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The Experimental Music Caucus at The Space Concert Club (6 February 2020)

2/8/2020

4 Comments

 

​Sometimes the story of any given show seems to require some context than can be adequately offered on a flier. Occasionally I’ll go out of my way to try and give that context, because I think it helps explain who people are, why they are there, and what leg of their creative journey they happen to be on. But sometimes you just have to dive in; certainly, not everyone at a show knows what you’re talking about, who you are, or even wants to know the details of your career. Sometimes they’re just there for a drink, and happen to be crossing your path. So even the back-story, if provided, can go un-regarded. They aren’t there for the Music Caucus, they just really like the burritos. 

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The Space Concert Club, as it exists now, is the second iteration of this venue, the first having been at a different location, and a few years previous. I discovered it because they put on an experimental show one night, with two gentlemen that I had met through radio (Uneasy Chairs & devilsclub, back in November of 2016). At that time, The Space had only been open for less than a year. I sort of fell in love with the place almost immediately. It’s a very down-home operation, run by three friends: one does the kitchen (Summer), one runs the sound (Stan), and one runs the booking (Doug). After I had established myself in Salem, both on the radio and through ’zines, I approached Doug about booking some semi-regular experimental shows.

As I understood it, while no one was actively apposed to hosting them, no one person (outside of artists trying to set something up themselves) had tried to book experimental music on the regular. Salem was, and still is to a degree, dominated by rock music type bands. There are more retro-grunge, metal and indie-rock adjacent musicians in our town than anything else, and while there are enough “weird” bands in the area to sustain a monthly experimental evening, it wasn’t really on the menu… yet.

While I’m stroking egos, here are some things that make The Space a better venue than almost anywhere else I’ve worked or played. First, it’s very easy to book. There’s an online form, they are open to all sorts of music in all sorts of genres, and they are happy to try something until it actively does not work. They are about as DIY as you can make a public venue that is also a business. For example: my shows almost never earn much money, and usually it’s no different for The Space (financially) than if they hadn’t had a band playing at all. And having live entertainment, even very weird entertainment, still brings people into the bar. So they have no complaints with us putting on shows, and really seem to encourage it; we don’t “scare” customers away, we don’t hassle the staff or make it hard for them, and usually, I bring in some interesting acts that seem to generate a positive response, at the very least. 

The bar is also vegan, which is nice for touring acts, and if the show is over by 10 PM, we can claim it is “All Ages,” and still have alcohol for sale for the adults, according to the strange OLCC customs here in Oregon. It’s nice to be shoulder to shoulder with people of any age at a show, and know that the kid and I can both experience music without having to go through that weird separation that some venues require. Lastly, I will say that The Space consistently has some of the best sound of any club I’ve ever been to. They record and live-stream every performance, and they always feed every performer, even if the show made no money that night. Since the people organizing the show can set the door price (or choose not to have one), I’d say that the venue supports our scene better than almost anywhere I’ve put on shows, and that includes “bigger” cities with more “sophisticated” scenes.

I’ll put it this way: Portland and Eugene are bigger, and it is harder to play at the places that do exist in those towns, where the sound is much worse (and there’s no food for performers). I regularly bring people to The Space, and find that they have never played through a sound system with monitors before, or to hear that they have never been treated well by a Sound Engineer until they met Stan. The Space built all of that themselves, on purpose, as performers who were frustrated with how sub-par venues could be. I commend them for understanding that our music is as interesting as any other band that wants to play in town, and that a harsh noise wall deserves as much care and attention as an acoustic guitar-wielding folk-performer. 

Way back in December of 2019, when I started planning this show, it began as a Tour Stop / New Album Promotional Gambit for Fischkopf Sinfoniker, an artist I’ve been a fan of for quite some time, and have hosted on my radio program previously. (Fischkopf Sinfoniker on Mid-Valley Mutations in 2017.) I enjoy not only their music, but their reference points, and listening to their tunes evokes old-school industrial with an ear for modern sounds and gear. So, check them out when you can.

Ironically, after arranging the entire show around their return to Salem, and booking the other acts to complement this lineup, I was incredibly saddened to discover that they had an emergency, and could not travel in the days leading up to the show. This is, of course, some behind the scenes sausage-making that really had no impact on how anything on the night went, except to say that, less that 24 Hours before the show was to start, I got some distressing messages, and was clambering for another act so I could re-calculate how it would all work out. 

