#drag city records

[katelouisepowell]

To celebrate the glorious & highly anticipated return of Joanna Newsom I thought I’d reshare my little collection of illustrations based on her music 🕸🍒🕊🌺 She moves and inspires me like no other, I’d love to keep making pieces that use her lyrics as a base from where I can hone my drawing techniques and explore more symbolism and visual storytelling 🌟

so far: Sawdust & Diamonds, a little Only Skin moment, a flora & fauna montage for Ellie (titled Feast For Precious Hearts), a fond silly goose drawing loosely prompted by Go Long, and Cosmia 🐣

her new music is sounding phenomenal, I’m especially excited by The Air Again. her artistry continuously blows my mind 🌬️

[mymelodic-chapel]

Ty Segall & White Fence- Joy (Psychedelic Rock, Garage Rock, Psychedelic Pop) Released: July 20, 2018 [Drag City Records] Producer(s): Ty Segall

[musicollage]

Oren Ambarchi — Shebang. 2022 : Drag City.

! acquire the album ★ attach a coffee !

[bandcampsnoop]

12/3/23.

Hot on the heels of December 1st's joy of the new Maxwell Farrington & Le SuperHomard comes a new release from longtime English band The High Llamas. After Sean O'Hagan left Microdisney he began this band. Their sound has stayed relatively the same over the past three decades. Chamber pop a la Van Dyke Parks or later era Beach Boys has always been their calling card.

More recent bands like The Heavy Blinkers, Sweet Apple Pie or even MGMT have shown that they're influenced by The High Llamas. And of course we need to mention Louis Phillippe and San Francisco band Healing Potpourri, with whom O'Hagan has worked.

This will be released by Drag City Records.

[popsixsquishcicerolipschitz]

Azita - Topic

Provided to YouTube by Drag City Records ~ In The Vicinity · AZITA Life On The Fly ℗ Drag City Inc. Released on: 2004-04-20 Auto-generated by YouTube.

Music

SONG Stim/Rspnse

ARTIST The Scissor Girls

ALBUM Here Is The Is-not

Life On The Fly ~

[sinceileftyoublog]

Ty Segall's Life Cycles

(Drag City)

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Throughout his career, prolific fuzz rock wunderkind Ty Segall has consistently revealed new combinations of sounds, and tricks. 2024 was no different. In January, with Three Bells, Segall combined the melodic psych folk of Sleeper with the glam funk sprawl of Manipulator and Freedom's Goblin. The album is a 15-song, song cycle, produced with Cooper Crain of Bitchin Bajas, that reads like a treatise on overcoming existential panic. In August, Segall released Love Rudiments, a not just fully instrumental but all drum album, inspired by the cycles of life and love. Both of these records contain moments of insularity and blasts of outward expression.

Even when Segall involves his band members, he's the true driving force behind the songs and their ability to bewilder you. Three Bells features collaborations with Denée Segall and Emmett Kelly, and occasionally, the rest of the Freedom Band. Of course they shine on a song like the thrilling "Move", which sports Denée's deadpanned, spoken vocals atop Segall and Kelly's dueling guitars and Charles Moothart's monstrous fills. But the album's highlights are directly representative of Segall's anxious inner monologue. Take "Void", where Segall's vocals lurk atop nervy acoustic guitars, as if to foreshadow the song's halfway about-face into a mopey, strummed tune with distorted guitars that almost sound like horns. "In here, I realize it's all fake, what I've seen outside," Segall sings, doubting his own past perceptions as you try to parse what you're hearing. "Eggman" plays like a sonic experiment, sounding slowed down before actually slowing down, its elements subsumed with noise as if the song is being boiled. "Your mouth's agape and caked with eggs," Segall deliberately sings, the rhyme scheme the only thing less expected than the song's aural turn. And at first, while a song like "Denée" seems like a showcase for the album's instrumental palate, Segall simply repeating his wife's first name and allowing the instruments to take shape, Ben Boye's spacey keyboard licks criss-cross with Kelly's bass and hand-clap percussion to create an odd time signature, making you forget how the song started in the first place.

