Posted in Questionnaire on August 3rd, 2022 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Jeffrey Owens of Secret Iris
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I’m vacillating between wanting to define writing music as being a conduit for the voice of the universe, and wanting to define it as total masturbation. As far as how I ended up doing this, playing music and writing are the only two skills I’ve ever felt even passingly good at, although I guess I was okay at geometry for a while there. Oh, and people say I’m good at photography, so I guess that, too.
Describe your first musical memory.
All of my earliest memories of music are of my mother singing songs to me, mostly lullabies. The main one I recall is ‘I’ve Been Working on the Railroad’. She used to sit by my bed and sing that one to me. I feel like I even remember being cradled and rocked by her as a baby when she would sing it. I’ll have to ask her if that’s accurate, because if so, it’s not just my first musical memory, but my first memory.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
This is a really hard one. I have so many great memories relating to music! Ultimately, it has to go to March 2017, playing at Beauty Bar in Las Vegas with our friends in Aneurysm. There was this super tall stage outside, and none of us wanted to stand up there performing. Most of us were punk kids. Stages are weird. It’s always way more fun to be closer to the crowd. So, somehow, we managed to convince the sound person to let us set up and play on the ground, even though there was (perfectly reasonable) concern of the mic feeding back. The show was packed and everyone was having the time of their lives. It was one of those nights where the whole crowd was throbbing and pulsing. It didn’t feel like there were individuals there, it felt like everyone was part of the same entity. Pretty cool. If I had to repeat one show every night, it would easily be that one.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
Hmm, I guess a good example is the death of my father. I have always pretty firmly believed in some weird shit. I’ve used ouija boards successfully more times than anyone in their right mind should admit to. I had the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram memorized for quite some time (probably should re-up on that). I could go a million ways on what happens when we die. I really just don’t know. Purely agnostic, in that regard. That said, I have always believed in the reality of ghosts. I don’t know what they are or how they work, but I pretty firmly believe they exist. Because of this, I find it interesting and challenging that absolutely nothing strange or supernatural has occurred related to my dad in the years since he has been gone. I don’t know, it’s weird. Maybe I made some changes to myself, but some of the magick in me seems to have passed when he did, and I think about it a lot.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
To the best and worst places you’ll ever go.
How do you define success?
It’s an ever-changing thing. To me, success is defined by accomplishing a goal you set out to do. I don’t define success in terms of what other people think of me, or how much money I make off of something. In fact, in some ways, money can run contrary to success. If your goals are to make money, you really shouldn’t be any kind of artist. Hell, if your main goal is to make money, we probably won’t get along very well without a significant amount of dishonesty from both parties. Success isn’t gaining fans or earning money, it’s writing an album and recording it. It’s making something cool with friends or by yourself, and FINISHING it. I feel successful when I wrap anything up. I feel even more successful when I like it.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
I’d rather not answer this, but, hey, I’m supposed to be honest, right? The thing that I would most like to unsee in life was when the love that someone once had for me all but completely disappeared, and I couldn’t do anything about it. Maybe some people can get over that shit, but I haven’t, despite my best efforts.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I feel like I’m too old to simply pivot into some kind of new career, but it would be great to be involved in a feature-length, independent (maybe guerilla) horror film in some way. I’d love to write, or be behind the camera. I’ve had an interest in both of those things my whole life, and have spent a lot of time experimenting with both. I wrote a lot more when I was younger, and I’m always kicking myself for not doing more of that. That or porn, but I don’t have the stamina for that. Seriously, how much cardio do those dudes do??
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
To communicate and connect with other human beings. To help us feel, and to show us that there are others who understand how we feel. To prove that there is good in the world, and that, despite the fact that we are clearly the worst species on the planet, we can also make some absolutely beautiful things, especially from our pain. Also to get laid. That’s the main reason anyone does anything, right?
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
I don’t know what day it is. The holiday here in the States has me all screwed up. I know it’s not the weekend anymore because I’m posting today, but really, if this is for Tuesday or Wednesday, I’m kind of at a loss. What I do know is that it’s 10 more records, and some quick math at the “71-80” below — which, yes, I put there ahead of time when I set up the back end of these posts so hopefully I don’t screw it up; it’s a whole fucking process; never ask me about it unless you want to be so bored at by the telling that your eyeballs explode — tells me today Wednesday, so I guess I figured it out. Hoo-ray.
Three quarters of the way through, which feels reasonably fancy. And today’s a good one, too. I hope as always that you find something you dig. Now that I know what day it is, I’m ready to start.