​I usually prepare my sets with regard to the specific show / acts that I’m playing with, but with this change, I jettisoned the set that I had prepared — something a little more ambient and without voice samples — and instead re-arranged the entire evening. The new line-up, now that Tethys stepped in to do a full set, and with everyone else being flexible amid the chaos, reminded me of the politics we've been watching, and launched in me the notion that we were having an Experimental Caucus, and we were going to receive the results from different performers and regions throughout the night. Very quickly, everything started to come together.

​As it was, Dryad had cooked up something rather unique for the show anyway, squeezing an extra act into the show by dividing her time up among two performers, so it seemed like the kinds of shenanigans that happened at political gatherings was already underway with us too. Dryad herself has been booking shows in Eugene, OR going back to the early ’90’s, and her involvement with Icky’s Teahouse and the Merkin Lounge made those venues essential for touring bands looking for a sympathetic places for weirdos to play shows and congregate. She currently books at The Rooted Space in Eugene, and her open mic nights and experimental showcases have a very cool vibe. She plays in a number of acts, and while none of them were available for this show, she threw all of that aside anyway and arranged something new with Tethys, whom she’d never performed with before. Also of note: to my knowledge, both Tethys and Degradation Chamber are relatively new to the area, and certainly had never played in Salem before. 

​I’ve played a few shows with Brad over the years, and he’s also been a guest on my program previously. (Brad Anderson on WTBC Radio in 2019). Brad’s performances are incredible, as he applies classical and compositional ideas and theories to modern Electronic and Experimental Musical sounds, with very cool results. Brad came all the way from Federal Way, Washington for this show, and is one of those dedicated dudes who really will drive several hours just to play, only to drive right back, even if there is no money. On two occasions Brad drove me well out of his way to get to a place I was staying, and once just because he was attending the show (he wasn’t even playing). All of this comes through in his work: his dedication, his attention to detail, and the production value of his music is due to a person as focused as he is. 

Our caucus, while not fully well rounded, did a pretty good job of offering a range of ideas and perspectives. Artists do represent different regions and regional ideas, and they bring to each performance the scene that they are all soaking in before they come and perform for you. The Eugene scene is very different than what Salem offers, and the same could be said for Brad up in Federal Way. With all of this in my head, I started cutting Monty Python samples, and recruited some assistance from a few artist friends of mine on social media. A member of The Dead Air Fresheners, Eden Mononym and Paul Pearson all sent me various “caucus” results, and these samples began to provide the frame for how I would proceed with my set.

In terms of execution, the show was flawless, and I owe this to the fine people at The Space, and our own professionalism as performers. The Space is always very accommodating, and we had a particularly calm group of artists this evening, all engaged and excited to check out what everyone was up to. It was the kind of show with a lot of gear talk between sets, and questions about what everyone does for this or that problem. Everyone played short, so we were ahead of schedule all night, which only seemed to add to the good mood for both us and the staff.

There was a very nice atmosphere of camaraderie and connectivity, as people who didn’t know each other met and exchanged thoughts. The moment Tethys started playing, I could predict that Brad would dig the set, and sure enough, they were chatting about everything afterwards.

Degradation Chamber, someone who I’ve only ever seen wear a somewhat somber look on his face, smiled when I started chatting him up about his set, and how much I enjoyed it. I think the positive energy was just too hard to resist. 

More than a good show, or even a successful show, I want to put on a show where people feel the community I feel when I consider my place in Experimental Music. When I see someone perform something that moves me, I want them to be in the club, to hang out with the people I know, and to share what they have to offer with everyone else, too. There is something about bringing together the disparate parts of our scene for a night of fun and music feel like something positive. As we were packing up, while there weren’t crowds of people around, it felt like more of a success than some of the bigger shows I’ve booked. 

Public Photoset of A/V from the evening. 

* A Note about the videos embedded: these were, primarily, taken from The Space Concert Club's live-streaming videos that post to their Facebook Page. In the case of the Tethys & Dryad video, this came from Dryad's live streaming coverage of the show. (I was holding the phone.) For the Mini-Mutations set, I edited video from a number of camera sources, and synched it to a recording I made off of my mixer during the show. 

You can find a lot of videos on My YouTube Page and on the Mid-Valley Mutations Facebook Page, where I post and live-stream a number of DIY musical events that I encounter. 