If some songs on Three Bells represent Segall's efforts to capture the absurdity of the world, the more traditional and introverted tunes seem like a necessary contrast. "Out there, I'm too dizzy," Segall declares on "My Room". In other words, when he's inside, he can fool around, flip through his record collection, and craft songs. Three Bells gives you your quintessential T. Rex-indebted strut with "I Hear", drippy Goodbye Bread-era ditty with "Watcher", and Neil Young stomp with "Repetition". Segall's great ability to propel a song with acoustic guitar shines on "To You"; even the sweetly whirring breakdown fails to prevent the main melody from wriggling its way into your ear. "Just keep singing so we can dance forever," Segall requests, to others and himself, as if it's his mantra.

Well, except for the fact that Love Rudiments, on the other hand, has no singing and much less than normal you can dance to. Three of its four tracks are longform wanderings that, even upon entering a groove, take a left turn. "Getting Ready / Arrival / The Dance / Walk Home Pt. II / First Touch", beginning with trilling xylophone and panning snares, eventually makes its way into a 4/4 beat, with a forward march that could stand up to his excellent cover of Hot Chocolate's "Every 1's a Winner". Soon, though, its layered mallet instrumentation melts into something that sounds like rustling around a pile of silverware, and the song rolls to its end. The clacking boom bap of "Honeymoon / Life / Confrontation / Argument / Separation / Realization" also gives way to skittering drum rolls. Its ambient whooshing recalls the feeling you get from hearing Segall's trap kit playing on opening track "First Look / First Conversation / Walk Home Pt. I": that the songs are crumpling in on themselves. The titles on Love Rudiments suggest a love that starts and ends over decades, but as with any cycle, it's not linear time that's important as much as repetitions on a theme. Three Bells and Love Rudiments are Segall's attempts to find patterns in a senseless world.

[sorrymomband]

the music video for But I'm a Quarterback came out a week ago! we had so much fun making this music video with our friends, the super talented crew, and some awesome fans who came out to be extras! thanks for all the love and support so far on the single, it means so much to us :) go check out the video on youtube! its actually really good and they filmed it on a really fancy camera

Directed by The Bloomquist Brothers

Produced by Mainframe Pictures

Director of Photography Mike Magilnick

[mywifeleftme]

92: Aquariana // Aquariana

Aquariana Aquariana 2013, Drag City (Website)

The Source Family were one of the more successful new religions (read: cults) operating in Southern California during the early 1970s. Founded by Father Yod (pronounced “Yoad”; né Jim Baker), a towering, bearded figure with a few alleged murders (via karate chop!) and bank robberies under his robes, the Source Family operated a popular health food restaurant in L.A. and cut dozens of brainstewing psych rock records that have become holy grails to men who physically resemble late period Jerry Garcia. Yod assigned one of his 13 wives (Isis Aquarian, née Charlene Peters) to document the cult’s journey over the years, resulting in an incredible trove of video recordings, some of which were used to assemble 2012’s The Source Family documentary. The footage, much of it eerie and gauzily beautiful, gives us a good idea of what day-to-day life in the Family was like, from its origins to Yod’s corporeal demise in Hawaii following a hang-gliding accident (!).

The Source Family were as close to a prototypical cult of the era as you can get: white robes, buffet approach to Eastern and Western spiritual concepts, illiberal attitudes toward “personal possessions,” semi-involuntary polygamy, institutionalized drug use, etc. If you’ve ever listened to recordings of the sermons of Jim Jones or David Berg, Baker’s hep gibberish will sound strikingly familiar, and indeed, the Source Family followed the standard trajectory—from monogamy to a form of free love that mostly allowed the leader to fuck all the hot girls; from soft notions about kindness and peace to dark mutterings about an imminent apocalypse; from vegetarianism to moral loopholes that sanctioned the killing of dangerous outsiders. The Source Family never went the way of the Peoples Temple because, when faced with a mounting crisis (the cult’s disastrous move to Hawaii), Baker decided to disclaim his godhood instead of doubling down on it. No one knows why he eventually told his followers he was only a man, but I have a hunch: he wasn’t a sawed-off little gnome, and he wasn’t crazy. Unlike his murderous peers, Baker didn’t have much to overcompensate for; he was a huge, built guy who didn’t need a cult to get laid, impose his will, or feel important (though he got off on all of the above). In the end, no one died, and so it feels a little less vulturine to nibble at this particular cult’s artistic output than it does, say, the Manson Family’s.

