Here’s our last release of 2021… the first new Dumbass release since 2016!
It’s a stand-alone single (with B-side), not from the new album that’s still in production.
And, you can stream it on youtube, with visuals:
2018 marked the 20 year anniversary of Trash Records.
Here is a playlist for your listening pleasure from the second decade plus one year (check out our 1998-2008 playlist here).
01 Pin – Right
02 Pin – Is This Today?
03 Dumbass – Faces
04 Dumbass – Design & Outcome
05 Dr. Roboto & The Hardcore Crisis – The Ballad of Johnny Custard
06 Dr. Roboto & The Hardcore Crisis – 2 Legit 2 Resign
07 YPC – A Place for Everything 09
08 YPC – A Place for Everything 10
09 The Fools Community Orchestra – I like You
10 The Fools Community Orchestra – Cat Tango
11 Zeke Mason – Days of Joy Unending
12 Zeke Mason – My Love and Me
13 Pin – One Way
14 Pin – Song 2
15 Misopogon – Death at the End of a Telephone Cord
16 Misopogon – Sharks
17 Pin – Faster, Tastier, & Above All… Easier
18 Barrow Island – Barrow Island 1b
19 Barrow Island – Barrow Island 2a
20 Dr. Roboto & The Hardcore Crisis – And then Johnny Custard discovered that the real gift was the friends he made along the way and also in prison, because he went to prison for several quite awful things
21 YPC – A Place for Everything 11
22 Zeke Mason – Where Else?
23 Zeke Mason – Here in the Desert
24 The Fools Community Orchestra – Plague Fleas
25 The Fools Community Orchestra – Mr. Bat & Mr. Parrot
2008 marked the 20 year anniversary of Trash Records.
Here is a playlist for your listening pleasure from the first 10 of those years. It’s not comprehensive (there are bands from those 10 years not represented), nor is it fully representative of each of the bands featured (some of them have done things that sound quite different from the songs here); it is, rather, a little taste of some of the things we did in those first 10 years. It’s not a “best-of,” as lots of best songs were surely left off of the list. I chose fast here; making a series of quick decisions about a set of stand-out songs that work together as a play-list and introduction. (They are culled from MP3s made at different times and are therefore at different bit-rates.) Enjoy!
You can download the songs here, or stream it below:
01 Dumbass – Cash (Single Version)
02 Dumbass – Blindness
03 Dumbass – Bored & Stupid (V.2)
04 Pin – Warlust (Single Version)
05 Pin – missile defense
06 Pin – Amerikatowne
07 Vates Mortis – This Evening
08 Vates Mortis – The End of the World
09 Vates Mortis – Summertime
10 YPC – Computation Calculation
11 YPC – Retro Boogie 3
12 YPC – Love in the Evening
13 Triceratops – Angry Walrus
14 Triceratops – Bill the Conq
15 Triceratops – Triceratops (Live)
16 Mr. Spooky Band – In the Den of the Leopard
17 Mr. Spooky Band – The Seduction
18 Dumbass – Deep Eyes
19 Dumbass – History
20 Dumbass – Making This Thing
21 Zeke Mason – Mind Under Matter
Stream the playlist on youtube:
“The negative form of the self exercises a loosening power as well as a binding power; at any time it can quite arbitrarily start all over again, and no matter how long one idea is pursued, the entire action is within a hypothesis.”
Robbing Graves is the new release from Dumbass.
It is an intense expressionist and experimental suite of music in two parts. The first part (the title track), is a 54 minute piece of music that is both sonically and lyrically challenging. It is deeply intertextual, both formalist and freeform, with lyrics in 4 languages, and music that moves from minimal and quiet to brash and noisy.
Robbing Graves weaves the past and present together, figuratively and literally through extensive use of archival recordings and incisive self-reflection.
The second part plays more like a traditional album, with more manageable song lengths, but it is in fact a continuation of an overarching narrative that moves, from bar 1 of part 1 towards its inevitable conclusion in the final song.
The album is available to download for free here at the Dumbass website.
It is also available in a portfolio edition, with 2 CDs, a liner-book, and 4 hand printed woodcuts. Contact us through the Trash Records Facebook page if you are interested.
Finally, you can also stream the first Part of the album on youtube and vimeo.
The Execution of Random Actions (2005)———————————————————————————————————————————————————-
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In 2002 Dumbass recorded an album called The Execution of Certain Actions, an album based on exploring the concept of ritual… particular actions taking place in particular ways, in particular times and places… As we put it at the time: “Time and space themselves are the instruments here. Recorded at night in scrap yards, railway tunnels, and atop a 40 foot metal tower, the recording process is ritualized and ritual represents the musical score.”
