A Peal Of Bells

The Aum Rifle as documented here is Alex and Cari Ganowsky and John Thill, along with a loose confederation of collaborators from seaside Seattle and scorched-earth Riverside, California, their hometown. To date they've produced a few handmade limited edition CDRs comprised of outdoor major-key folk tunes and environmental soundscapes infiltrated by tape noise, TV broadcasts, and local methamphetamine culture. The music inhabits a dusty, rusted landscape, fetishized in their songs. Other work includes recording camping trips to the Olympic Peninsula and Death Valley National Park. A Peal Of Bells is the product of time divided between the Pacific Northwest and Southern California, moving from slowest "quiet-time" dirges to a pots-and-pans racket, sometimes within the confines of one song. The Aum Rifle and their various collaborators play banjos, accordions, tape loops, trees and hand-crafted musical monstrosities in, around, and outside the trappings of traditional song structure. They'll be taking their semiacoustic ideologies and rusted metal on the road in July and August 2004 up and down the West Coast and throughout the Midwest.