Quarterly Review #71-80:
MWWB, The Harvest
It’s difficult to separate MWWB‘s The Harvest from the fact that it might be the Welsh act’s final release, as frontwoman Jessica Ball explained here. Their synth-laced cosmic doom certainly deserves to keep going if it can, but on the chance not, The Harvest suitably reaps the fruit of the progression the band began to undertake with 2015’s Nachthexen (review here), their songs spacious despite the weight of their tones and atmospheric even at their most dense. Proggy instrumental explorations like “Let’s Send These Bastards Whence They Came” and “Interstellar Wrecking” and the semi-industrial, vocals-also-part-of-the-ambience “Betrayal” surround the largesse of the title-track, “Logic Bomb,” the especially lumbering “Strontium,” and so on, and “Moon Rise” caps with four and a half minutes of voice-over-guitar-and-keys atmospherics, managing to be heavy even without any of the usual trappings thereof. If this is it, what a run they had, both when they were Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard and with this as their potential swansong.
Look. Maybe it’s a fan-piece, but screw it, I’m a fan. And as someone who liked the second run of Corrosion of Conformity‘s Animosity-era lineup, this previously-unreleased LP from the three-piece that included C.O.C. bassist/vocalist Mike Dean and drummer/vocalist Reed Mullin (R.I.P.), as well as guitarist/vocalist Jason Browning, is only welcome. I remember when they put out the single on Southern Lord in 2010, you couldn’t really get a sense of what the band was about, but there’s so much groove in these songs — I’m looking right at you, “Hard Time Killing Floor” — that it’s that much more of a bummer the three-piece didn’t do anything else. Of course, Mullin rejoining Dean in C.O.C. wasn’t a hardship either, but especially in the aftermath of his death last year, it’s bittersweet to hear his performances on these songs and a collection of tracks that have lost none of their edge for the decade-plus they’ve sat on a shelf or hard drive somewhere. Call it a footnote if you want, but the songs stand on their own merits, and if you’re going to tell me you’ve never wanted to hear Dean sing “The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Pronged Crown),” then I think you and I are just done speaking for right now.
Seven Nines and Tens, Over Opiated in a Forest of Whispering Speakers
I agree, it’s a very long album title. And the band name is kind of opaque in a kind of opaque way. Double-O-paque. And the art by Ahmed Emad Eldin (Pink Floyd, etc.) is weird. All of this is true. But I’m going to step outside the usual review language here, and instead of talking about how Vancouver post-noise rock trio Seven Nines and Tens explore new melodic and atmospheric reaches while still crushing your rib cage on their first record for the e’er tastemaking Willowtip label, I’m just going to tell you listen. Really. That’s it. If you consider yourself someone with an open mind for music that is progressive in its artistic substance without conforming necessarily to genre, or if you’re somebody who feels like heavy music is tired and can’t connect to the figurative soul, just press play on the Bandcamp embed and see where you end up on the other side of Over Opiated in a Forest of Whispering Speakers‘ 37 minutes. Even if it doesn’t change your life, shaking you to your very core and giving you a new appreciation for what can be done on a level of craft in music that’s still somehow extreme, just let it run and then take a breath afterward, maybe get a drink of water, and take a minute to process. I wrote some more about the album here if you want the flowery whathaveyou, but really, don’t bother clicking that link. Just listen to the music. That’s all you need.
In March 2021, T.G. Olson, best known as the founding guitarist/vocalist for Across Tundras, released a self-titled solo album (review here). He’s had a slew of offerings out since — as he will; Olson is impossible to keep up with but one does one’s best — but II would seem to be a direct follow-up to that full-length’s declarative purpose, continuing and refining the sometimes-experimentalist, sometimes purposefully traditional folk songwriting and self-recording exploration Olson began (publicly, at least) a decade ago. Several of II‘s cuts feature contributions from Caleb R.K. Williams, but Olson‘s ability to build a depth of mix — consider the far-back harmonica in “Twice Gone” and any number of other flourishes throughout — is there regardless, and his voice is as definitively human as ever, wrought with a spirit of Americana and a wistfulness for a West that was wild not for its guns but the buffalo herds you could see from space and an emotionalism that makes the lyrics of “Saddled” seem all the more personal, whether or not they are, or the lines in “Enough Rope” that go, “Always been a bit of a misanthrope/Never had a healthy way to cope,” and don’t seem to realize that the song itself is the coping.
