Debacle Records Round-up

For those involved in the Seattle noise/drone scene you know Sam Melancon from Debacle Records nearly props the scene up singlehandedly, the guy is crazily active both with his label which focuses exclusively on Seattle-area artists and with Debacle Fest a multi-day festival which he curates. This year's Debacle Fest is coming up quick, starting tomorrow night and running through Sunday (Sept. 17-19) and features the likes of Pete Swanson, Rene Hell, John Wiese, Chrome Wings, Stag Hare as well as local/Debacle favorites Dull Knife, Du Hexen Hase, Physical Demon, Wind Swept Plains and Megabats, among many others.
Anyhow, a long while back Sam handed me a hefty stack of Debacle discs and I'm sad to say I've only taken the time to review a few of them so I'm playing catch up now.
Various Artists - Bleak|Beauty
Since I was just mentioning the curatorial capabilities of Mr. Melancon. I figure a compilation is a good one to start out on. Culling artists from across the Debacle catalog and beyond, there's hearty doses of noise from Slates and Pig Heart Transplant and gritty, occasionally groovy, malfunctioning machinations from Summon Thrull and Physical Demon among many other sounds. The opening track, Slates's "Rainscatter" is all jagged, serrated edges; a relentless 7 minute rumble in the gutter. Certainly a brave way to kick off the disc. Meanwhile, later in the disc Pig Heart Transplant give the listener a quick run through the wringer with "How to Survive in the Woods." What I really like about the track is how succinct the pummeling is. They drop in and 3 and a half minutes later your skull is pulverized. Thunder Grey Pilgrim and KRGA both turn in some really nice drones as well. TGP's track "Breathe Eons Breadth" does a great job balancing melodic elements while sustaining atmoshere. There's some sparse, ringing Western-ish guitar notes near the end which you know I love.
Although the disc is solid on the drone and noise fronts, it's often the oddballs that catch my attention here. Walrus Machine delivers a great, idiosyncratic jazz track "Attic Stains" which stumbles around at a quick pace like a drunken man chasing the bus. Red Squirrels make an excellent raga-ish contribution "My Bike is a Sailboat" that definitely stands-out amongst its company. Forrest Friends are probably the weirdest band in Seattle and their track makes that very clear. A four minute menagerie of literally thrift store instrumentation. Cheap acoustic guitars, weird metal chimes, yelping, hand drums, toy accordion, you name it. Wind Swept Plains challenges them for weirdest here though with a loping, detuned, weirdly voiced "folk" ditty. Megabats shifts things into a heavy fog with sequenced melodies and drum machine barely peeking through, very nice.
Overall, it's quite a good compilation as it features a lot of quality work that covers a lot of area on the sonic spectrum. Perhaps a good place to start if you've never heard any Debacle material before. There's plenty of artists here I hope to hear more from.
Megabats - In/Out
Megabats is Sam Melancon's music project along with somebody named Riley. There's next to no info on the disc so I'm gonna guess this is predominantly keyboards, electronics and possibly a guitar. The disc veers back and forth between dronier selections and rather vibrant keyboard-driven pieces. "Meek Attack," the opener for instance, finds Megabats gradually building in volume over the course of 7 minutes. Grey-blue drones dominate but it's slowly apparent there's a synth melody burbling underneath. The next track "Battleground Sky" totally flips it around. There's pretty much no reverb, just multi-tracked, quivering synth. A stomping bass drum is a nice touch that really slingshots the melodies on their way, upping the energy of the track. The melodies slowly become more complex as does the drumming. I can't tell you how happy it makes me to hear live drumming on this track as well. Since they're trafficking in such boldly in electronic textures, the live drumming gives the piece a wonderful balance between the electronic and the organic. Nice choice boys! "Bag Lady," the only short track, is another good one, delivering a heavily murked out two minutes of looped melodies. "Clever Teeth" twinkles, lopes and glimmers over its seven minutes while "Jarritos" slightly echoes "Battleground Sky." Its got a murkier feel than "Sky" but its got a boatload of keyboard melodies all locked arms and skipping down the street. Megabats kick in the distortion for the default epic, the 13 minute closer "Canopy Fire." Spitting sequenced synth melodies through static distortion, the duo straddles the noise and electronic music realms without actually sounding like either.
