Through the years membership has included musicians who've also played in such groups as Karp, And You Shall Know Us By The Trail of Dead, Noggin, Nice Nice, Leopards, A:Frequency, Slip, Blue Faces, That Stupid Club, Wood Paneling, Sun Lake, the Awful, and Canned Pirhana. However, the identity of these members has always been hidden.
Influences
Sun Ra, Sonic Youth, John Cage, Throbbing Gristle, Zoviet France, Brian Eno, Autechre, Noggin, Sun City Girls, Crank Sturgeon, Cabaret Voltaire, Negativland, Kraftwerk, The Residents, Clara Rockmore, Steve Fisk, Jandek, Suicide, Screamers, Chuck Swaim, Leopards, Glenn Branca, Black Dice, Nurse With Wound, Christian Marclay, This Heat, Hafler Trio, John Oswald, Can, Tape Beatles, No-Neck Blues Band, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Ornette Coleman, Snivlem
Just don't believe, or disbelieve everything you read.
Formed around 1996-7, shrouded in mystery, strange multi-media presentations hidden in a variety of masks. Moog and tape samples mix sometimes, but not always, with haunting wind instruments and bent cello, noise and prepared guitar, ambient vocals, distorted feedback, sometimes drums but often other percussion things from rocks to thundertube, computers and digital toys, and even digeridoo.
For over a decade they have shared stages throughout the NW with the like-minded and the unalike, toured Pittsburgh PA behind poet Chuck Swaim in 2001, and have put in sets at Olympia's Experimental Music Festival for eleven years straight. An internet radio broadcast on KMLP in 2001 was purported by the station staff to be heard by some 12,000 streaming listeners including one very excited Russian who proclaimed in an e-mail, "Dead Air Fresheners Rock!"
The most recent direction of the Dead Air Fresheners has primarily been an instrumental one, but contrary to frequent misconception it is not a purely improvisational purview. There are actual compositions for most performances that draw upon the Chance Deterministic style of John Cage, filtered through the Fluxists, Sun Ra's style of jazz conducting, and a healthy dose of post-punk chaos. It's not that they know exactly at all times what they are doing, but rather they know more than anybody else.
2009 saw the group join forces for the second time in their history with a spoken word artist, though this time not exactly a poet, but a writer and reader of poetic surreal prose: Jennifer Robin. Ms. Robin's futuristic storyscapes have been an ideal match with the obtuse music of the Dead Air Fresheners, and their partnership seems likely to continue for a great while.
Recorded history began with I Try To Show My Love, on Olympia WA's ultra-independent Plastic Duck Records in 1999, then three self-released albums from 2001-2003 providing soundtracks to Chuck Swaim's poetry: Verses of Echo, Bastard Customer, and Pleasure Is Where All Labor Ends. They appeared on a two compilation CDR series: Infamous Polywogs Vol. 1? released by Inlet Recordings in 2002 and Infamous Polywogs Vol. 2? released by Kill Pop Tarts in 2004. 2006 saw the release on Kill Pop Tarts of a CDR-ep called An Ulcer is a String of Pearls, and also the inclusion of the track "God Damn Bullfighter" on a compilation by Icky Recordings entitled Reek of Influence. 2007 has brought us the most recent Dead Air Fresheners album A Slip Inside the Quiet Room on Bristol CT's Icky Recordings!
The Dead Air Fresheners are currently culling through recordings to release a new album featuring their work behind Jennifer Robin. Likely title will be A Wave of Luxury.
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i just clicked on this page....and the sound from "an ulcer..." coming through the headphones (which i wasn't wearing) blended perfectly with a passing airplane. i thought it was a loud airplane there for a sec....
