released January 21, 2021
“3 Stars On Mountain of Doom” was recorded for Richard Youngs’ 50th Birthday (a limited edition of 1 compilation CD entitled 50 Years Of Youngs) curated by Madeleine Hynes. Most of this piece is a reflection upon Richard's Three Handed Star released on his No Fans label in 2008. I cannot count on this being true or not but I believe that he recorded it after acquiring a concertina or melodeon or some such thing, using the recording process to get to know the instrument. I have always had a fondness for this untethered reverie of his. The last section is an instrumental version of Mountain Of Doom, which Richard wrote and recorded with his son Sorely. The lyrics are fried and the song is an oddly touching and beautiful one - one of those songs that seems to just drop into the world without a hitch. Thank you Richard, Madeleine and Sorley for giving me an aberrant place to play around. – Eric Chenaux

During these COVID days I keep thinking about Buster Keaton. Especially a scene in which he is leaning against a building, minding his own business. Soon, a cop appears to tell him to move along. He does, but at the moment he stops leaning against the building, the building collapses. Today, it is not just time that is out of joint (Hamlet), but space as well (Keaton). And the arbitrariness of both reminds us that there is no permanent state of things--no built and unbuilt, no forwards and backwards. Yes, there is a dominant capitalist logic today that informs reality and is desperate to orient us to its pathetic little desires. But this logic is not stable and can always come crashing down. Eric’s music reminds me that there is no fixed order of things. No natural progress. And when we subtract these false orientations, something clears so that we do not even notice that the whole video was shot in reverse and that the dancer’s every movement is backwards. Or, more to the point, it is not just that we do not notice these things, but that these things (forwards-backwards, movement-stillness) do not exist in the first place. – Eric Cazdyn

Eric Chenaux, recording, mixing, electric guitar, bowed guitar, nylon-string guitar, various electronics, field-recordings.