Hemingway - The Mansions in Heaven are Empty
First of all, love the title of this disc. Now that that's outta the way, Hemingway will be playing Debacle Fest in their two-man heavy metal riffin' guise Great Falls. On this disc though, a single 22 minute track, they use space very well. Panning spacey, percussive bass notes while a guitar crackles and feeds back, the piece moves through peaks and valleys. Just when you think a crescendo may be on the rise they push everything back leaving only a few deliberate sounds. This disc is all I've heard of Hemingway but from where I'm sitting they are at their best when they are the most restrained. They really know how to hone in a few potent sounds and garnishing them with a few noises around the frayed edges. The duo mostly moves back and forth between a simmer and pummeling, as occasionally they like to drop some in-the-red rumbles on you. The back half of the track continues the peaks and valleys trajectory but also works around a loose guitar progression leading to a modest but satisfying finale.
Slates - Street of Dreams
Here's another single-track CD-r but this one's twice the length. Yikes! I'm guessing there's a concept here but there's practically no info to back me up. If you look at the cover which is a really wonderful piece of photography, you'll notice the house burning amongst the beautiful flowers and otherwise quiet neighborhood. The cover folds out to show the rest of the photo a crowd of neighbors grouped in the street, some craning their necks out windows, all attention focused on the fire. The flip-side of the booklet thing shows the fire from another perspective, raging even further, with the group of neighbors still captivated by the smoke and flames, with one man caught in the act of photographing the fire on his cell phone. I'm guessing that this piece is attempting to capture the experience on these onlookers. I may be way off base here but I'm goin' with it anyway. What's my evidence? Slates's track sounds like a fuckin' fire! It crackles and grumbles incessantly and grows, very slowly, more massive, more intrusive and more violent. There's a hypnotic aspect too as you see with the onlooking crowd. (May I also cite those DVDs of nothing but footage of a crackling fireplace to warm the homes of those without chimneys?) You can't keep each crackle, crunch and pop straight and, for better or worse, you get lost in the noise. Some people will appreciate the experience of this 44 minute arson-steeped piece, others won't, but it's gonna keep burning whether you like it or not.
Anyway, Debacle Fest will be kicking around The Josephine and The Black Lodge here in Seattle over the next three days. Hit up the Debacle myspace for full info

Du Hexen Hase - Du Hexen Hase [Debacle]/Dull Knife - Hands of Conjuration [No Label]

I've been neglecting a stack of discs from local mind Debacle Records. Unsurprisingly, one of my favorites of the Seattle scene, Du Hexen Hase, is among the best of the bunch.
This CD-r reissues a rarely heard tape called Concert for the People of Eugene with a new track stuck in the middle. The first jam "Concert for the People of Eugene Pt. 1" opens with a lingering flute and sparse drum hits. The track lopes along, slowly gathering steam, enlisting guitar drones, a suitcase full of electronics, sloshed vocals and skittering bass drum hits. DHH are masters with doing a lot with a little. There aren't that many elements to the jam but it manages to be dank, meditative, abstract, unsettling and weirdly groovy. It shifts imperceptibly throughout, never giving away its next move but never falling too far from the original tree either. The new 18 minute track separating the "Eugene" jams is an odd one. "Werekrautwolf" isn't tropicalia or anything but it's a weird change of pace. There's a vaguely upbeat rhythm section, squirmy electronics you'd mistake for bird calls, various blurs of static and currents and then the occasional depressed guitar strum trying to bring everyone down. I don't know if this is a live track or not but if it was I bet the crowd was pretty WTF'd and I imagine the band asked themselves the same question. Halfway through though, they really start grinding with the static and the synth blips and pulses and maintain the rhythmic quality in the newly percussion-less environment. The track begins a slow descent into (further) madness with weird cooing, synth sweeps and generally psychotropic drug-addled disarray. The synth squelches, bells toll and the magic man limps down the hallway humming his head off. Phenomenal jam, particularly in the head phones. The final jam "Concert for the People of Eugene Pt. 2" is more concise and less minimal at the get go. Dual guitar lines intertwine constantly with echoing melodies while subtle synth swoops move underneath. The piece moves along in that relatively pretty stasis, forming new melodies and such. Around halfway through the synth gets more unruly with seasick, warbly feedback loops and stuttering circuitry. The track feels like it might break at the seams but Du Hexen manage to keep everything in control for the final, surprisingly mellow comedown. It's a strong work. Anyone into full band drone really oughta check these guys out, they're a must.

