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Virgin Eye Blood Bros. "Rec'd Live from the Deepest Hole in Louisville"

by Virgin Eye Blood Bros.

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live from the deepest hole 36:29

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Oh Louisville... Man I still love you.. but why is it every time I'm there I feel like I'm never going to be able to escape. Like a dream of an alternate reality where I'm still living there that I'll never be able to wake from.

It was hard times that first brought me to Louisville (did you know that it's one of the 2 cheapest places to live in America?). I wish I could say things improved once I was there, but they got worse before they got better. But... dirt cheap rent, whisky bars till 4 am, and a full blown noise orchestra made for some interesting times.

Kris Abplanalp was at the epicenter of a very strange scene in Louisville when I moved there. He played with a super far out 10-25 piece group called Sapat. They practiced in the basement of a church about 2 blocks from my apartment on Ormsby in Old Louisville. Other spiritual mainstays of the group were upright bass player Dave Sauter and drummer Matt Mason, both of whom have passed away since my time south of the Mason/Dixon.

I wish I could describe the music of Sapat at this time, but I can't because it was totally free. Not just like free jazz free... but they had different members, different instruments, different m.o. every single time they played. I guess the only contemporary I could think of might be the "A" band from northern England.

I played with this group and with some of these dudes individually in different settings. Kris and I had a lot of shared musical headspace and somewhere along the way we decided to make a duo. I think it was to open for the Scorces on their U.S. tour. We decided to take a page from their book and name ourselves "Virgin Eye" as in half Virgo half Gemini.. and the blood bros thing had kind of a hillbilly ring to it.

Abplanalp played a bank of prepared 4 track tapes, some reed instruments.. I can't remember what all.. He always had so much stuff and it was always different.. a crazy awesome fucking mess of stuff. I think guitar too. I played synth, saxaphone, trumpet, trombone, acoustic guitar, pots and pans. I think I remember thinking somewhere in my head that the I wanted us to be like a blue skinned Wolf Eyes or something. A fucking weird and suitably amorphous goal.. that got us somewhere else.. somewhere, I think at least, pretty singular and great.

When Tom Lax came out of retirement, guns blazing, he was disdainful of pretty much all the music that happened during the Siltbreeze hiatus.. but particularly of the whole "new weird America" thing. Kind of understandably so... I remember touring one summer after Keenan dropped the N.W.A. article in the wire and every town had it's own Sunburned Hand of the Man rip off. Things went to imitation wank pretty quick... but lets rewind the hype a season or 2.

Me and Kris played this particular set at Artswatch on Franklin Ave. A big wide open art gallery... perfect for a'happenin'. I think it was just us that night... we filled up the hole space with our pots and pans and assorted detritus and made the handful of people that actually came to the brightly lit high ceilinged room sit in the middle of all our stuff. I'm gonna reclaim tie-dye here and say we proceeded to wander around the room from station to station and grab the zeitgeist of the whole N.W.A thing right out of the air before it had ever been labeled as such. We never really sounded like this before or again.. just a cool night.

Stick around, cause hi-lights from the set (apart from the music) include me personally thanking every single person who came to the gig ( I think it was 5 people), and forgetting my own name while introducing myself to a member of the audience. No wonder I live in fear that my life now is just a dream and the real me is still wiling his days and nights away in the deepest hole in luhville.

credits

released June 19, 2014

Kristafer Abplanalp
Peter Nolan

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Arbitrary Signs Pelham, Massachusetts


Arbitrary Signs is the vanity record label of Pete Nolan of the Magik Markers. Artists: Magik Markers, Spectre Folk, Devin, Gary, and Ross, MV&EE. For links to other Magik Markers see Drag City's Bandcamp. For more Spectre Folk go to the Vampire Blues Bandcamp page. ... more

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