Sun City Girls :: From the Vaults of the Cloaven Curse
Finally, after several decades residing in the biblical bardo, where the kinetic keys to the dysfunctional dungeons of one of the greatest and most influential groups of their time, Phoenix, Arizona/Seattle-based cosmic collective, Sun City Girls have secretly kept their cryptic catalog locked away, the Cloaven Cassette series have begun to see a proper release, and its only the beginning. If you’re a fan of The Self Portrait Gospel, you know we’re as serious as a harrowing heart attack about anything related to the weird and wild world of SCG. Acting as a sonic school that oozes with spiritualistic suspense, where students can receive the ultimate esoteric education in exercising dormant demons, and artistic freedom of the highest order, Sun City Girls are the real fucking deal when it comes to effervescent expression. Fundamentally fearless, and giants among the sophistication of the subconscious storytelling market, there isn’t anything like them, and nothing even comes close.
Without writing a murderous memoir on the group, or annoying readers with information they may already know about its merciless members, Alan and Richard Bishop, brothers of Lebanese descent, and the late Charles Gocher Jr., who passed away from a long battle with cancer at the age of 54 in 2007, lets instead gaze into the band’s vast, and bottomless catalog, while focusing on four installments in the Cloaven Cassette series: “Famous Asthma/Tibetan Jazz 666" and “Extra-Sensory Defection/Graverobbing in the Future.” Recorded between 1985 and 1990, give or take, in various locations such as Crash Arts, Jessop's Diary, and Arizona State University, these titles were born in the atmospheric ashes of pure alchemy, and have since taken on a life of liberating lunacy among collectors, elemental enthusiasts, and the like. Standing against the whispering wind of their generation with punk roots that carefully connect to local legends such as the Meat Puppets, and skate punk pioneers JMA, with whom Alan Bishop briefly played with, the band immediately began recording and releasing cassette tapes in the mid-1980s that spoke of lore in a language that could only be understood by die hard fans, and inner circle creatures within the desert scene.
Set for release on double vinyl in early July on the mighty Three Lobed Recordings for the first time since the radical recordings’ cosmic conception all those years ago, these incredible institutions of melodic magic provoke the holy grounds of pulverizing psychedelia by trespassing into the glorious glow of the afterlife, and hijacking it’s cable TV connection for all too see the sounds of a legitimate seance. Featuring tracks like “Mystery Panhandle,” the epic finale to “Wanna Go Up See Witches In The Hills,” “A Fast Stitch Towards Oblivian,” and “El Mahdi,” these back-to-back double album releases are some of the band’s most sought-after material. While it may not end the civil injustices and cultural carnage we’ve been living in with the freakish flick of a broken wrist, it could delay the personal pain we’ve all endured for so long, by demonstrating a dedicated practice in something that makes you happy and feel whole. Cory and TLR aren’t new to this particular corner of the world, having released works by the Bishop Brothers in the past, the label and its nearly three-decade sonic stretch into this particular paradise has taken a career turn with these deep cuts from the band’s witchcraft warzone. Eventually relocating to Seattle in the early 1990s to further set up their operations based in oblivion, the band established their very own imprint, Abduction Records, and put the pedal to the metaphysical metal, releasing into the vast solar system some of the most mind-altering aromas, and prolifically pasteurized purges any artists has ever attempted to accomplish in its career.
For Charlie.
(November 12, 1952 – February 19, 2007)