4 Comments

“Forest Dwelling Hippie Weirdos”: A  Pacific Northwest Perspective

2/2/2020

6 Comments

 
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1. Greg’s Sage Perspective

For anyone who didn’t grow up in the Pacific Northwest, there’s a story that Greg Sage tells that is particularly apt when getting at the heart of our relationship to the outside world. The year is 1980. The Wipers are doing pretty good with their regional hit, “Better Off Dead,” which was self-released, even. There’s a bit of a scene happening in Portland, and as he starts to collect this motley crew of oddballs (Smegma), punks (Stiphnoyds), retro nerds (Napalm Beach) and girl groups (The Neo Boys), his tiny label — Trap Records — might have some juice outside of the local scene. If we rewind the clock to the previous generation of Northwest acts, they were only ever successful “regionally.” (The Sonics, The Kingsmen, The Wailers, etc.) Greg started to surmise that if punk from LA and NY was getting major label attention, perhaps he could at least get some larger distribution for his 45s as a by-product of this trend. He knew other people through the grapevine who said it had worked for them in bigger cities, and the impending Wipers record he was slaving away over was the perfect item to try and get bigger distribution for. 

Ever the go getter, Greg does the research, finds the names of the key people who make deals for record distribution at various mid-sized national labels that deal with punk and new wave bands, and he starts making calls as the, “Trap Records Rep,” to see what his chances were. Usually, the calls all started roughly the same: “Hello, I represent an independent label, with a roster of New Wave acts.” And everything would be going great; these were, after all, companies used to distributing this kind of stuff. This wasn’t strange, right? However, there would be a point in every conversation where they would ask, “So, where are you from?” And when Greg would answer with, “Portland,” there would be a moment of silence, the most imperceptible laugh — as if someone just realized there was a joke being played on them — and then a sharp click. 

It was the same everywhere he called. 

People forget that the canonized view of putting the first three Wipers albums into some sort of punk rock Valhalla has to eventually come to terms with the fact that during the three short years that those records were being made, The Wipers were essentially unknown outside of hardcore punk rock nerds, and people who lived in the Portland area. Even 10 years later, when I was coming up as a young record collector, you could still find a lot of the back-catalog used in stores for a few dollars. Certainly, Nirvana did a lot toward changing their reputation tremendously, and the difficulty with which it was to find those first three albums AFTER they covered “D-7” was the indicator that the Wipers were suddenly becoming “known.” 

There is more than just humor to the idea that most record distributors in 1980 couldn’t believe that punk rock or new wave could come from the Northwest. It points to this larger reputation that we have with us, that not even the Grunge Revolution of the ’90’s or the eight seasons of “Portlandia” can get at. Maybe “Twin Peaks” paints a better picture of Northwest life, or better yet, “Northern Exposure,” a show set in Alaska but is so much about rural Pacific Northwest life that it is hard NOT to read it as such. Suffice it to say, there is a strangeness, let’s say, to this region. An oddness that seems to permeate, not just our punk rock or our TV shows, but the very way of life that many of us lead. We grow up next to conservative pot smokers in Oregon, who are side-by-side with Lexus-driving deadheads who are the CEOs of major tech companies. Kids of every sub-culture in the Northwest make pilgrimages to The Country Fair in Eugene, a drug-infused bacchanalia of Grateful Dead parking lot style shenanigans. But, of course, only on the weekends; everyone has an 8 AM meeting with clients from San Fransisco tomorrow. There is a duality and a strangeness that moves through all of the Pacific Northwest. For many states, they are quite excited about Legal Recreational Marijuana. In the Northwest, it has essentially been “legal” since 1969. While simultaneously having one of the most conservative liquor commissions in the United States. 

This conservative weirdo / urban deadhead persona that the Northwest carries with it is no better personified than by a comment I got from someone I met in Virginia in 2003. My girlfriend and I were going out for a drink, and we met up with some locals she knew vaguely. In the commotion of chatting and introductions, I was talking with one girl who was about to start her Sophomore year at VCU. In my sweater and bow-tie, in fairly decent, educated English, I tried to explain to her where I was from. She looked at me quizzically, cocked her head, and in a thick southern accent, said, “You? Live out with those Forest Dwelling Hippie Weirdos? What are you, in the Peace Corps?”

As proudly as I can hold my head high, I would like to introduce you to the Forest Dwelling Hippie Weirdo from Salem, Oregon, as I try to present our little corner of DIY strangeness to the readers of the Electronic Cottage. 

