Down in the Light (Ketamine Mix)...

(Amended July 11, 2008.)

Guten Tag, Freunde,

It's been a few weeks since our last real chat, so pour yourself a cup of oven cleaner, have a slice of salmonella pie (freshly baked!), and try as best you can, despite the excruciating pain, to relax...

You'll note we've just uploaded a quartet of tracks from our fledgling BMLS (Blinde Männer Laufen Schnell) series. They're sense-memory calculations, basically, extracted from music we listend to on our recent tour, and spliced into/around/between/beneath sampled bits of the master recordings for our forthcoming Cortege opus. For this new series, TLASILA was: Rat Bastard, Ben Wolcott, Don Fleming, Chris Grier, Gaybomb, Dimthingsshine, Graham Moore, Misty Martinez, Nandor Nevai, Mark Morgan, Patrick Spurlock, and yours imprudently. Download, squirm, and excrete.

Time to sort out the album queue... We begin with The Cortege, the album we recorded nearly a year ago at Sonic Youth's Think Tank studio in Hoboken, NJ. Rat Bastard's mix takes a docu-vérité approach to the material, massing solo, duo and trio recordings into a faux-live, early 90s-style scumrock spectacular. It's all first and second takes, no sweeteners or fillers, and flat notes and tempo shifts be damned. It fucking rules. Coming soon to vinyl via Blossoming Noise.

In 2009, our Mr. Fleming will be re-assessing the Cortege's beeps and squeals for a doctoral clinic on 99th-century ass-kicking (und arse-licking). We'll keep you posted on his progress, the eventual release and related info, etc. His version will complete the informal Cortege trilogy.

As for the "version" mix of the Cortege recorded by Graham Moore and myself in Atlanta earlier this year, we're pleased to report that the album, titled Épuration, will be issued on a very cool European imprint later this year. Don't want to give details away just yet...

Thus, Rat's mix is the first part of the triptych, its version (as in the gilded era of dub) will comprise the second panel, and Don's Imax/Hollywood mix will be shotgunned across the third. Three (cross-eyed) visions of the same material, three dramatically different results...

Next, we can report with certainty that Menlo Park Recordings, our primary label since 1995 (!), has given the go-ahead for a TLASILA retrospective box set. There'll at least be four discs (but perhaps six, and maybe even an accompanying DVD), split into two volumes that will be issued separately. The first volume, due late in '08 (?), will cover the years 1990-2001, and the second will pick up with the Wigmaker in 2002 and skid to a stop in the electro-boogie present. (I suppose both halves will then be zipped into a commemorative Hazmat suit or antique wicker suitcase with the obligatory 700-page booklet...) We're probably only going to include one track per each officially released album, so expect a motherlode of unreleased actinium. Very thankful to Menlo Marc, and psyched, as always.

Also nearing completion after a gnarly five-year, thousand-tear gestation is Reconquer Sleep or Disappear, the full-length TLASILA/Kevin Drumm collaboration. It's set to fly via Savage Land later in 2008. I've worked on this fucker in restless spasms of feverish (in)activity for longer than I dare remember. Most folks expect certain sounds from M. Drumm, a particular approach from To Live and Shave in L.A., and my task, as I saw it, was to disrupt those notions, and upend expectations while raising the aesthetic bar beyond the reach of puny mortals. I've likely failed, but it was worth having the opportunity to stab our respective CVs with a pair of rusty garden shears...

EuroShave exemplar and breakcore megastar Sickboy Milkplus has brokered a deal with sterling schiz-tronic imprint ___ ___ (it's a little too early to reveal the label's identity) for a vinyl long player. Sickboy will produce the album, which will feature contributions from both the American core unit and our upstart continental comrades. Venetian Snares will be apparently be doing a remix for the album... Bliss.

Lots of other albums, singles, and whatnot on the horizon, including the Melted Mailbox 7xCD3 box, the Important 2xCD remix joint, the split 12" on Isolated Now Waves, a split 3" CD with Torino titans Harshcore (for the Dokuro label), a collab with Nana RapeBlossom, a split C-60 with Demonologists, etc. And there's more, for fuck's sake, including albums we agreed to create for the various wild-ass label folk we met on the April-May death march.

OHNE news: there's definitely going to be a new studio album! Dave, Reto, Daniel and I have agreed to make it happen, and so it shall. We're looking at a probable 2009 release date, so I guess we won't be making that Ulan Bator gig that's been listed on OHNE's MySpazz site for 18 months... We'll keep you posted on our progress.

Finally, solo/TS news. I'll be moving to Europe soon, setting up camp with the lovely Cool Palm in Hannover. While there, I'll be preparing for the debut tour of my new trio with EuroShave alum Balázs Pándi and saxophonist Feri Kovács. (Those Hungarian cats know how to fucking roll. Just ask Nondor!) The tentative schedule has us meeting in Budapest for rehearsals, then taking a three-week stroll through Austria, Switzerland, Germany, France, and Italy, before doubling back to Hungary for a final blowout. We hope to cajole Atilla from the redoubtable Sunn 0))) to join us for the mop-up gig in B'pest...

Lastly, I'll be in NYC later in 2009 to record my first proper solo album... I've elided details, but expect what you may have remembered reading...

Our official website is still undergoing its usual post-tour recalibration, so please forgive us our sloth. You can always follow your old bookmarks to explore the site; the 2004-2008 links still work fine.

That's it for now. Stay cool, and be well.

Love,

Tom/TLASILA