Kerkland Jerks, Frozen Lake, John Cale, Laughing, and more!

Kerkland Jerks in Cowtown

Hello! I'm back on the west coast after two weeks in 'berta. Sled Island was a blast, as always! I've proudly attended or performed at almost every single edition of that festival since it started in 2007, and it's still evolving in thrilling new ways.

This year, Kerkland Jerks performed live on CJSW (listen at one hour and 17 minutes here — video footage coming soon). Then, we joined a killer bill at Dandy Brewing with Big Rig, Barbara, Hardcore Makeout, and our sister band WUT!

After that, Frozen Lake (my improvised guitar and drums duo with Devin Friesen — Friesen Locke/Frozen Lake — get it?) celebrated the release of our debut cassette with an exciting show at Loophole, during a downpour.

Devin played an ambient tape set to start the night, followed by a lovely solo performance by Victrix. After that, Devin and I performed together for the third time ever, and even recorded our set on his four-track cassette recorder. That tape might see the light of day at some point, but who can say when with this stuff?

In other news, I've been writing up a storm, so I wanted to share some linkage, starting with my Laughing and John Cale reviews for Paste:

For FLOOD's best albums of 2024 (s0 far), I wrote about Cloud Nothings:

For Aquarium Drunkard's 2024 mid-year review, I wrote about Cindy Lee, Gastr del Sol, Jim O'Rourke, Rafael Toral, The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis, Laetitia Sadier, Deron Johnson, Ruth Goller, Klaus Johann Grobe, Horse Lords, Ibibio Sound Machine, and Lou Reed (this one is paywalled ☹) :

Finally, for the June edition of Bandcamp Daily's Tape Label Report, I wrote about the dungeon synth and dark ambient label Windkey Tapes:

TTFN!