On that note, let’s turn to the music. Record nerds are always on the lookout for cult music because it often goes extremely hard, be it Manson’s acoustic freak folk, Scientology space jazz, or “Veteran of the Psychic Wars.” The albums the Source Family are known for (released under a variety of names like Ya Ho Wha 13 and Father Yod and the Spirit of ’76) are out-there freeform acid jams in which the cult’s more experienced musicians try to work around frontman Yod’s untrained drumming and bellowing—a member of the No-Neck Blues Band pops up on the 2012 documentary to gush about their records, and you can see why acts like NNCK and Jackie O Motherfucker would lose it for this stuff.

The album we’re looking at today, by contrast, is a solo piano recording from the mid-‘70s by Aquariana, another of Yod’s wives, that went unissued till 2013. Aquariana had a Queen Guinevere-type look, and the liners note that she would frequently spin her own long golden hair into thread to sew and embroider with. A capable pianist with a multi-octave voice, Aquariana’s music could broadly be called folky, but it feels a little more theatrical than that, influenced by show tunes and AM soft rock. Her songs are mostly about love (-ing Father Yod), bearing children (of Father Yod), and the magnificence of Father Yod. It’s midway between devotional music and the type of stuff a medieval bard would be retained to write in praise of an egotistical baron. You can practically see Baker being fed grapes in the producer’s chair while she plays. Though it’s not as overtly weird as Ya Ho Wha 13, there’s still a lot of stuff on Aquariana that no sane producer would’ve allowed, like the way she tunelessly holds and holds and holds her notes on “Oh My Love” and “One Love” until you start to think your record is skipping. That strangeness is why it exerts the particular appeal it does, and it does have a particular downbeat intensity that holds my interest, despite its rudimentary songcraft.

Chicago’s Drag City label was behind the documentary and mid-2010s series of Source Family music reissues. Unlike reissues of, say, Manson-adjacent music, the label was able to work with surviving Family members like Isis Aquarian. This meant of course that they couldn’t dress up the reissues too salaciously (see LIE: The Love & Terror Cult), but Baker’s group already had such a strongly creepy aesthetic that there wasn’t much need to. A designer would be hard-pressed to come up with a more uncanny cover than Aquariana got: the singer at the piano in her ruffled gown with an unreadable expression, the head and shoulders of her husband-father visible behind the instrument, the portrait framed in ornate white fabric. It feels like the work of an outsider trying to underline the cult’s depravity in red pen—yet the composition and cover design were by Yod himself. Make of that what you will.

92/365

[passengerpigeons]

So back in the day i followed someone who was posting about how this gay porno called The Drifter had a really good soundtrack but there wasn't an official release. This was one of the songs she ripped where she could filter out most noise besides some rain and stuff i think.

anyway this song from an obscure gay porn is the song that got me into six organs

[leilakisakabiri]

Miami Hot Lap (CL)

Summary: You're forced to do a Miami Hot Lap with your boyfriend.

Warning(s): Just fluff.

A/N: Ahh I love this concept!! Requests are open for Charles and Lando.

Word Count: 800+

Masterlist

Being invited to an F1 race through a brand seemed like a fun idea at first. You would get to see your boyfriend for the first time in weeks, watch the race in your hometown, and somehow still be able to call it work. It was a win-win situation.

That was until they approached you with a video idea.

"So since you're working with one of our sponsored brands for the weekend, a Miami native, and dating a driver, we thought it was only fair to ask you to do the Miami hot lap video." The F1 content manager explained.

"Miami hot lap?" You questioned, unfamiliar with what they wanted you to do.

"Yeah y'know just go for a few laps on the track with a driver. For you, it would be Charles of course." She assured.

You shook your head rapidly, shrinking back, "No thank you. I don't drive with Charles."

"But he's your boyfriend? Surely you've driven with him before?"

You sighed, "Yeah in a city, where he's forced to follow the speed limit, I would never be able to handle going that fast. He's too scary without restrictions."

She furrowed her eyebrows, opening her mouth to respond before she was cut off.

"Spreading lies about me again?"

You felt your lips upturn in a smile as he came up behind you, fingers entwining with yours as he kissed your cheek.

You turned to face him, attempting to be firm, "I love you, but I'm not driving with you." You repeated.

One hour later you found yourself being strapped into the passenger seat of his car, cursing yourself for giving in after he convinced you it wouldn't be that bad.

The camera sat on the dashboard, recording the both of you.

"Go slow," You warned, as he got the green light to pull away.

