"The only way I can really sum it up is like this: Have you ever taken mushrooms? fire island, AK sounds like the part where you think that you will never feel normal again or that you are probably dying, but you still want to do mushrooms. That is what fire island, AK is like." - YoungCreature
"[T]his dude is a fucking cunt. In a good way." - Jordan M. (Rutherfordton, NC)
"There is no audience that would pay to listen to [noise]. There are, however, lots of people that come out to our shows." - a Hub-Bub employee (Spartanburg, SC)
"these tapes are EXCELLENT! Thanks so much." - Aaron Dilloway (Wolf Eyes)
"You know how there are times when you have that very specific kind of dream that isn’t quite a nightmare — nothing specifically bad happens — but nonetheless you still wake up feeling significantly, if not entirely justifiably, disturbed? Sometimes, those dreams can even be relatively close to reality, but the details just off enough to feel desperately wrong: Your lover’s face with a smile that suddenly seems cruel; your home suddenly having rooms filled with broken toys from your childhood; a dead relative suddenly showing up to give you unasked for relationship advice." - Steve Shanafelt (Spartanburg Spark)
"Oh, how can I get one of those Thomas Boettner works? Can fans write to him plaintively or something? His work sounds so incredibly good." - Dennis Cooper (author, God Jr., Closer)
"THANK YOU FOR THE AMAZING MUSIC!!!" - Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu, 7 Year Rabbit Cycle)
"[Murmur & Belial] is so spooky! i cant tell if its half drone sludge gore electronic insanity or if my tape player is too old to play things correctly. i love it so much!! i have to listen to it again with headphones. ... i like this insane noise, it sounds like i'm on a mountaintop somewhere. ... the quality of your products are incredible! ... everything is great!! the insane music! the black boxes, stickers, diamonds, little notes, INSANE, where do you make all of this? ... you're like a 19th century shopkeeper who makes tapes instead of cobbles shoes!!??! this is like a fucking little gemstone puzzle!! like some fucking weird talisman! now i have these two black nondistinct boxes on my dresser with strange shiny sides and evil looking pictures on them, that both hold evil noise and evil spell-notes. this little conceptual box is EVIL EVIL EVIL!!!! ... these last two tapes you sent me are MARVELOUS little things." - Antonio U. (Ponyboy, Godbless)
"[Murmur & Belial] is such a wide range of sounds and tones, yet it manages to take me to the same place. not necessarily the songs, but the entire album gives me a similar trip as Black One [by Sunn O)))], Total destruction, debauchery, mayhem, decay, and death rattles!"
- Erler (of The Gentle Suit, Greenville, SC)
"[Rectal Fascism] was amazing to listen to while web surfing... made every new page seem like it was going to kill me. Menacing. Glorious." - Richard R. (NYC)
"I Moved Away has become essential night time/early morning listening. I was listening to Xiu Xiu today and realized how similar your voice sounds to [Jamie Stewart's] in parts of that album." - Tony (ACOSM Records, England)
"thomas, when i was returning from my spring break trip to montréal i traveled through airport security, removed my shows, emptied my pockets, the usual. i placed my laptop in a bin to be screened for explosives and such when the security guard bent down and peered at it for a few moments before asking 'what is this.. fire.. island?'
oh geez i had to explain it was a musicmaker, and he let me know that The Arcade Fire had just come through recently. 'neat,' i said
a black sticker on my laptop with the words 'fire,' 'depression' and 'worst' almost implicated me as a terrorist!" - A.Z. (Miss Ohio's Nameless, South Carolina)
Desolate, brutal, inhospitable and, on occasion, beautifully remote. It's a description well-suited for the isolated and icy island off the coast of Anchorage, but it also holds true of T. Boettner's solo musical project, fire island, AK. Based in Spartanburg, S.C., the fire island's recordings sound much like its namesake, near-barren ambient soundscapes set upon by electronic blizzards and crashing waves of harsh noise, with, as Boettner puts it, "a touch of black metal theatrics thrown in for good measure."
"Imagine a deep hole in the ground," Boettner says of his music. "Out of the hole comes a terrifying, deep voice that tells you horrible things. It begins to rain and thunder profusely. The voice begins to shout at you. The rain is coming down harder and the wind begins to blow fiercely. Lightning cracks overhead and the voice is howling from the pit. Around you, the air crackles with static electricity."
This is obviously not ironic bubblegum pop dressed in goth's clothing. This is music that aims to confront the listener with feels of dread, hatred, fear, worthlessness, anxiety, loss and depression. And in that bleak, harsh landscape, there is a rare species of beauty.
Over the course of its five-year history, which includes one national tour, fire island, AK, has shared the stage with many notable and hard-to-pidgeonhole performers, including: James Jackson Toth, Real Live Tigers, Realicide, Tom Blood, Actual Birds, Darsombra, and Magicicada.
For booking information, please contact:
midas.heart@gmail.com
864.237.4619
Me too, I met him at a show at the hangar. I've seen you play at reverb before. I think you opened for the bitches and bass dance thing before, I was part of that (kind of). Anyway, I saw you play with see goon see at the last reverb before they opened their doors, and Kevin said you recorded it. I was wondering if there was a way I could get a copy or if it was floating around the internet.
my schedule is usually empty as fuck. cause i do nothing.
i'm headed to Winthrop this weekend though, so it's all cool. but anyway, i'm free all next week if you wann do something. i'd definately be down. i don't see you enough
Wow! I must see 'Bucks Beaver' PRONTO! "a guy with a pussy." I absolutely love this dude. I've actually always wondered about this particular thang thang and I dig that he didn't get a vag. I hear they always turn out really small...
ah...and here i was thinking you were like, "haha! fucking jail!" strange, this thing doesn't work properly during the day but is a goddamn villian when it gets dark...so tonight, you get some hard to identify structure pics.(should there have been hyphens there?)
oh, and how schweet is it to be held up there with sunn 0))) i mean really, especially the black one...so what, it's the only album of theirs i've heard? it's bad ass...with malefic...
