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

Light Album FIN // The Trials and Tribulation Commit Bum-outs to Tape

Welcome back to this megalomaniacal trash heap overstuffed with half-chewed crusts of bloated self-importance. It's good to be back. It's been awhile. Super busy the entire month of December. Filing through the throngs of holiday shoppers to purchase whale penis-skin arm rests and other unneeded junk... enduring painfully awkward family get-togethers buffered only by convenience store wine... watching neighbors' homes leveled by a serial arsonist... the usual mixed bag of holiday tricks.

Eon's home was not engulfed in flames. His neighbor's was though and, sadly, did not survive the ordeal.

Amid the entire town burning, Eon managed to finish the 2nd Light album Beams of Light Like Insects Crowd the Floor. I received an advance copy and have been envy-stricken ever since. Shit sounds like the ghostly pleads of a malfunctioning transistor radio wafting up from the bottom of a frozen lake. I'm awaiting details regarding a proper release. But for now, you can hear some of the album tracks HERE and check out the album artwork AT THIS PLACE.

Changing topics, The Trials and Tribulations is slowly assembling to record an unknown number of songs with an unknown number of musicians and an entirely unreasonable number of instruments. Regardless of how many trumpet, violin, organ, acoustic and electric guitar, bowed and plucked bass, shaker and tambourine, glockenspiel, trombone, omnichord, flute, melodica, found-sound, banjo, and saw-players lead-depressor Jameson Lavo accumulates, I assure you it will be ten short of his satisfaction. I have no idea how this will sound but I'm absolutely fucking terrified. I'm sure the production team behind such a soup of unwieldy sounds - Justin Pizzoferato and Aaron Borucki (from Bank Row Studios [Dinosaur Jr., Bunnies] and Something Studios [Mire, My My] respectively) - could agree. I'll let you from the frontline once I'm deployed next month. It looks like Aaron posted an in-progress version of T&T's "...to Alaska!" on the Something Studios myspace. So go there and listen to this song in the most skeletal incarnation that it will ever appear in - only 12 instruments on this version.

I'm tired and don't feel like typing any more. Eat it.

no, I love you.

~Adam

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

Recording: Dealing with no daylight whatsoever

The entire roster of holdyourbreath Music has fallen into live slumber lately. Very few live shows to speak of, though things will be picking up considerably after the first of the year. For now, beneath the perceived lag, and in classic introvert style, our brains have been atwitter with writing and recording activity. Every... single... project. I'm assuming this has something to do with our distaste for being around other human beings that only increases as the amount of daylight wanes.

PONDS will begin recording an EP tomorrow in Leverett, MA with Will Killingsworth at Dead Air Studios!! This is very exciting. I'll let you know how it goes on Monday. Will: don't fuck this up or else I'll make icky jokes about you on a blog that no one reads. Consider the arc of your entire career in the crosshairs.

THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS has been meandering about, recording songs here, some there, and even a few over there. Today, Cora, Bard, and I will be hearing some of these recordings for the first time and contributing bass, bells, and guitar on the song "Alaska". Eventually these bits of histrionica will make their way onto some sort of release. Possibly two releases? Ask Jamie Lavo. Email him: trials.tribulations01@gmail.com

SYLPHID is slowly, painstakingly recording dozens of pieces. I'd hazard to guess that this will continue until the ground thaws, leaving us with a mass of music roughly the size of Siberia to sift through and compile into our first actual LP.

TUNDRA TODDLER has clambered back onto it's feet. If it ever were on it's feet in the first place. I have 5 years worth of demos that I've been giving the eyeball, the eardrum, and the harelip lately. 8 of these have been selected and are getting re-honed and thrown back down onto fresh tape err... hard drive. I imagine that within a week or two I'll be dumping every thread of my being into this and not really coming up for air until it's done.

The LIGHT album is nearly done from what I understand. I wouldn't know. I haven't talked to Eon lately. Though I'm in a band with him and he's one of my best friends, I think I've talked to him for a net total of 2 hours in the last month. Should be a good barometer for my anti-social behavior lately. Sorry everyone. Spring is just around the corner in 4 months. Anyway, the new Light is absolutely fantastic. Perfect for long, dark nights, with the weather-proof windows to your home gathering frost patterns, sputtering heating vents in the corner. It will be called "Beams of Light Like Insects Crowd the Floor".

loves,

~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

Unreleased Cheaters Club Track Available

Hey everyone. Remember The Cheaters Club? Neither do we. The Cheaters Club has fallen to the back of the backburner, to where all of the olive oil residue and bacon drippings collect, where it may very well stay indefinitely. Or not. We're all (relatively) happy chaps at this time in our lives and I think it'd be disingenuous for us to blaze that trail for the time being. Only time will tell.

Anyway, I was meandering through my hard drive today dispensing of unlistenable 90s NoMeansNo mp3s when I happened upon an old, notably apocalyptic, demo(?) for a song that we never managed to do much of anything with. I thought you might be interested in hearing it.

So until our families are crushed by an upended tractor trailer full of beef, or we watch our best friend slowly engulfed by Parkinson's Disease, you can tide yourself over with the unreleased track "Wake Me Up" on the myspace player.

THE CHEATERS CLUB ON MYSPACE

~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