"We'll get no views then." He argued.

You started at him in disbelief, "Would you rather have more views on a video or have a girlfriend in one piece?"

It was quiet for a beat too long and you put your hand up, "You know what don't answer that. I don't want to know."

"So how do you like driving with me so far?" He asked once you made it past the first lap.

You nodded, "Not bad, right now I feel like we're going to get food."

He smirked, "Well in that case go on and get comfortable."

You eyed him skeptically but you decided to trust him, "Okaaay," you dragged out the word as you slouched a bit more in the seat, letting your body relax against the seat, going as far as to admire the view outside the window.

The peace only lasted for a second before Charles was slamming on the pedal, sending the car lurching forward at record speeds.

While he got a shot of adrenaline, you felt your stomach somersault as your body jolted backward.

“Charles. Charles!!” Your voice filled with panic, fingers grabbing onto the side of the car for dear life, eyes wide as you refused to take your eyes off the rapidly passing road in front of you.

He laughed at your reaction, only stopping once he realized how serious you were. He dropped a hand down to squeeze yours, reassuring you, “Relax I won’t let anything happen to you.”

The supposedly sweet action had the opposite effect, “Keep both your hands on the wheel!” You shrieked, sending him into another fit of laughter.

You put a hand to your forehead in shock and disbelief, "We're going to die."

You felt hysterical, and his shit-eating grin only irked you further.

"We're not going to die. I promise." He swore, trying to calm you down.

You shoved his shoulder, "Your promises mean nothing to me anymore Charles. We're going to die and it's all your fault." you deadpanned.

“Y/n amor I’m barely pushing 90 mph.” He revealed.

Your body froze, before finally losing some tension, “Oh."

You checked the meter seeing that he was telling the truth, "It feels a lot faster,” you argued, “Especially with the sharp turns," you elaborated.

He agreed with you but not before side-eyeing you, "Right."

"So should we go faster?" He proposed.

"Charles," You warned.

"Why so formal?"

You glanced at each other for a second and already knew what would happen from the unfiltered excitement in his eyes, "Hold on amour."

You watched in horror as the meter rapidly rose hitting up to 130mph, you mouthed a "help me" to the camera.

“I think I’m gonna throw up everywhere.” You groaned once the car had finally come to a halt.

Charles patted your head affectionately as you laid your head against your knees, “You’ll be ok.”

“No. I’m going to projectile vomit on this dashboard,” you warned, “I’m never driving with you again.”

He furrowed his eyebrows at your comment but didn't say anything, instead facing the camera.

"Well thanks for joining us today, if you want more videos like this-"

You lifted your head off your knees when you noticed he hadn't finished his sentence, finding him staring at you expectedly.

"Like and subscribe?" you questioned, voice hoarse.

"Exactly. See you guys later!" He waved bye to the camera and moved your head to lay on his lap so you could rest.

[the-witchhunter]

DP x DC: The Dead Man at the Diner

Danny has a hard time maintaining regular jobs. At this point he’s pretty much nocturnal after years of being attacked at night, and possibly just part of his ghostly nature. He’s odd, and a basic google search brings up various news articles about him getting into fist fights with the mayor of a small town. He barely passed high school and college was out of the question, so who in their right mind would hire him?

What’s a job that would work with his odd hours, doesn’t require a college education, and a possible criminal record and a tendency to be ready to throw down is NOT an issue?

Danny is a cook at a 24hour Diner in Gotham

The man just needs to be able to flip a burger and make breakfast food and doesn’t mind a gun in the face because he’s well used to it. So what if the robber was dumb enough to pull that shit next to the fryer. If he didn’t want something to end up extra crispy he should have stayed out of Danny’s kitchen

Just think of all the folks he would meet.

Sure, the vigilantes of the city would be obvious and you can’t tell me spoiler isn’t dragging folks there to eat. Maybe they notice some weird things about the cook, like he doesn’t breath, his eyes reflect light like an animal’s, or the time he accidentally cut off a finger and it was fine the next day, or maybe the time a robber shot him and he just... didn’t react

Something is weird about that guy

And of course the person I think would love a jersey style diner breakfast at all hours: Harley Quinn

Technically she’s not supposed to bring the hyenas in, health code and all that, but everyone else is to freaked out to tell her and Danny doesn’t care. Frankly he spends his break petting them and they like him because he smells like food.