Issued on limited blue vinyl through StoneFly Records, Freebase Hyperspace‘s first full-length, Planet High, is much more clearheaded in its delivery than the band would seem to want you to think. Sure, it’s got its cosmic echo in the guitar and the vocals and so on, but beneath that are solidified grooves shuffling, boogieing and underscoring even the solo-fueled jam-outs on “Golden Path” and “Introversion” with a thick, don’t-worry-we-got-this vibe. The band is comprised of vocalist Ayrian Quick, guitarist Justin Acevedo, bassist Stephen Moore and drummer Peter Hurd, and they answer 2018’s Activation Immediate not quite immediately but with fervent hooks and a resonant sense of motion. It’s from Portland, and it’s a party, but Planet High upends expectation in its bluesy vocals, in its moments of drift and in the fact that “Cat Dabs” — whatever that means, I don’t even want to look it up — is an actual song rather than a mess of cult stoner idolatries, emphasizing the niche being explored. And just because it bears mentioning, heavy rock is really, really white. More BIPOC and diversity across the board only makes the genre richer. But even those more general concerns aside, this one’s a stomper.
Not calling out other reviews (they exist; I haven’t read any), but any writeup about Melt Motif‘s debut album, A White Horse Will Take You Home, that doesn’t include the word “sultry” is missing something. Deeply moody on “Sleep” and the experimental-sounding “Black Hole” and occasionally delving into that highly-processed ’90s guitar sound that’s still got people working off inspiration from Nine Inch Nails‘ The Downward Spiral even if they don’t know it — see the chugs of “Mine” and “Andalusian Dog” for clear examples — the nine-track/37-minute LP nonetheless oozes sex across its span, such that even the sci-fi finale “Random Access Memory” holds to the theme. The band span’s from São Paulo, Brazil, to Bergen, Norway, and is driven by Rakel‘s vocals, Kenneth Rasmus Greve‘s guitar, synth and programming, and Joe Irente‘s bass, guitar, more synth and more programming. Together, they are modern industrial/electrionica in scope, the record almost goth in its theatrical pruning, and there’s some of the focus on tonal heft that one finds in others of the trio’s ilk, but Melt Motif use slower pacing and harder impacts as just more toys to be played with, and thus the album is deeply, repeatedly listenable, the clever pop structures and the clarity of the production working as the bed on which the entirety lays in waiting repose for those who’d take it on.
Moongazer is the second full-length from Bologna, Italy-based heavy psychedelic blues rockers Tenebra, and a strong current of vintage heavy rock runs through it that’s met head-on by the fullness of the production, by which I mean that “Cracked Path” both reminds of Rainbow — yeah that’s right — and doesn’t sound like it’s pretending it’s 1973. Or 1993, for that matter. Brash and raucous on its face, the nine-song outing proves schooled in both current and classic heavy, and though “Winds of Change” isn’t a Scorpions cover, its quieter take still offers a chance for the band to showcase the voice of Silvia, whose throaty, push-it-out delivery becomes a central focus of the songs, be it the Iommic roll of “Black Lace” or the shuffling closer “Moon Maiden,” which boasts a guest appearance from Screaming Trees‘ Gary Lee Conner, or the prior “Dark and Distant Sky,” which indeed brings the dark up front and the distance in its second, more psych-leaning second half. All of this rounds out to a sound more geared toward groove than innovation, but which satisfies in that regard from the opening guitar figure of “Heavy Crusher” onward, a quick nod to desert rock there en route to broader landscapes.
Doom Lab, IV: Ever Think You’re Smart... And Then Find Out That You Aren’t?
With a drum machine backing, Doom Lab strums out riffs over the 16 mostly instrumental tracks of the project’s fourth demo since February of this year, Doom Lab IV: Ever Think You’re Smart... And Then Find Out That You Aren’t?, a raw, sometimes-overmodulated crunch of tone lending a garage vibe to the entire procession. On some planet this might be punk rock, and maybe tucked away up in Anchorage, Alaska, it’s not surprising that Doom Lab would have a strange edge to their craft. Which they definitely do. “Clockwork Home II (Double-Thick Big Bottom End Dub)” layers in bass beneath a droning guitar, and “Diabolical Strike (w/ False Start)” is a bonus track (with vocals) that’s got the line, “You’ll think that everything is cool but then I’ll crush your motherfucking soul,” so, you know, it’s like that. Some pieces are more developed than others, as “Deity Skin II” has some nuanced layering of instrumentation, but in the harsh high end of “Spiral Strum to Heaven II” and the mostly-soloing “Infernal Intellect II,” Doom Lab pair weirdo-individualism with an obvious creative will. Approach with caution, because some of Doom Lab‘s work is really strange, but that’s clearly the intention from the start.