Dull Knife's career trajectory as been that of constant paring down. They started out as a four piece drone act, then became a trio and have since settled into the core duo of Adam Svenson (Du Hexen Hase, Little Claw) and Garek Druss (Ear Venom, (A) Story of Rats, Tecumseh). Not only has the lineup been whittled down over the years, Dull Knife is operating at the most minimal frequency they ever have. Last time I saw them play, their gear consisted, between the two of them, of a bass guitar, a microphone and a couple pedals. This CD-r from earlier in the year, Hands of Conjuration, reflects that shift though they don't appear to be using the same set-up.
Opening track "Northern Vortex" features a pretty, delay-addled guitar unfurling arpeggios and it isn't until five minutes in the predatory static that had been creeping up since the beginning makes itself perceptible. By the halfway point the track has found an uneasy balance between dimly lit, droning hiss and moderate but constant kinetic motion. It's certainly one that sneaks up on you; it sounds very different by the end but it's difficult to pinpoint when the whole transition came about. The title track wanders about on what sounds like a collage of footsteps. That weird sort of (a)rhythmic figure eventually leads to a somber, loping bass drum, an occasional crisp cymbal hit and some signal manipulation. Very unusual ground for the men with the dull knife. There's a brief cluster of swelling guitar notes every so often which sometimes intertwines with the feedback warping going on elsewhere. The guitar is probably the only welcoming sound in the whole track. Everything else just sounds... bitter. Mean-spirited but not violent, just there to bring you down. Near the end the guitar gets a little room to expand its shimmering limbs but it's too little too late as the mood doesn't get a whole lot less dire. Out of nowhere there's this strange sort of groove in the final minutes that always shows up unexpected with some sort of drum machine(?) at the helm. Really weird jam. The final track "Goats of Clay" features echoing percussion of some sort and some lonesome organ swells. During the slowburn a few guitar parts come in, one of them seagull-like and the other almost managing a Morricone-esque guitar tone. A full blown guitar melody makes it through in the middle of the piece breaking free from the subtle, aural shackles of the drone genre. Moving from delayed clatter, the duo solidifies into a wall of drones for the track's end.
Each CD-r comes with cool artwork and may be still available through the Debacle and Dull Knife myspaces, respectively.

Mood Organ - Visiting a Burning Museum [Debacle]/Physical Demon - Pulse Maggot [Atonal Microshores]

These are a pair of local CD-rs I've had in the to-do pile for way too long.
Debacle continues to do it's Seattle-only thing which is great cause they dig up artists that I know nothing about. I haven't even seen the Mood Organ name around town (or the internet more accurately) so maybe he doesn't play live much. Or maybe I'm totally out of the loop which is very possible. Anyhow, Visiting a Burning Museum, despite its name, is a relaxing disc. It's not lush or new age or any of that; it's just mellow. The first track maneuvers gentle keyboard pulses into a very singular atmosphere. The piece hovers in near-stasis for half its length so when a few more notes appear making up a slowly forming melody it's a startling and dramatic occurrence. From there the piece, again gently, slides back into a similar but slightly ruptured stasis. The second piece immediately feels warmer due to the static-y field recording suspended ghost-like in the background. There's a looped keyboard melody and another tone that be either a counter melody or a stretched recording of a siren peeking out from the background. Around 3:30 any roughness slips away revealing smooth, gleaming drones. It's definitely a high point of the record because the tones are so simply and eloquently aligned with one another. There's a chilly, consonant beauty to the composition, but still with a lingering touch of tension disrupting the euphoric experience. Track no. 3 changes things up considerably, bringing in a pair of warbling acoustic guitars with a light hum of white noise. At 12 minutes its a bit drawn out for its own good though that isn't to say the piece is without compelling moments. The four minute closer kicks off with chimes and thick waves of static (literally coming from field recordings of waves breaking) before introducing a delicate and beautiful piano figure. What's interesting is the piece throws minimalism to wayside but stays completely faithful to the tone of the album. It manages to be the record's expressive climax and mournful coda at the same. That the heavy static shroud isn't dropped until the final 15 seconds or so, making the impact that clarity brings much more profound. It's really a lovely piece.