In 2005 we returned to the idea, but this time we decided to explore its opposite pole… we delved into the idea of randomness… if ritual is all about the significance of actions, we wanted to explore the meaninglessness of actions. As I put it in the recent retrospective:
“We explored the notion that human beings are no more able to be truly random than computers. We began each recording session with no pre-decided ideas or plans. We tried to do things randomly:
“I’ll record some drums.”
“I’ll record some bass.”
“I’ll chop up what you just recorded.”
“I’ll chop up what you recorded a week ago.”
“I’ll slow this down.”
“I’ll delete the guitar.”
Etc. etc. etc.
We plugged instruments in or miked them up and just pressed “record.” Lyrics were written the same way: I would randomly decide to lay down a vocal. Sometimes I would open my notebook and just write whatever came out, sometimes I would decide to edit this or that text, sometimes I would just stand at the mike and make it up on the spot. At one point I flipped through my notebook, reading lines and words from songs from previous albums at random. And yet…
And yet, it’s all strangely musical. And yet, lyrical themes developed (a series of song texts that revolve around the seasons, for instance). Random things should surprise you… what surprised us was just how un-random it all sounded. We had an inkling that this is how it would turn out, but not the extent (did this inkling affect the outcome?).
I like this album a lot, but it got a bit lost between the bigger projects that preceded and succeeded it. It’s nice then to put it out now where it can breathe a bit more.
This is a noisy album, it’s sonically harsh at times, but it has, I think, a strangely deep musicality to it that I have a hard time explaining (a result, no doubt, of the “random actions” forcing our musical subconscious, instincts, muscle-memory, etc. to take the wheel as our conscious planning-minds tried to forsake the driver’s seat). It’s also a lively and, I would say, again, strangely joyous album.”
I hope you enjoy it,
ZM
God’s Garden is an organic and experimental album that feels like a logical development from the movements of the previous several years of work. This release sees Dumbass recording largely live on many tracks rather than building up songs piece by piece in the studio, mixing elements of noise-rock and post-punk with more (and less) traditional experiments. New member Stanley Pushkin adds his talents on bass, keyboards, and guitar.
01 God’s Garden
02 Lie Beside Me
03 Gauze
04 Monogamous Binaries
05 Life Dirge
06 Night Active
07 Touching Eyes
08 Seldom
09 Faces
10 Maria Theresa
11 Santa Maria
12 Gallows
13 Viteus
14 Librarius
15 In Flammeolum
16 Aphrodite’s Eyes & Manifold Names
17 In Absentia
18 The Concept of Anxiety
19 Falling Atoms
This is the cheeky noisy eponymous first single… enjoy!
01 God’s Garden
02 Pleasureplex
03 I Love You
04 Us
05 Waypoints
06 Faces (Long Version)
07 Lost
08 God’s Garden (Hellhole Remix by Pin)
09 God’s Garden (Paradiso Remix by Pin)
10 Five
11 Seldom (Infrequent Remix by Pin)
12 God’s Garden (November 2007 Version)
13 You and Me
Die Mauer was conceived by the light of a desk lamp late one October night in a hostel that had once been a telephone factory in Berlin after a flash of inspiration at the longest remaining stretch of the wall. The initial tracks were recorded all over the wilds of British Columbia on rocks, bridges, power towers, trees, etc. then studio work was added. Still regarded as the best Dumbass album by both the band and the fans.
01 The outline of the hypothesis
02 Expansion of the particulars (part 1)
03 Expansion of the particulars (part 2)
04 Unlimited horizons
05 Infinity as a unity
06 The human wager
07 Homeland
08 The unitary cause is infinite
09 Tempus est aligatus
10 The tunnel
11 History
12 Hermeneutics
13 Semiotics
14 Method
15 Glass
16 Causality leads to determinism
17 Seeking
18 Dialectics
19 The test of time
20 Certainty
Recorded over two separate weeks – one in the middle of summer, the other in the dead of winter. Two Weeks has a strangely magic feel to it.
01 Beautiful horizons
02 Summer song
03 The reasons why
04 Elapsed time under 12 seconds
05 Ich
06 Try hard as you will
07 Complications in the summer heat
08 Making this thing
09 Winter song (Miss Timid)
10 Flower petals
11 Twilight in summer
12 Seasonal affected disorder
Time and space themselves are the instruments here. Recorded at night in scrap yards, railway tunnels, and atop a 40 foot metal tower, the recording process is ritualized and ritual represents the musical score.
Possibly one of the least accessible Dumbass albums, but also one of the most significant.
01 Execution # 1 (railway tunnel with approaching train)
02 Execution # 2 (modem machine music)
03 Execution # 3 (guitar and environment)
04 Execution # 4 (hostile piano)
05 Execution # 5 (40′ metal tower)