Pre-order of Lapsed Gasps. You get 1 track now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.
A few lifetimes ago, in late 2007 by my guess, Jon Mueller passed me a CDR with “Gong/Snare” written across the face. At the time we were both releasing music on the seminal Table of the Elements imprint. Interested in one another’s work, and after a good hang at a label showcase at Death By Audio in Brooklyn, we made loose plans to collaborate. The following two years proved to be a tumultuous time for me; Jon’s CDR went into a box and was subsequently moved from storage unit to cold, lonely storage unit for over a decade.
Along with many other folks, 2020-21 was defined by massive personal change and upheaval. A major move of house resulted in a storage purge. I was astonished and excited to find the “Gong/Snare” CDR among the usual life detritus. The recording was immediately enthralling; monolithic sheets of acidic distortion, metallic overtones, skittering patterns of clipped snare drum. It was super raw, crackling with energy, and I wanted to work with it immediately.
Push For Night, the duo of myself and Oliver Chapoy, has had a slow birth since the early part of 2017. A few compilation tracks and a full length cassette via The Tapeworm have, I hope, seen us begin to develop a signature style of electro acoustic minimalism that tips toward our darker inclinations. Jon’s recording from 2007 struck both Oliver and I as weirdly in line with what PFN’s agenda is shaping up to become. We spoke with Jon and he encouraged us to begin.
Almost everything on Lapsed Gasps is based on Jon’s original recording, with Oliver and I embellishing and reshaping that material via extensive processing, augmented with our own electronics, guitar, field recordings, and additional percussion. Jon sent new material - drum kit and lawn sprinkler (!!!) - to add. Oliver and I worked and reworked these tracks, together and apart, for months. We met in May 2022 for a sweaty three day marathon at Oliver’s North Brooklyn studio to finalize the mix. The music has been layered, mutated, and reconfigured immeasurably and ruthlessly to arrive at its final compositional form. It’s a thick, liminal record, rich with the dread, absurdity, and delirium of the past several years. I hear a tense beauty in it as well, and hope you might, too.
credits
releases April 21, 2023
Produced and recorded by Push For Night and Jon Mueller in Brooklyn, NY and Sturgeon Bay, WI, 2021-2022
Original source material performed and recorded by Jon Mueller in Milwaukee, WI, 2007
Mixed by Push For Night at Ohm Sweet Ohm EMS, Brooklyn, NY, 2022
Mastered by James Plotkin
Cover photograph by Tim Leeds
Published by Ohm Sweet Ohm (ASCAP) and Carapace (SESAC). All rights reserved.
Literally the music I listened to all through senior year to do homework, work in adobe, or simply turn my internal monologue off so i could do something. 10/10 album, cannot wait to have it on vinyl 😁 callmenihil
Ominous but never overwrought, English's moody protest music is executed finely here with a cabal of luminaries. Bandcamp Album of the Day Feb 17, 2017