Physical Demon deals in less placid textures. This album occupies a strange space because they aren't exactly noise or drone but they carry that vibe into a weird electronic concoction. Pulse Maggot is the perfect name for this record cause it's jittery and heavily rhythmic but at the same time it constantly gnaws away at itself. Basically whats going on in the title track, as far as I can tell, is there are a number of synths in flux, slowly fluttering up or down, one or two drum machines or samplers pumping out sharp arrhythmic webs and a fuzzy bass undertow creeping sinisterly in the shadows. The second half of the jam shifts into a head nodding, downtempo beat thing with a bunch of synths suspended mid-melody. One of the strengths of the piece is that Physical Demon really have things under control. There's a looseness to the sounds but the trio is very measured and particular where they place them. I don't know if this is improvised or not, because it sounds like it but it's hard to believe that it is. The second half of the half hour long record is jokingly titled "Mulse Paggot" and its got a meaner spirit. Burbling synths are undermined by deep, unsettling groans of noise. Around 4 minutes in Physical Demon kicks up the tempo and things get dangerously close to a full-on groove while the second half of the track glides on steady synths and distorted pulsations. Physical Demon is definitely doing their own thing with this release which is admirable and worth looking into if you haven't heard them.
Both CD-rs look nice in their own way. Pulse Maggot has a well-done spray & stencil job while the Mood Organ disc looks refreshing professional for a small-press release. Debacle is definitely at the top of its visual game right now. Both discs are in print and available.

Super Fun 3" Round-up

I had a tiny stack of my favorite kind of CD-r and I decided to lump them all together for a super fun round-up...
Bearses – The Prettiest Girl I Ever Saw [Hymns]
Not sure if this band’s name is pronounced like “bare-zees” or “bee-arses” but that’s beside the point. This 3incher, from Florida label Hymns, is a crumpled up mass of static spread across five tracks. There are samples of stuff buried deep down but they’re mangled beyond recognition by incredibly thick, saturated distortion and pitch shifting. Near the send of the first track a bit of carribean dance/pop stuff (maybe?) is barely audible through the muck leading into flashes of slowed radio DJ babble, heavily rhythmic crunching distortion and garbled vocal tones in the second piece. It’s nice having bands like Bearses to remind us just how much a fuck-ton of fuzz can morph one sound into something entirely different——namely magnanimously crusty squalls. The third track brings up the curtain a bit letting shards of distortion interact with the source material (a slowed down, rambling folk tune) instead of smothering it. It’s a well-placed melodic break in the middle of the record. The fourth track is interesting as well. There’s plenty of distortion but bits and pieces of gongs, bells and ethnic percussion poke through at certain intervals. The fifth track uses a lot hi-pitched freakouts amongst sloshed zombie slurs——a nice little kick in the teeth to remember them by.
For people, like me, who keep the radio dial placed equidistantly between stations or for fans of listening to records at the wrong speed played through twelve Metal Zones.
Arklight – Nolo Contendre [Ruralfaune]
A nice companion piece to that last CD-r is this Arklight 3”. Two tracks making up 24 total minutes of relentlessly chugging, bludgeoning noise. This is my first introduction to non-song-based Arklight and it’s pretty damn good. The title-track builds and builds on a pummeling loop/drum machine, while specks of static stagger in and out. They play around with the tempo a bit and offset the bass pulse with brief, searing jets of feedback. The track just keeps slumming, being tweaked here and there but mainly just riding the domineering beat. With about four minutes to go friendlier instruments are introduced——mellow, dirty guitar and live drums——and the track unwinds. “Rakkasans” starts up with a speedy, nearly techno drum machine. This track isn’t quite as noisy as its predecessor but it dishes out its fair share of feedback blurring the drum machine into a seizuring piece of equipment. Human shouts are coming from somewhere but they’re almost sensed more than they are actually heard through the putrid, filthy layers of fuzz. Traces of live drums are evident but they’re drowned in the bog like everything else. Straight up mildewed fury.
Single Indian Tear – The Black Category [No Label]
Moving into the easier-on-the-ears stuff, Single Indian Tear (the name ostensibly referring to the crying Indian/litter monitor from the PSA) are an Iowa City based duo and this 11 minute track is heavy on the synths. Not dreamy synths either, they seem to work with a bit more of a Kraftwerk mindset of loving their machines for the machine sounds they make rather than trying to disguise them as the ocean or the heavens. A variety of synth-tones are employed here from squelchy, filtered bass and tinkling belltones to static-y pulses and ray gun sounds. The track hits a nice stride around four minutes in where it settles into its skin and slowly cycles through the array of sounds at its disposal. There’s a three note motif that starts the track out and it returns in the second half but surrounded by creepy, “cat meow” sounds. Weird, dude. The last minute is a toy piano melody plinking across inter-galactic deep space synth and radio waves.
