A 15-headed Hydra Breathing All Over You

I'm at work right now fooling employees I preside over into thinking that I'm laboring over their well-being and meticulously scheming to improve their work performance. In actuality I'm typing this up and ignoring them. That's not the point though. The point is that I'm at my day job while I'm supposed to be 1 of 15 people belting out the lyrics to ambiguous protest songs at Bank Row Studios right now.

Yes. As I type this, The Trials and Tribulations is in the studio (sans me) torturing Justin Pizzoferato (Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth) with it's folk-sludge mash of 5409 individuals all braying in cacophonous unison. I'll be joining them tomorrow to lay down some synth squiggles and crunchy organ drones on "Quebec", an evil, swampy rendition of "You are my Sunshine", and the epic and absolutely fucking crushing "President Arbenz' Last Smile". Now I've had my doubts about T&T before. I'll be the first to admit that it can be a chaotic mess. In a bad way. But after the recording rehearsal last weekend, all of those doubts were shattered like the dreams of a pregnant teenager. Mark my words: this will be far more monstrous than even I anticipated.

Completely unrelated: Just a reminder for some shows coming up...

SYLPHID
playing Sat. Feb 6 @ The Yellow Sofa (24 Main St. Northampton, MA)
all ages
free
starts at 8pm

PONDS
playing Sat. Feb 20 @ The Brass Cat (65 Cottage St. Easthampton, MA)
with
BLACK PYRAMID
BLUE STAR BURNS RED
21+
$5?
starts at around 8:30

SYLPHID
playing Feb 28 @ The Elevens (140 Pleasant St. Northampton, MA)
providing the soundtrack to Scott Alden's TRIALS OF GARY
MORE INFO TO COME!!!
21+
9pm

We're back, we're bad, you're black, I'm mad.

Apropos to reference the Danny Glover swansong Lethal Weapon 2 in this post title. Apropos because Sylphid is back, not only with teeth, but with a badassed, off-the-rails partner in plugging South African diplomats with hollow-tipped bullets. That's right - our very own PA system. You can call him Riggs.

Eon, Cora, and I congregated like cows huddled for warmth during a nor'easter yesterday and squeezed out an effluvium of pretty sounds for the first time since early October. We tested out our new PA system. Sounds totally dope. This year, we will test out our new live format. Anonymous background music.

We're now officially in the process of offering our minds and bodies (and the products thereof)to anyone who seeks slightly noisy, oft-unpredictable, textural drones and lullabies for their listening needs. Restaurants, parties in opium dens, art galleries, lonely insomniacs et al: we are here to offer you a delta-wave stimulating, narcosis electronic-helping hand.

Sorry Madame Rock Clubs. You were our first love. Freaking out onstage, drawing blood, and generally making a spectacle of yourself is fun... unless you're making ambient music. We do not write songs. Our music is bereft of a tangible personality. To showcase our ugly mugs bobbing several feet above a confused and underwhelmed crowd, conditioned to devote it's attention to us, makes very little sense to me. It's time for us to move on and find slightly less spotlight-driven venues. The less of a stage there is the better. We will however be providing background music and drones wherever it's wanted or needed.

One of the first of these performances will be this Thursday night at Sam's Pizza on Main Street in Northampton, MA. We'll be playing roughly 3 hours (6:30-9:30) of moody blip-bleeps. It's also free. We're being paid in pizza. And holy god of fleeting joy, Sam's pizza just so happens to be the best in town.

Other shows coming up:

-Sat. Jan. 23 Don't Go In the Basement house show @ 4 Caterbury Lane in Amherst. PONDS will also be rocking the show for the first time in awhile. Also appearing are Hornworm, Abortus Fever, Belltone Suicide, Two Tents, and the lascivious Gastric Lavage. Fuck. Go to this. Hornworm's dream machine will be in full effect.

-Sun. Jan 31 @ The Elevens. This is the Happy Valley Showdown. Sylphid will be appearing alongside Visited By A Giant, Johhny Mondegreen, Golden Boys, Almost Morse Code, and Tasha Yar. Come watch us play an ill-fitting show judged by folks who will sneer at our absence of onstage banter. Shit starts at 10pm and should be a party.

long-winded indeed

love,

Adam and Riggs

Sorry for the poop jokes Will

Ponds recorded this past Sunday for a behemoth 12-hour block with Will Killingsworth at Dead Air Studios in Leverett, MA. The day was grotesquely productive.

In that 12 hour span:

-we recorded 4 songs almost entirely - "Heart/Lungs", "A New Hampshire Mirage", "Prophylaxis", and "198 Pieces". Song names always sound stupid when you're sharing them with people.

-we talked about poop only twice

-when we tired of talking about poop we changed the topic to music. The only band we could think to talk about was SHAT

-Bard recorded guitar solos. Fucking guitar solos. Two of em. Jesus.

-I ate two entire bags of trail mix. That was all I ate. The following day was a grisly ordeal.

-the unmixed, rough, result is a nightmarish mess. Terrifying. I think you'll love it.

