it “between Mouthus and Pig Destroyer”.  The kind of thing I could see coming out on Hospital Productions.

Just arrived, five releases from local Chiptune elites at CrunchyCo. 

• Fighter X - Chrance EP v.2. (Put your mouthguard on before blasting this cracked out erradic mash-up of Metroid and Ninjagaiden)
• Leeni - 8 Bit Heart (A floaty love letter to melt that lead ticker of yours)
• Leeni - Labyrinth (perfect for exploring haunted carnivals, team rockets hideouts, cities in ruin, or anything else floating in the VG omniverse)
• Circles - Rapture (Surviving the end-times has never been so fun with a tasteful palette of bouncy beats and a Doom sized arsenal of lo-bit SFX)
• Spamtron - Never Say Die (Take a moment to embrace your loved ones before you set off on your long, intense, complicated yet hilarious quest)

And prepare yourself for a future in-store.

Dominick Fernow’s Hospital Productions has none done well over 200 releases of power noise and black metal.  Sadly, most of the releases are limited edition leaving only a handful of titles available at any time.  We stocked up on what is available and got:

• Akitsa  ”Le Grande Infamie”  CD  (Tour De Garde)  $11 - Canadian black metal
• Controlled Bleeding  ”Shanked and Slithering”  CD  (Hospital Productions)  $11  - totally violent eletronics/vocals/junk metal assault
• Crumer, Jason  ”Ottoman Black”  CD  (Hospital Productions)  $11  - heavy noise and thick drones
• Giffoni, Carlos / Prurient  ”Heavy Rain Returns”  CD  (Ideal Recordings)  $11  - deep throbbing analog power electronics noise
• Hair Police CD  (Hospital Productions)  $11  - cut up harsh noise in the vein of K2, Pain Jerk, etc.
• M.B.  ”Symphony for a Genocide”  CD  (Hospital Productions)  $11  - reissue of ultra rare Sterile LP, a classic of early noise
• New Blockaders,The  / Moore, Thurston / O’Rourke, Jim  ”Voloptulist,The”  CD  (Hospital Productions)  $11  - classic crunchy noise from old school characters
• Prurient  ”Cocaine Death”  CD  (Hospital Productions)  $11  - power electronics, material from very limited tapes
• Prurient - Drumm, Kevin  ”All Are Guests in the House of the Lord”  CD  (Hospital Productions)  $11  - dark and intense collaboration 

plus a few more not worth mentioning as they sold even before we could price them!

Demian Johnston recently brought in some of his Playing Enemy and Nothing Left releases for us. Playing Enemy plays Avant Garde, Hardcore, Metal Crossover in the vein of Ved Buens Ende, Dillinger Escape Plan, or Girth. Nothing Left is a more Crust, Grindpunk band of Demian’s from the mid 90’s.

I  just learned that after 10 years in Seattle, Levi Berner is moving to Portland.  It sounds like he’s got a nice situation lined up down there, and we wish him luck, though will miss seeing him in the shop on a regular basis.  Before he moves at the end of the month, there will be a show with …Wind Swept Planes…, Algiers, Drowner, Red Squirrels and Worthless Eaters at the Seattle Metaphysical Library (which is less than a block from us) on April 13th (a week from Monday).  Some time after he has resettled down south, he will return to Seattle for a Zen Enthusia in store performance featuring Algiers and Sterile Garden.  Zen Enthusia is of course Levi’s label, we just got the latest release which is a C26 by Algiers.  It’s an edition of 40 copies and as usual comes in a double sided full color J-card.  The sounds contained within are a thick blanket of static noise - it sounds like things piled up on top of each until the details blend together into one large mass of sound.  In this sense, its like the early Hands To recordings.  At the same time, we got a couple copies of a Vertonen C20 on What We Do Is Secret entitled “Rogyapas Bath“.  This one is a bit different from other Vertonen recordings I have heard and is very peaceful ambient.