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​2. Origin Story 

I grew up largely in my mom’s record / book / comic store, “a.k.a. Used Books & Records,” which was located in Cottage Grove, where I graduated from High School. In the late 80’s / early 90’s, you would probably find me there, either listening to George Carlin records, or reading Green Lantern comics, dreaming of other places. It was through her and her girlfriend that I first learned about Science Fiction, and as I sat in that store, imagining what hanging out with Ray Bradbury might be like, I began to imagine myself as some sort of writer, not really knowing what I was going to do with that. I loved listening to the radio, I imagined myself in bands too, but the fantasy I came back to was that of traveling the world, going from Sci-Fi convention to Sci-Fi convention, selling my new space novels about time travel… or something. 

This fantasy entirely fueled my desire to publish some sort of literary magazine, inspired by back issues of “Analog” and a magazine my school had compiled, of student writing. But my vision was something student run. In a story that is incredibly strange and much longer than I should get into here, I managed to talk my way into making four issues of a magazine of student writing and fiction that was financed by the school, titled, “Bob’s Imagination.” The first issue was published in March of 1993, and I distributed 100 copies to my friends, classmates, and to a couple of local stores. (At one point, the Cottage Grove Library had a copy that you could check out and read.) For about a week or so, I imagined that I would do this for the rest of my life: read fiction submissions and wade through poetry, trying to pair it all with the right artwork. 

And then JP Otto gave me a copy of his zine, “Shrapnel.” 

I’d never seen anything like it. Music reviews, sarcastic social commentary, collages. It was… unlike other things I’d read. It was knowing, it didn’t have all the trappings of formality. It looked like… something I could make. It had an attitude and a style that I could relate to. And I was probably going to be better at it than these intense spy stories I was trying to put together. 

When the last issue of “Bob’s” was paid for, and I had graduated, I immediately took the lessons of “Sharpnel” and continued making ’zines, and as I began to find shops that sold them, and places where I could get more, I began to immerse myself in the world of DIY, and everything connected to it. 

By the fall of 1993 I had moved to Eugene, where I met Semi-Colin, kiisu d’salyss & The Ramen City Kid, and they completely reshaped my view of the world in ways that I still feel here and now. They all had their own ’zines: “The Portal” for Colin and kiisu, and “Ramen City USA” for you know who. But their interest in music and other art very quickly revealed to me something more fascinating than the hair metal I was previously enjoying, and certainly more sophisticated than the Nirvana albums I was humming along with. As I began to see how DIY culture was connected, they took me to my first DIY show at Icky’s Teahouse, with Holy Rodent, an experimental act! It became very clear to me that I was no longer interested in being in Bon Jovi. Now, I wanted to be in a small band that could play at Icky’s, which seemed much easier to do than it did when I was in High School.

All three of them were in this band, and in the following year, Cathead — which had been largely talk and a few practice sessions up until then — began playing shows. On Halloween of 1994 I was recruited to join the band. I had fantasies of making music, and had even recorded some home-made stuff here and there. When I would sing along with They Might Be Giants, I could imagine doing something like them. But playing that show with Cathead that night blew my young mind in a way that no album had ever done, and no book would ever do. I lost myself in that night, where I met scads of people I’d never seen before, experienced performing experimental music for the first time, spent the night partying with strangers and women who were introducing me to thoughts and ideas I’d never had, and I knew that there was something happening in my head that I could never turn off, even if I wanted to, which I certainly didn’t. 

I listened to the radio A LOT growing up, and in Eugene, they had KWVA, a college station that had punk, indie, DIY and experimental music on the radio, along with a lot of other stuff, too. (To this day there is great radio on this station.) ’90’s College Radio was THE way to learn about music outside of record stores and friends handing you albums directly, and I listened to more than my share of it. Inspired by listening to recordings of Negativland’s radio show, and hearing stuff that was in an adjacent vein on that very same station, I took my years of listening to it and synthesized it into an application for a show, and got on the air by April of 1998, again, largely through talking my way in and suggesting that I might have almost 100% more experience than I actually did. 

Between 1992 and 1999, I went from a teenage weirdo who longed to see the world outside the small town I was living in — a town that I was convinced would never offer my anything — to someone who was producing DIY ’zines, music and radio of which I was quite proud. And, I didn’t have to compromise on the content of the stuff I was making at any point in those early years. Rarely did anyone come in and say, “You can’t play this!” I never got mail saying, “Don’t print stuff like this.” It was so empowering to be able to make the stuff I wanted, the way I wanted, without anyone ever getting in the way, and I didn’t even realize how important that was, or that I had something special, unique, or unusual. Once I had it, I sort of expected it, and figured that if I could do it, anyone could. I wasn’t any smarter than anyone else. I didn’t have any more skill than anyone else. I just wanted to do it… so I did.

