JYRK JAMBOREE IN REVIEW - DAY ONE: SAMOA

well honey and i just got back from tour/xmas vacation last night. it was a time and a time and a time and a time. yeah......let me show you these pictures i merely linked to before, for all those lazy folks who did not click. also, a few comments and a general, vague, lazy blow-by-blow.
we started off on a cold portland moring, went to the rental place and got a rugged, blue, sweet smelling subaru outback, piled in the gear, piled in the GOD boys (thats Brian Eubanks and Lief Sundstrom, for those who don't know) and hit the motherfucking road - with two bags of clothes strapped to the rack.

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ok so we drove down I5, cut over at grants pass and drove the rest of the way through redwoods hidden by deep, dense dark patches of mist and fog until we finally reached SAMOA. Samoa is a little village on the coast of california near arcada. thats in humbolt county (where the weed comes from). the "venue" was actually a huge house a few blocks from the ocean. we could hear the waves from thei back deck. old cypress trees loomed over us like enormous bonsai. the dudes who set up the show and their girlfriends and other friends made the Jyrk troupe a HUGE, delicious sushi dinner. sweet potato tempura sushi, eel, all sorts of good shit. we played in this huge barren living room with a nice warm fire going in the fireplace. friendly stoney humbolt surfer types popped in and out as the show mellowly rolled into the night...
the hosts were the righteous local quintet STARVING WEIRDOS who laid down an organic neo-finnish/thuja/jomf/nnck/vibracathedral guitar on guitar rubbing and singing bowls and low drone vibe that was as good if not better than all those bands i just prattled off. their set was entitled "axis of evil". i was amazed that such a small, remote town could be hiding such a beautifully sophisticated ensemble. look for new material from the starving weirdos on Jyrk and Root strata imprints
check the vibe shot

that night was our first time seeing eva inca ore with her touring partner karl bauer, aka axolotl. the CDrs i've heard of his are all good, especially the new one he gave me, and it was great to finally meet him and feel his vibe, even if the entire time we hung out he was sick sick sick. karl's someone that both honey and i really would love to play music with some day. his vibe is pure and natural and un-self-consious. blending seamlessly with eva's ever developing foggy blur of reverb cloaked, line6 layered vocal chanting.

GOD played an amazing stoned-out mass of minimal sine wave differences, resonant cymbal feedback and internal circuit burnout that completely fucking floored me. so much more acute and severely focused since the last time I'd seen them. both brian and lief seemed to ride the brink of un-controllablity with a sense of intuition eloquent adaptability that perhaps only comes from years of playing improv. check back later for a picture of this set.

honey and i played a weird set. i couldnt hear anything honey did and after driving all day i was sort of out of it. it was our first real show for a long time. our last few performances in portland had in art setting and much more ambient/conceptually based, so it was hard for me to get back into the swing of making improv music as a performance piece on its own. much different than being in the white rainbow sound installation head-space that i had been dwelling in almost exclusively for moths prior to the tour.
then yellow swans topped the evening off with their forceful waves of soft focus pinknoise. what i like about these dudes is that its the most un-harsh "harsh power noise" or whatever that i've ever heard. their tones are not some mindless torture demonstration or naive bullshit festival. i hear things in their music. tunnels of sound open up for me in ways that i don't get from wolf eyes or black dice or the million other cdr and tape noise projects out there that people talk about. the swans actual rock, the swans actually get psychedelic, the swans use electronics to make actually engaging soundscapes. the samoa show, as my re-introduction to them was nothing less than completely insipred, inspiring and impressive. fuck yeah. i love these dudes.

after the show we put all the gear in a corner of the big living room, set up camp and all fell asleep with the fire still going in the fireplace. mmmmmmmmmm