We'll be returned to Dead Air after the first of the year to record a 5th song, "Stork Bites" and to track vocals, samples, drones, et al. Between now and then, we'll figure out what exactly we're going to be doing with these 5 pieces of horror and let you know as soon as that happens.

bye bye!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

~Adam

2 Last Minute Shows...

Lots of wee 'ittle bits of news this week.

First things first: There are 2 last minute shows quickly advancing this week. A bit bummed about this, only because this is my first opportunity to really tell anyone at all about them.

This Thursday (Nov. 12) PONDS will be rocking the the dirt out of our hair and the grease out of our beards at O'Brien's Pub in Allston, MA with God Awful and other mysterious bands that are unbeknown to us. This is bound to be a dead show and I apologize to all two of my bandmates for booking such a waste of gas. Come out and prove us wrong! Nevertheless, thank you Mr. Shred for keeping us in mind. Starts at 9pm, 21+, and I believe can be had for $7. click for directions. You don't want to get lost in the bone bucket that is Allston...

Show # 2 is this Saturday night (Nov. 14). SYLPHID is playing a house show in South Deerfield, MA at the Woodrose Ballroom (7 River Rd.) with Almost Morse Code. I jammed with these cats roughly a year ago. Weird, Krauty psychedelic squalls of splendor. A wall of synthesizers, a homemade electronic drum kit... I'm missing The Jesus Lizard and Animal Hospital in Boston for this, so you know it'll be good.

In other news there has been a truly mongoloidal amount of recording activity lately. We've got 4 separate projects in the process of recording material for various EPs, full lengths, and downloadable tracks. It's consumed our entire being - and we wouldn't have that shit any other way. More to come oh so soon!

~Adam

Ponds Live Recordings Available On the Now-Obsolete Myspace!

I posted two very rough live recordings from our show up in Peterborough, NH at Toadstool Books from a few weeks ago - courtesy of the beautiful Dave Seidel and his (startlingly) even more beautiful Zoom digital recorder that he smuggled into the store. Way to bootleg our recordings Dave. This shit's going to be worth it's weight in gold someday, possibly, but not likely... or even at all.

Check out "Heart/Lungs" and "A New Hampshire Mirage" on the PONDS MYSPACE.

More shows to report in a couple o' days.

~Adam

Ponds shows! Ponds Recording! Ponds Ponds!

Holy confused priorities. After 6 months of near inactivity, Ponds is back to playing shows. For now we only have 2 shows in the upcoming weeks, but we're just barely creaking out of sleep and dusting the rust off. I say "near inactivity" because we have hatched out a few new, ugly, throbbing lumps of evil that we'll be debuting at these shows.

It also looks like next month we'll be holing ourselves up at Dead Air Studios in Leverett, MA with Will Killingsworth (Orchid, Ampere, Bucket Full of Teeth) to record a 5 song EP. We're longtime fans of Will's output, so expect lots of ass-rimming on our part.

In the meantime, Ponds will be playing Sat. Oct 17 @ Toadstool Books in Peterborough, NH with the deliciously stoned Black Norse. The shows starts at around 6pm. Click the link for directions.
We'll also be playing a house show in Granby, MA on Halloween afternoon/evening with the likes of Belltone Suicide, Evil Bill, Problem with Dragons, Whyte Castles, Radioactive Prostitute, Hornworm, Jow Jow, Bunwinkies, The Lamb Bashers, and of course, The Two Tents band, who are throwing this abominable soiree.
If you're on facebook, here's a link to the event for more info: HALLOWEEN SHIT.

Have the fun.

Hello Fan!

Congratulations Fan #_______! If you've haphazardly stumbled upon this page, then you've probably heard of one of our projects. Blush. What's even more, you probably took enough interest in what hatched and oozed from our brains and bodies to follow one or more of our projects' myspace pages, since that is the only place we've chosen to pass along the word that is this site. Erections. If that isn't enough, NO ONE in their EVER-LOVING RIGHT MIND would still bother farting around with the user-shredding interface of myspace.

Unless of course, you're a fan.

Our sole motivation behind unveiling our collective corner of the internet via myspace's crummy antiquity is that you probably qualify as a fan. If you had taken the initiative to maneuver through the endless spawn of legions of backwoods tweens and bot-abusing metal bands to read our advert from within the cyber-folds yellowed panties then I would say you qualify as a fan. Any interest you have, the volume of which matters not, is humbling. Without you, the artistic process would not only be nullified, but incomplete.

Interest in what you may ask?

This little, swirling gyre of creative waste, is the combined effect of the musical projects of Eon Fontes-May, Cora Rose Gaulin, and myself, Adam Kozak. Functioning, or no-longer functioning. And those would be SYLPHID, PONDS, THE CHEATERS CLUB, LIGHT, TUNDRA TODDLER, GUILTY RICH WHITE KIDS, THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS, and whatever the fuck else we feel like releasing without a budget, on a whim. All news, show-listings, and general information regarding any of those bands will be available on here, along with miscellaneous crap we're presumptuous enough to think you'll find interesting/amusing.

So read on! Check back daily.

~Adam