Eugene, in many ways, is the perfect place for a young artist to begin their life, and it is an analog for what the rest of the Northwest is also like. In the heart of a place that is being re-defined by the culture of hippies and DIY / punk rock, this new perspective is incubated among religious conservatives, backwoods hillbilly rednecks, and a landscape that looks like some sort of mystical rainforest from a fantasy novel. There are contradictions in everyone here, and in the mid-90’s, Eugene was cheap, had plenty of jobs, and had a wide range of people making strange music and wonderful ’zines to keep any kid occupied. Mysteriously, I discovered that Semi-Colin’s mom worked in a bookstore, and again, talked my way into a job I was very much not nearly as experienced to do as I may have accidentally implied, and that was how a corporate chain of bookstores funded my young creative life until I decided to go to college. 

It was in this kind of environment that Austin Rich was born. 

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​3. Resulting In… 

In just over three years from today, I will have been making my own version of art for 30 years. What happened in the time between would be a blur of completely forgotten nights folding and talking into microphones if I didn’t have decades of recorded radio shows to listen to as a sort of “diary.” Those zines certainly do a lot to help keep the timeline in order, too, when I try to recall where I lived when I was in what band, or who was I living with when I was on which radio station. Living as cheaply as I have over the years has sort of caused me to need to live out of closets, boxes, storage units, basements, and anywhere I could suddenly move into when one thing dries up overnight. Suffice it to say that in that time, I still play in bands, I still make ’zines, and I still make radio. Maybe not all three all at once; I would take a break from bands to focus on ’zines, or take a radio break to get a band going. But those three things have been at the focus of most of my waking thoughts, for almost three decades now, even during the down-time. And all of it was produced with what extra cash I had lying around, and with no one else ever cracking the whip, to tell me when I need to turn my drafts in, or when I need to write a song. 

The bug to keep making things with a DIY spirit seems to be a part of the Pacific Northwest way of life in all the artists I know and love here. We are all incredibly proud of the work we do, and we love sharing it and showing it off as much as we love weirding people out with the oddness of all of it, too. The most reasonably looking people I know, with very straight jobs, give me a look when they reveal their music to an audience, an impish look, like they are very excited about possibly freaking out the squares… mostly because it’s what the squares all want in the end, anyway. They expect it out here. I’ve seen some crowds in Oregon get mad because an experimental show is too boring. It’s a strange dance we all participate in out here. There’s a meme going around about the bar in Salem where I put on shows, which is almost 100% a result of a show that I put on: “Went to the Space Just For Food And Now I’m At A Noise Show.” No one seems to think it's as odd as it once was.  

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​It’s certainly not exactly easy to be a weirdo, though. Some of the same problems we had in the 90s are still common here, too. In my county, we have consistently voted “red” in the last several elections. Even my city is split almost in half, in terms of voting, with a strong conservative streak in the City Council. Venues close as fast as they can pop up, and when one place starts having DIY shows suddenly, that doesn't mean it will continue. I can still get a negative reaction out of some locals for playing the most straightforward music, and it’s not like everyone walks around listening to experimental jams and quoting everyone’s self-published manifestos in the Northwest. Like in a lot of places, our scene ebbs and flows, we gain and loose venues and shops that sell our stuff, and we are always trying to find ways to continue doing what we do, often with fewer and fewer resources at our disposal.

But I’ll close with this anecdote: my wife grew up in Salem, and when she first started going to shows, the idea of a monthly showcase of experimental music of any kind just wouldn’t have been possible, at any venue, and any weirdness occurred when John Fahey’s experimental trio would play out occasionally (which is another story entirely). But here in 2020, a monthly showcase is now a reality; the aforementioned and memed Space Concert Club has had monthly Experimental shows for a few years now… sometimes more often than that, depending on the month and who is touring through. (It was one of the stops Mark Hosler made on his Northwest tour, where I was lucky enough to be his opening act.)

I was just contacted the other day about playing a show in Cottage Grove of all places, a town that I STILL can’t imagine being into experimental music, and yet, here we are, 30 years later, about to negotiate playing at a place that I'm sure I rode my bike past in High School, wishing I could find real culture in a real city. In many ways, the more things change, the more they stay the same. On January 24th, I played samples in an experimental band at a show almost exactly 20 years after I played in an experimental band at a venue one block away, a band that also had pre-recorded samples in our songs. 

So I must be doing something right. 