[musicollage]

Bill Callahan — YTI⅃AƎЯ. 2022 : Drag City.

! enjoy the album ★ provide a coffee !

[bandcampsnoop]

6/29/23.

Interesting that Los Angeles based band Flat Worms have never gotten their own post. I remember wearing out Red Hot Sand several years ago and loving that members were in the Ty Segall Band, Thee Oh Sees, and Dream Boys. Listening to Flat Worms always made me think a little of Love As Laughter.

This morning I listened to St. Vincent's by Deaf Wish, which made me go back to Red Hot Sand (Volar Records). Then a quick search on Bandcamp revealed that the the band will be releasing "Witness Marks" on Drag City in late September 2023. They also have a live album on Frontier Records.

[jaebeomsbitch]

The Princess and Eggplant (E.M.)

Summary: Your boyfriend happens to be a foot taller than you...or Eddie is afraid to stick it all the way in, afraid to hurt you

Warnings: Minors DNI, size kink, pure smut

Pairings: Boyfriend!Eddie x Girlfriend!Reader

A/N: watching Sex and the City and couldn’t stop thinking about the size difference between Carrie and Aidan. As a 5'1 they/them I'm drooling. Literally finished this a while ago but couldn't find a good gif, I'm gonna start making my own banners

Like Eddie holding you up, your thighs wrapped around his waist, his big hands on your ass. His tongue in your mouth as he kisses you more and more aggressively until you can’t breath and your head is spinning. The way he manhandles you, impaling his thick cock inside you as he grits his teeth trying to control himself from being too rough. But his cock only fits half way and you’re clinging onto his shoulders moaning like a ghost in a haunted house.

You heave for air as his cock knocks the wind out of you. He lays you out on the bed, your hair fanning out as he yanks you to the edge of the bed.

“Fuck sweetheart” he groans looking at the way his cock disappears inside of you. His neck straining as he holds himself back.

“More Eddie, fuck give me more” you gasp, your nails digging into his back.

“S-shit baby, don’t wanna hurt you” he grunts, slowly pulling out and back halfway in. As he refuses to go deeper, his eyes already rolling back as your tight velvet walls grip onto him.

“Please Eddie” you whine, pressing the heels of your feet into his ass forcing him deeper into you. Your jaw slacks as you’re stretched open by your boyfriend.

“S-shit s-so fucking big” you moan pressing your chest into his.

“F-fuck you’re gonna kill me” he groans voice higher pitched then normal. He hisses, teeth clenched tightly as he tries to remain still. However you don’t give him the chance, you dig your feet deeper into his pale ass. Pushing him inch by inch slowly into you until his hips are flush with your ass.

Eddie knows that he needs to be the one to slow down, but it's hard when you feel this good - especially when you're moaning like that. He hasn’t even moved and yet you’re already cock drunk. You’re drooling and moaning incoherently as Eddie’s cock fits like a puzzle piece inside you, nice and deep.your pussy struggles to accommodate the stretch. Your walls pulse around him almost like it’s trying to push Eddie out. 

His arms shake as he shallowly thrusts into you, little grunts leaving his lips. 

“Fuck Princess, so fucking tight” he whines. 

“S-shit it’s like you’re fucking choking my cock” he grunts out, looking at the slight bulge in your lower stomach every time he slides back in. The sight is enough to make him cum right then and there. 

“F-fuck fuck fuck ohhhh fuck” you moan underneath him trying to grind into him but his grip on your hips tightens. You know he’s gonna leave bruises on you but you fucking love it. Love that he’s practically whimpering “princess” under his breath like a broken record, like he needs to burn the feeling and imagine in his head. 

“More, Eddie please-” you whine, your pussy pulsing around him desperately trying to drag him back in. He shakes his head vehemently, his jaw tight as he grinds his teeth. No girl could ever take his full cock before and much less someone so petite. 

“So fucking perfect Princess. Your pussy’s taking me so fucking good. Fucking stretching out to fit my cock baby” he grunts out starting to lose his reserve. His hips move slightly faster as he feels the burn deep in his gut. 

“Made f’you Eds” you nod, eyebrows pinched together as he pulls the rubber band tighter. You flex your stomach trying to keep it together. Your moans getting louder as his his resolve starts to slack more and more. 