Sean McCann – Background Sound Two [No Label]
This 3” is another long, lovely piece by San Francisco’s Mr. McCann. I know his stuff is always lovely but this thing is one of the lovelier ones. This would be meditative if it wasn’t so immediately, palpably beautiful and in a strange way, saddening. There’s a wonderful mournful quality to the sounds here. A pretty melody twinkles, emanating from a far corner of the stereosphere as you just kinda drift along in a synthy sea. Not too much to say about this other than I’m enjoying the ride. McCann shifts incredibly subtly between ideas keeping the piece entirely engaging over its 22 minutes. I like how the melody at the beginning drifts away but makes a sly, unexpected comeback in the last couple minutes.
But why am I telling you this? This thing was given out with orders from McCann’s label Roll Over Rover and is all gone. Furthermore, it was limited to an utterly ridiculous 22 copies. That almost makes me angry there’s so few of these around. This piece deserves a reissue as a side of a split LP or tape or something like that. Hopefully some good soul reads this and takes it upon him or her self to do just that. It’s too goddam good to drift into obscurity.
KRGA – Thousands [Debacle]
The theme of this double 3” is the first disc concentrates on predominately acoustic arrangements while the second disc brings on the electronic elements. The first track “Thousand Armed” is rather nice with plenty of layers of acoustic guitar and hand percussion and then bits of flute and pump organ flowing by underneath. It doesn’t establish too much atmosphere but it’s really melodious and easy on the ears. “Thousand Headed” is more brooding with a lot reverb and an effected acoustic guitar and patches of vocals and other sounds stitched in. The first disc’s final track, “Thousand Hearted,” exceeds the combined length of the previous tracks. It’s a real nicely unfolding piece with a couple of dueling guitars over chiming bells and a reed organ that quietly leads the track. That reed organ is the real key here cause it glues all the clanging, jangly percussion, random bits of whistling melodies and other sounds with the acoustic guitar digressions making a real beautiful, dynamic and effortlessly flowing track. My favorite piece here.
The second disc opens with its longest track “Thousand Beaked” which after a minute of oscillator doohickery steadies itself and glides along with burbling tones. You can see some similarity between this disc and the first. Both feature multiple layers of sounds and use ever changing clusters of notes on top of sustained tones. The piece shifts often throughout its 11 minutes, hitting upon some nice, even pretty spots, but it doesn’t quite have the invisible guiding hand leading it coherently, seamlessly on its course as in “Thousand Hearted.” The second half is a quite a pleasantly buzzing bed of synths. “Thousand Eyed” is also a bed of buzzing synths but not one you’d want to sleep in, and the buzzing is more akin to angry wasps. “Thousand Horned” has some pseudo-bowed sounds and a pairing of slippery, blipping melodies. A digital fog fans out and overtakes the piece by its end.
3” CD-rs get the shaft a lot of times when it comes to packaging, but the Thousands packaging is clean and classy with two printed CD-rs mounted on the inside of double-sided cardstock that folds closed like a book.

Chaostic Magic – Phantasmagoria [Debacle]/Forrest Friends – Forrest Friends [Debacle]

Sam from Seattle-based Debacle Records gave me a stack of CD-rs when I met him at the amazing Ear Venom reunion show awhile back and these two emerged quickly from the pack as some of my favorites.
Chaostic Magic is a duo of Corey J Brewer on guitar and Eric Ostrowski on violin (Ostrowski also played in the dual violin project/onslaught NOGGIN.) I’ve recently realized how much violin rules in an experimental context. I’ve been having a love affair with the Blue Shift tape on Breaking World and this CD-r is a dexterous firebreather. “Morning Nightmare” is rather friendly at first (keep in mind that is very relative.) Both sets of strings scrape and saw and skronk. Ostroski pulls tones out his violin reminiscent of a jittery oscillator, which is a feat in itself and it sounds so cool! The guitar moves through periods of fairly clean-toned but highly metallic mangled arpeggios and heavy metalfuzz assaults that might be classified as riffs if they weren’t so loopy and deranged. At certain points the two men imitate each other’s playing on their respective instruments which creates a kind of funhouse mirror effect. Near the end, there’s a calmer period where, I wouldn’t call it pretty but, sustained tones from both instruments complement each other nicely. One of this CD-rs biggest strengths is each track improves on the one before it. “Brains on Fire” is the default epic clocking in at the combined length of the other two tracks and it slays. Though kicking off brashly (and continuing on brashly) the track provides a few moments to catch your breath. One passage in particular sounds like it may be solely Brewer’s work (which if true would be damn impressive) there are guitar harmonics sustaining with a very lo-pitched, crazed bit of glissando that’s almost like when you play with a synth’s pitch wheel. This piece is a total monster through and through——too many great moments to mention. These guys play entirely free form in every way so there doesn’t seem to be any preset agreement on rhythm or harmony. The only thing Brewer and Ostrowski match up on is intensity. And you’d think a half hour mess of audioviolent guitar/violin improv might get a bit trying, these guys have incredible pacing and are able to continually entice the listener to follow while somehow avoiding the standard way to do so, that is providing brief periods of consonance amidst the maelstrom for the listener to latch onto.
