A noise-dude aggregate that only played out twice, both times at Tonic. This was the second of the two shows, on a bill with Thurston Moore and Burning Star Core. There was no rehearsal for either, I just called everybody to play the gig and everything was improvised. These sort of ad-hoc ensembles happened quite a bit at Tonic; one of the nice aspects of having a venue that regularly caters to improvisation is that it becomes a space that inspires a lot of spontaneous assemblages that are meant to be a one-shot deal, more or less.

The name came up because the Eagles of Death Metal were playing a show elsewhere in town on the same night as our first show. My idea of getting all these guys on the same stage was probably somewhat in the spirit of Carlos Giffoni's No Fun festivals, which everyone involved had participated in at one time or another, and were a very energizing force back then. I had met Tamio in the 90s; he had an amazing history as an original member of Keiiji Haino's Fushitsusha in the late 70s and also as an organizer of a legendary Tokyo club called Minor. He would do improv gigs here and there but mostly played alone in subway stations late at night. I did a couple of releases playing duo with him in the 90s & 00s that might find their way onto bandcamp at some point. Also in the 90s Wayne Rogers and Kate Biggar of Twisted Village/Cyrstallized Movements told me that some guy had started working at Forced Exposure who was a really good guitarist, and that was Keith; I met him some time after that and we later figured out that we had both been at the same Allan Holdsworth concert in New Jersey as teenagers (not that you would know it from this gig). I met Carlos, Greg and Michael through working at Tonic and the whole scene that No Fun helped bring together; I remember seeing Greg play in a trio with Wayne and Kate, and having a discussion with him afterward about coming to free jazz as a next step after hardcore punk. There was another gig that I did with Carlos, Lee Ranaldo, and Nels Cline, also at Tonic, that Carlos released as a CD on his No Fun label, called "Nothing Makes Any Sense." I saw Mike play a lot with Double Leopards and Religious Knives, two of the more interesting groups in New York at that time.

This show is unusual for me in that I play piano for the first few minutes before switching to guitar. A curious intro before the mayhem starts--very high-contrast. After sending the recording around to everybody to sign off on before releasing it here, Greg said it's "nice to have a snapshot of what now seems even more like a very specific time and place," and I think that's a good way of summing this one up.