It isn’t long until he’s snapping his hips into yours looking like a man possessed. He’s fucking feral, hair wild, pupils blown out, neck flexed. His whole body is tense as he pounds into you fast and hard completely breaking you down. 

You’re more than cock drunk at this point. Babbling gibberish, writhing under him, pulling at the sheets, your eyes closed shut as you’re in your own little world taking Eddie’s thick cock. 

“Jesus fucking Christ” Eddie moans at the sight of you. Most girls would’ve cried in pain, he always needed at least an hour of stretching and foreplay to get half way in and yet here you are taking it.

“M’gonna cum!” You cry, stomach flexing harder, your muscles tightening almost painfully. 

“Fuck- cum on my cock, Princess,” he pants, his balls slapping into your ass, hand pressing into your stomach feeling the bulge of his cock.

“Ohh fuck- fuck- fuckkk fuckkk” you all but scream as you let go. You tremble under Eddie’s body, face contorted, jaw slacked, drool dripping down your chin. It’s like you’re high and drunk at the same time. 

“That’s it Princess milk my fucking cock. Taking me so well, begging for my fucking cum” he grunts. His eyes rolling back as he clenched his jaw and comes hard. Thick white ropes paint your velvet walls already dripping down to your ass. Your pussy too small to accommodate both his cock and cum. 

“Shit” he heaves, slowly pulling out not trying to hurt you further. 

“I’m not gonna be able to walk am I?” You groan as he nuzzles into your neck. 

He chuckles,”probably not.”

“You’re the worst” you mumble lightly nipping his bottom lip. 

“Not what you were yelling two seconds ago” he murmurs against your lips. That’s dimpled grin on his face as he presses for a kiss and another and another.  

[sinceileftyoublog]

Six Organs of Admittance Interview: More Than a Couple Chairs

Photo by Kami Chasny

BY JORDAN MAINZER

When Ben Chasny dives into something, he usually dives deep. Upon answering the phone in February, when I called him to talk about his new Six Organs of Admittance album Time Is Glass (out today on Drag City), he seemed a bit scattered. Despite mentally preparing himself all day for the interview, he got distracted by a "What are you digging lately?" Bandcamper compilation Drag City asked him to put together to advertise his record release. (A music fan with a voracious appetite, Chasny was rediscovering music he had purchased a couple years prior and forgot about.) Six Organs records often occupy the same dedicated headspace, Chasny setting aside blocks of time to think about nothing else. That is, until Time Is Glass. On his latest, Chasny blurs the lines between his outside-of-music life and the music itself, the album a batch of songs that reflects on the magical minutiae that sprout during a period of needed stasis.

The last time I spoke to Chasny, he and his partner [Elisa Ambrogio of Magik Markers] were still settling in from their move to Humboldt County in Northern California. "When Elisa and I first moved here, we didn't have any friends," Chasny said. "But there's a group of us that live in Humboldt now. A bunch of my friends moved up since the last time I talked to you." That includes fellow Comets on Fire bandmate Ethan Miller and his partner, fellow New Bums musical partner Donovan Quinn, and folk singer Meg Baird and her partner. "Every New Year's Day, if it's not pouring rain, we take a walk on the beach," said Chasny. One such photoshoot on January 1, 2023 yielded the album cover for Time Is Glass: That's Miller and his poodle, along with Baird's Heron Oblivion bandmate Charlie Saufley. This unintentional artistic collective meets up often, whether for coffee or as Winter Band, a rotating cast of area musicians who form to open up for musician friends when they come through town, like Sir Richard Bishop of Sun City Girls. As such, according to Chasny, Time Is Glass is a celebration of community.

Perhaps the supportive strength of his artistic family gave Chasny the willpower to incorporate elements of his daily life into Time Is Glass, something he couldn't avoid. He didn't share with me exactly what in his personal life made it impossible to separate the two, though he mentioned his dog, a difficult-to-train puppy that was a mix of three traditionally stubborn breeds. Said dog inspired "My Familiar", a song that uses occult language to inhabit the mind of his obstinate canine companion. "And we'll burn this whole town / No one says there's good," Chasny sings, alternating between his quintessential hushed delivery and falsetto, his layered vocals atop circular picking exuding a sense of sparseness. Indeed, you wouldn't expect a Six Organs record about home life to sound totally blissful; Time Is Glass is at once gentle and menacing. The devotional "Spinning In A River" portrays the titular carefree act as lightly as the prickle of Chasny's guitar or as doomily as the song's distortion. "Hephaestus" and "Theophany Song" imagine their respective mythological characters as gruff and voyeuristic. "Summer's Last Rays" indeed captures a sense of finality, Chasny's processed guitar and warbling harmonium providing the instantly hazy nostalgia before the fade-out. The album is bookended by songs more straightforwardly hopeful, the opener "The Mission" a dedication to friends falling in love with their new place of residence, the closer "New Year's Song" a twangy ode to dreaming. But it's the moments in between that Chasny was forced to capture on Time Is Glass. And thankfully, what was born out of necessity yielded, for him, new ways to interpret the same old, same old.

