Me Man Would Never Say Nope For A New Release By Zelienople.

"Elephant"

Zelienople is a quartet from Chicago that slowly formed into a proper band out of years of 4-track sound experiments, hazy jams, and all-night drone sessions in a haunted room above an old antique shop. Matt Christensen plays bass, guitar, organ and sings. Brian Harding plays b-flat and bass clarinets, piano and guitar, and Mike Weis plays the drum kit, vibraphone and various eastern percussion (irreverently). In the fall of 2003, Zelienople became a quartet with the inclusion of guitarist Neil Jendon, an active musician in the Chicago improvised music community.

"Plaster Dog"

Drawing upon the drone-based music legacy of '60's American minimalism, 70's ambient rock, 80's space rock, and 90's electro-acoustic improv music, as well as a reverence for the history of psychedelic rock, the trio committed hours of songs to tape in preparation for their debut album, Pajama Avenue which was released by Loose Thread Recordings in August of 2002. The band took to the stage in earnest, sharing bills with Múm, Tristeza, Circulatory System, Eternals, and Scott Tuma. Info by Loose Thread Recordings.

"Fuck Everything"

Another beautiful sounding and gorgeously packaged super limited release from Jefre Cantu-Ledesma's (Tarentel) Root Strata label. This one, from a mysterious band of noisemakers from Chicago (even though they're named for a city in Pennsylvania), Zelienople. Having lurked on the periphery of the underground drone / noise / free folk scene, releasing a handful of limited cd-r releases on labels like PseudoArcana, 267 Lattajjaa and others, Stone Academy finds the band at their darkest and most expansive, droney and buzzy but still so delicate and beautiful, hopefully this release will be the one to get these guys more widely heard 'cuz they do belong right up there alongside Avarus and Starving Weirdos and Yellow Swans and Birchville and all of those ambientdronefolk household names.

Stone Academy, at its core, is basically a stripped down folk record. Simple strummed steel string guitar, wavery plaintive vocals, warm swells of ambience, wrapped in TONS of thick reverb, like it was recorded in a cave or a gymnasium or empty swimming pool, and while each song has this strummy folk center, each track evolves or devolves in a totally unique way, into a barely there minimal crawl, into grinding washes of distorted guitar, into warm thick swirls of My Bloody Valentine like buzz, into weird 20th century abstract clatter, into Murky Dead C like blurry noise rock, and sometimes into nothing at all, just sort of quietly and contemplatively drifting along, shimmering in a druggy haze of warbly ephemeral folk and whirring ambient rumble. Text by Aquarius talking heads.

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