Formed in the Summer of 2000, after performing together with Jim O'Rourke at the Melt Down Festival in London, acoustic upright bass and percussion duo ON FILLMORE creates original music that incorporates field recordings. Bassist Darin Gray and drummer Glenn Kotche recently completed their 4th full-length album, Extended Vacation, which covers new territory for the experimental pair. The album is both a continuation and departure from their previous work, taking the listener to exotic sonic locations - both real and imagined - resulting in music that is peerless in contemporary composition.
The band's first record was a limited edition improvised album accompanied by a companion record of individual compositions. However, their first record of songs, a self-titled LP (released on Quakebasket in 2001) consisted of highly disciplined song structure to reflect a new breed of elastic minimalism. Their next record, Sleeps with Fishes (Drag City, 2004), relied only on the string and tuned metal combination, while layering beds of field recordings from the environments surrounding their respective homes in Chicago and St. Louis, resulting in a pixelated paean to lullabies, location, and liberation. Sleeps with Fishes saw them head out on their first US tour and they've continued to perform occasionally since then, including a special collaborative concert with Domenico+2 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (named one of the best performances of 2005 by Time Out Chicago). In April of 2005, they traveled to Brazil where they performed at the Perc Pan Festival, collaborated with local musicians during several concerts, and led a workshop at the University of Bahia.
Since then, the long stretch of Interstate 55 and their commitments to other projects (Jim O'Rourke, Wilco, and solo work) has limited their time to create together, but Darin and Glenn still managed to record the soundtrack to NYC filmmaker J.T. Petty's disturbing and haunting documentary "S&Man" (screened at both the SXSW and Toronto Film Festivals) and the soundtrack to his film "Blood Red Earth," a prequel to the Film "The Borrowers" (Lions Gate). With Extended Vacation the duo has somehow managed to reach a new creative peak while making their most accessible record to date. They hope you'll enjoy it.
"Master Moon" is great. It made me think of some long-lost Welles movie, with a little Tom Waits and David Lynch-sort of moods thrown in somehow... these are first thoughts, obviously, and desperately in need of some mulling over....
But it's awesome, that's for sure. Can't wait for the record.
"Also hugely enjoyable, highly original AND psychically useful is the
music of Australian duo The Scrapes, whose fiery epic guitar and
abandoned Mithraic fiddle pieces evoke images of lost Keltic lands
inundated by the oceans, lost Iberian & Armorican sea peoples and
lost times from beyond the beyond." Julian Cope