Read my conversation with Chasny below, edited for length and clarity. He speaks on domesticity, mythology, playing live, and Arthur Russell.

SILY: You've lived in Humboldt County for a bit. Is Time Is Glass the first Six Organs record in a while you made while situated in one place?

Ben Chasny: I did do a couple records here before. The first one, I was in the process of moving here, so I wasn't really settled. The second was at the beginning of lockdown. This is the first one I felt like was recorded at a home. Everything was settled, I have a schedule. When I was doing the first one, I didn't even have furniture in the house. I had a couple chairs. [laughs]

SILY: Do you think the feeling of being recorded at a home manifests in any specific way on the album?

BC: I started to incorporate daily domestic routines into the record, more often. A lot of the melodies were written while taking the dog for a walk, which I've never done before. There was always stuff to do as I moved in. The times weren't as separate. Before, it was, "Now I'm recording, now I'm doing life stuff." There was a merging of everything here. I would listen to it on my earbuds while taking walks and constantly work on it for six months.

SILY: It definitely has that homeward bound feel in terms of the lyrics and the sound, like you've been somewhere forever. There are a lot of lyrics about the absence of time, and there's a circular nature to the rhythms and the guitars. Does the title of the album refer to this phenomenon?

BC: A little bit. Time does seem, in general, post-lockdowns and COVID, different. The lyrics on the record have a bit more domesticity. It always seems like there was something that had to be done, that would normally keep me from doing music, that I tried to incorporate here. Maybe I'm just getting older, too. I'm getting more sensitive towards time. I'm running out. [laughs]

SILY: Was there anything specific about your domestic life that made you want to include it in your music?

BC: Just that I had to include it in order to do anything. It was no longer separate. The way life ended up working out, I could no longer separate my artistic life from other life. I had to put the artistic aspect into it in order to work. Instead of getting frustrated, I brought [music] more into the house.

SILY: Did working on the record give you a new perspective on domesticity?

BC: I don't know. A little bit. I was just trying to come to terms with basic life things. Let me look at the record, I forgot what songs are on it. [laughs] The song "My Familiar" is about my dog. I got this book called Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits, which was sort of taken from transcriptions of witch trials from Scotland in the 1500's. A lot of dealing with things like witches' familiars and demon familiars. I found a very strong similarity between that and my dog, which seemed like it was maybe a demon. She's a Husky-German Shepherd-Australian Shepherd mix, so as a puppy, she needed a lot of work. So that became a song. That's a more humorous way everyday life made its way into the music.

[With regard to] the last song, "New Years Song", Elisa and I have a contest on New Year's Eve when we're hanging out where we go in separate rooms and have one hour to write a song. We come out at 11 or 11:30 and play the song for each other. We've done it for a few years now. This was the song I wrote for New Year's Eve going into 2022.

SILY: You talk about God on Time Is Glass and delve a little bit into mythology. Was that something you were thinking about on a day to day basis when writing?

BC: The “Hephaestus” song was just a character. That was a rare song for me in that I was trying to make sounds that particularly evoked a mythological figure. I've made nods to mythology in the past, but the titles were almost an afterthought. This particular song, I was trying to make the sounds of that character in their workshop with the fire and anvils. I was trying to evoke that feeling. That was kind of a new one for me.

SILY: Maybe I'm reading into it too much, but you also seem to talk a bit about your state of mind on "Slip Away".

BC: It's funny you caught onto that, because I wasn't really expecting to bring it up during interviews. I wouldn't say that I came close at times in the past couple years to schizophrenia, but I could see way off in the distance and horizon what that would be like. I...was trying to write about that. At the same time, the lyrics that have to do with two minds and the splitting of the mind are also somewhat of a reference to the idea of a celestial twin or Valentinian gnosis, how you have a celestial counterpart. That idea [is behind the concept of] someone's guardian angel.