What you see is what you get in the sometimes manic, sometimes blissed-out, sometimes punk, sometimes fluid, always rocking Medicine by White Fuzzy Bloodbath, which hearkens to a day when the universe wasn’t defined by internet-ready subgenre designations and a band like this San Jose three-piece had a chance to be signed to Atlantic, tour the universe, and eventually influence other outcasts in their wake. Alas, props to White Fuzzy Bloodbath‘s Elise Tarens — joined in the band by Alex Bruno and Jeff Hurley — for the “Interlude” shout, “We’re White Fuzzy Bloodbath and the world has no fucking idea!” before the band launch into the duly raw “Chaos Creator.” Songs like “Monster,” “Beep-Bop Lives” and “Still” play fast and loose with deceptively technical angular heavy rock, and even the eight-minute title-track that rounds out before the cover of Beastie Boys‘ “Sabotage” refuses to give in and be just one thing. And about that cover? Well, not every experiment is going to lead to gold, but it’s representative on the whole of the band’s bravery to take on an iconic track like that and make their own. Not nearly everybody would be so bold.
With the vocal melody in its resonant hook, the lead guitar line that runs alongside and the thickened verse progression that complements, Secret Iris almost touch on Euro-style melancholic doom with the title-track of their debut 7″, What Are You Waiting For, but the Phoenix, Arizona, three-piece are up to different shenanigans entirely on the subsequent “Extrasensory Rejection (Winter Sanctuary),” which is faster, more punk, and decisively places them in a sphere of heavy grunge. Both guitarist Jeffrey Owens (ex-Goya) and bassist Tanner Grace (Sorxe) contribute vocals, while drummer Matt Arrebollo (Gatecreeper) is additionally credited with “counseling,” and the nine-minutes of the mini-platter first digitally issued in 2021 beef up a hodgepodge of ’90s and ’00s rock and punk, from Nirvana grunge to Foo Fighters accessibility, Bad Religion‘s punk and rock and a slowdown march after the break in the midsection that, if these guys were from the Northeast, I’d shout as a Life of Agony influence. Either way, it moves, it’s heavy, it’s catchy, and just the same, it manages not to make a caricature of its downer lyrics. The word I’m looking for is “intriguing,” and the potential for further intrigue is high.
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 19th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Secret Iris self-identify as ‘depression rock’ and if you’re familiar with guitarist/vocalist Jeffrey Owens from his work in Goya, Tanner Grace from Sorxe or Matt Arrebollo from Gatecreeper, you’ll find their downer grunge a distinct shift in approach. Fair enough. Their first two-songer EP, What Are You Waiting For is seeing a vinyl release later this month through Crisis Tree Records, which if you need to know how new an imprint it is, you can look on the BigCartel store and find Secret Iris‘ impending platter is the only thing there. Cool by me. Support new shit. Ground floor, man. One chance to make a first impression, etc.
They got a mid-paced track and a fast track with a slow part, and you know what? For an offering of two songs from a new project that’s taken shape over the last few years that brings together different players from different styles and runs all of nine and a half minutes, that’s enough to make the time count.
I don’t know what will come next, but I missed this when it was released last year digitally because I suck at nearly everything, and I’m glad to have the opportunity to hear the songs. Maybe you’ll be too. That’s how this thing works.
From the PR wire:
SECRET IRIS (GOYA/GATECREEPER/Ex-SPIRIT ADRIFT) To Release What Are You Waiting For on Vinyl
SECRET IRIS will release their debut EP What Are You Waiting For on vinyl via Crisis Tree Records on May 27 2022. The EP was previously released digitally.
SECRET IRIS was born out of chance with Jeffrey Owens (GOYA, SPIRIT ADRIFT) writing in 2017 material initially intended for a new GOYA record. With the new tracks taking on a different character they were separated off to become SECRET IRIS. The new release delivers a powerful throwback to the early 00s with “What Are You Waiting For” packing a melancholic minimalist verse, reminiscent to NIRVANA, contrasted with an anthemic chorus. Heavy guitars and bass morph into a wall of sound, grounding the track with behemothic rhythms. “Extrasensory Rejection (Winter Sanctuary)” delivers a fast pace with energetic guitars and percussion. Progressing into a slow, doom-esque bridge, the track explores multiple layers both musically and conceptually.
The What Are You Waiting For 7” is the first release on new label Crisis Tree Records. CTR specializes in pressing limited-run 7” vinyl. This release (and all following) will be limited to 100 black vinyl, and 25 hand-made Wax Mage copies.
Album Credits: Engineered by Zachary Rippy at Sound Signal Audio Mastered by Dennis Pleckham at Comatose Studio Cover Art by Velvastein Photo by Hayley Rippy