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4. Mission Statement 

Between radio, playing and going to shows, and being an avid fan of ’zines and music and film, it occurred to me that the scene I get to participate in might suffer from some of the problems that Greg Sage was experiencing 40 years ago: the perception of the Northwest might make any understanding of what happens here seem dim, or incomplete, or backwards, compared to more metropolitan areas of the United States. We have a sense of the entire world via social media, certainly. But there are some true gems in the Northwest that might not be known outside of it, and we may be experiencing a regional scene here in a way that is only really understood by the outside world to be more ‘Forest Dwelling Hippie Weirdos’ doing their thing. And, certainly, there are genuine Forest Dwelling Hippie Weirdos out here, too, making experimental music that you should, in fact, hear. (Forrest Friends comes to mind off the top of my head.) So I hope to use this node as a way of bringing some of this to the Electronic Cottage community, not just as a way of documenting the experimental music world that I get to experience, but to also keep me back in the habit of writing like this in a regular way. 

We’ll see how successful I’m able to be at this project. In the meantime, it seems appropriate to offer some insights into my own work, and the art and stuff that I make. Here’s a rundown: 

Mid-Valley Mutations (midvalleymutations.com): A continuation of the experimental radio program I’ve been doing since 1998. It’s had a few different names, and been on several stations, has had stops and starts, and has even been a podcast-only show for a while. But it’s now on KLFM.org in Split, Croatia, and is podcast just afterwards (you can find it in iTunes, or most podcast aggregators, or you can just listen to it from the website, or download the shows at your leisure). The show is usually produced between 8 AM and 10 AM on Sunday Morning for later broadcast, and we do try to stream that video live, when possible. We’re hoping to have a proper studio with phone and Skype interactivity in the future, but for now, it’s a low-tech operation that I love doing.

WTBC Radio In Beautiful Anywhere, Anywhen: (anywhenanywhere.com): This podcast is part of the They Might Be Giants Dial-A-Song network, and features interviews and live performances, with artists and musicians that I find interesting, largely in the experimental world, but there’s all sorts of people on this show (past guests include the members of Negativland, Zander Schloss, Hal McGee, univac, Jan Freya (the woman who wrote, “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo”), Rodney Anonymous, Little Fyodor, and many others). This program alternates, every other week, with Mid-Valley Mutations. (You can also find it in iTunes, or most podcast aggregators, or you can just listen to it from the website, or download the shows at your leisure.)

Mini-Mutations: (wtbc.bandcamp.com): This is a collage-based solo project I'm in that produces “Audio Essays” and cut-and-paste mash-up music, with a focus on different political themes and ideas that I've been considering. This is the thing I play in the most, and is usually what I’m making, musically. There’s often a Mini-Mutation component to almost every new episode of “Mid-Valley Mutations,” so you can get a taste for free on the radio before actually buying anything. What a bargain!

The Olsen Twins Ghostlight Ensemble (midvalleymutations.com/totgen): This is a free-improv group that I play in, where I perform synths and samples, along with our guitar player and percussionist. This is a new project, that just began in 2020, though we’ve been recording since 2019. There’s a couple other musical projects that I participate in, too, but those are still in the beginning stages, and we'll see how they go...

’Zines: (wtbc.bandcamp.com/merch): Along with CDs, tapes, and lathe-cut records of my bands, you can also find a number of ’zines I’ve produced and / or written for sale on my Bandcamp page. The most recent 'zine is titled, “The Ghost In You,” a collaboration with artist Jeremy Hight, which is a 100 page novel, with editing and design by Austin Rich, all wrapped in an attractive vellum cover. 

Video: (youtube.com/user/BlasphuphmusRadio): While I only recently began producing video, in terms of my overall output, I’ve become quite fond of it as a format. All of my videos end up on my YouTube page, for now.

And, of course, there’s always the old-fashioned way: austinrich@gmail.com

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Be seeing you!

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Austin Rich will publish his first post soon!

1/31/2020

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    Austin Rich

    Austin Rich is a musician, radio broadcaster and writer, who currently lives in Salem, Oregon. He is the creative force behind Mini-Mutations, a musical project that creates collage-based audio essays on a variety of political and social concerns. He also hosts Mid-Valley Mutations (an experimental radio program in the vein of Don Joyce's Over The Edge) and WTBC In Beautiful Anywhere, Anywhen (a live performance and interview based program). He's been writing and publishing a variety of 'zines since 1993.

    email 
    midvalleymutations.com
    anywhenanywhere.com
    acronyminc.org
    ​

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