SILY: On a couple songs, you sing to someone or something else. "The Mission" you've mentioned is for a friend and their new partner. What about on "Spinning in a River"?

BC: Maybe it was more of a general idea. It wasn't so much to a person as to a general concept of Amory.

SILY: What were all the instruments used on the record?

BC: I had some guitar, I was singing, and there's some harmonium on it, which I did a lot of processing on, lowering it octaves. I've got some really basic Korg synths. Electronic-wise, there's a program called Reactor I like to use a lot. I do it a little bit more subtly than electronic artists. I use it more for background.

SILY: I picked up the harmonium on "Summer's Last Rays"! I feel like you never truly know when you're hearing a harmonium unless it's in the album credits. Sometimes, that sound is just effects.

BC: There are two different harmoniums. When the bass comes in, that's also a harmonium, but I knocked it down a couple octaves and put it through some phaser. It has a grinding bass tone to it. This is actually one of the few Six Organs records with bass guitar on it. Unless it's an electric record with a band, there's never really been bass guitar. I was really inspired by Naomi Yang's bass playing in Galaxie 500 and how it's more melodic. I told her that, too.

SILY: On "Theophany Song", are you playing piano?

BC: Yeah, that's at my friend's house. I just wanted to play a little melody.

SILY: Was this your first time using JJ Golden for mastering?

BC: I've worked with JJ before. He did Ascent and a few others. I particularly wanted to work with him this time because I had just gotten that Masayuki Takayanagi box set on Black Editions and saw he had done that. I have the original CDs, and I thought he did such an amazing job that I wanted to work with him again.

SILY: Is that common for you, that you think of people to work with and you dig a record they just worked on and it clicks for you?

BC: That's the first time I had just heard something and thought, "Oh, I gotta work with this person." I usually have a few mastering engineers I work with and think, "What would be good for them?" or, "What does this sound like?" I usually like to send the more rock-oriented stuff to JJ, but I was just feeling it this time.

SILY: Have you played these songs live?

BC: The instrumental "Pilar" I have been playing since 2019. That's the oldest song on the record. I did do one show last September where I played a couple of these songs live. I have some ideas on how to work it out. It will be a solo acoustic show, but I [hope] to make some new sounds so it's not so straightforward. One thing about this record is I tried to write songs in the same tuning. On previous records, I used a lot of tunings, and it was a real pain to try to play the songs live. I did write this record with the idea that most of these songs would be able to be done live.

SILY: What have you been listening to, watching, or reading lately?

BC: I just got the Emily Robb-Bill Nace split LP. I just saw her live a couple nights ago. The latest one on Freedom To Spend from Danielle Boutet, which is awesome. Freedom To Spend is a go-to label for me. Also, this split with Karen Constance and Dylan Nyoukis.

I've been reading Buddhist Bubblegum by Matt Marble, about Arthur Russell and the systems he developed, which I knew nothing about. His compositional systems have almost a Fluxus influence. The subtitle is Esotericism in the Creative Process of Arthur Russell, so it's also about his Buddhism as well. When I first heard about the book, I didn't know if I needed to get it, but I heard an interview with Matt about the detailed systems Arthur Russell came up with. It gives me a whole new level of appreciation for him. It's so good.

SILY: Did you listen to Picture of Bunny Rabbit?

BC: It's so good, especially the title track. It seems like when he has us plugged into some kind of effects or delay, he's switching the different sounds on it, but it makes the instrument go in so many different areas. To me, the title track is worth the price of the entire record, even though the whole thing is good.

SILY: What else is next for you? Are you constantly writing?

BC: This is gonna be a very busy year release-wise. I have a couple more things coming out. It's hard to write stuff because I always think it'll take so long for it to come out. I'm halfway working on something, but I have no idea when it will come out.

[senorboombastic]

What’s On Michael Portillo’s iPod: Flat Worms

Here at Birthday Cake For Breakfast, we like to get to the heart of what an artist is all about. We feel that what influences them is just as important as the music they make. With that in mind, ahead of releasing their new album ‘Witness Marks‘ (via Ty Segall’s Drag City imprint GOD?), Tim Hellman of LA trio Flat Worms talks us through a number of influences. Take it away, Tim… Words: Andy…