The devasted finale, “Brown Cloud/Magic Dragon” begins more sparsely than the previous tracks. There somehow seems to be a bit more space in the mix. The reason for this may be that Brewer’s playing is more percussive here with lots of banging and rattling along with the blistering string strangling. Ostrowski, on the other hand, just takes to wailing. He allows his notes to sustain longer and I really like the results. Nimble tonal shifts are still a main feature of his playing but they sound great applied to a more consistently radiating bed of sound. This is at least true until he dives of the path into a knotted undergrowth of frenetic plucks. When Brewer and Ostrowski each embark on their final finger-breaking freak out in the last minute, it is a supremely satisfying experience.
After hearing this CD-r Chaostic Magic has shot to the number one spot of local acts I still need to see. Once I’m back in Seattle, Chaostic Magic, be prepared to have me gawking at you during all your shows.
The next CD-r, a self-titled one by Forrest Friends, is a half hour of weird whateverness. The Friends are a duo of Garrison (who runs the nonsensically titled Motor & Famine distro) and someone named Chad (who I’ve never met.) The first thing I remember hearing about this act was when I met Garrison at a show, he told me they went to play a noisefest in Spokane, WA (weeeeird, right?) and for their set they played “smooth jazz, Chuck Mangione shit.” The image of a bunch of pissed off eastern Washington noise dudes standing around watching someone play soft jazz makes me laugh my ass off, but thankfully, this CD-r is far from Chuck Mangione shit. The first track is a bunch of whimpering coos and garbled speech with sparse echoing percussion, slide whistle, toy piano and occasionally splinters of picked acoustic guitar. Out of the blue, everything comes together quite nicely, lead by a catchy melody on the slide whistle. The only track with a title, “Disco Cloud,” is my favorite of the bunch with an Asian-inspired guitar part doubled by vocals, rambling percussion and then outta nowhere a couple of synths pop up and the whole thing drifts off on a sick groove. The appearance of “disco” in the title is not ironic at all, this thing shakes and moves in the weirdest way. Really brilliant piece, and I'm pretty sure had disco actually been this creative and rad, Americans of all stripes would have united in it, said “no” to Reagan and kept the 1980s from being such a shithole. The next track summons a tribal rhythm and employs mellow wordless vocals. Though, it’s a repetitive thumb piano figure that anchors the whole thing. The subsequent track drops the tribalism for a minimal synth dance track. Based off a looped clicking pattern (occasionally augmented by drums,) more keyboards, voice and cymbal rolls drift in and out until it all gets piled on top of each other in last minutes. The fifth track is a bit lacking in comparison to the others but eventually hits upon a rather enjoyable, smoothly lurching groove. The final track is a good deal longer than the others and starts with a minute long pulsing synth intro stitched in before a huffing accordion pops up against the usual junk. This one has a more organic vibe to it, rhythm is still very important and ever present but it upshifts and downshifts whereas the other tracks find a groove and ride it til the end. Acoustic guitar is one of the main elements here and also maybe a piano or hammered dulcimer or something to that effect. There’s some electric burbling but the track is mostly occupied by organ/accordion and a heavily reverbed bell. At least until the 8 minute mark when another solo synth piece takes over a-twinkling. Overall, it’s a really fun listen and a different take on junk store shamanism.
Both CD-rs are still in print. They are available as part of volume 2 of the Emerald City Debacle, a subscription series focused around Seattle-area artists, as well as individually. Check ‘em out and give my city some love.