[Apologies to our faithful readers. This news is at least a month old but somehow wasn't posted here.... until now!]

Chef Menteur will be opening for Cloudland Canyon and White Hills on Thursday, April 28.

Also playing will be Pontiak. All four bands specialize in different flavors of contemporary heavy psychedelic music; although Chef Menteur and Cloudland Canyon come from more electronic beginnings.

Siberia is the venue. If you haven’t been there yet it’s at 2227 St. Claude Ave., near the Hi-Ho.

White Hills and Pontiak are on Thrill Jockey and Cloudland Canyon were formerly on Kranky and are now on Holy Mountain. All three of these bands will be playing the Austin Psych Fest on Saturday April 30.

Shout out to Nick  for putting this together.

More info available at backporchrevolution.com

All the music from the new album has been finished! We’re currently working on finalizing the mastering, and coming up with artwork; as well as planning the release schedule.

We’re sticking with the plan of releasing the new album on double vinyl (that’s 4 sides for a total of 72 minutes) with hand printed covers in a limited edition. We will let you know more as we can.

Meanwhile the three of us have been getting together with Phil Rollins (of the Gubernatorial Candidates) and started rehearsals again for our next world tour.

We may have some interesting news here soon. Keep checking back.

Here’s a demo of the song “1491″ from our last album. It’s about 100 times faster than the song ended up being.1491 (original demo).

You can hear the original song on this page.

Disclaimer: for entertainment purposes only.

Video: #1 Champion Cigar Box Guitar on YouTube

There will be no CD version. The album will contain two LP’s and a certificate for mp3 download.

That is all.

More images here.

the place was shutting down soon anyway. maybe it was just being all-but-kicked-off the stage at the mermaid (we only played three songs that night). this is from a live stereo tape recording of a mermaid show we did with the bastard sons of subotnick and shatner. there were not enough people to make three bands, either on or off stage. i think potpie brought homebrew beer backstage and deprived the club of some possible revenue and that had more to do with kicking us out than the music. or maybe not. you be the judge. gilgamesh was our third and last song that night, and yeah, we kinda dragged it out. if you dig that kind of thing, you’ll like this. if not, you’ll hate it.

gilgamesh from last show at the mermaid

every now and then i come across a track that was never released but i think is worth throwing out there; here’s a very minimal verrsion of “europa” from december 2003:

europa.minimal 19.dec.2003

this very much represents our idea of what ambient drone meant at the time. i will probably be throwing up more tracks as they come up, especially if people like them.

Not much to report here. Usual humid sluggishness, exotic head and hand injuries, having to work for a living, et cetera makes for the usual vacation from progress.

If you are looking for something to read, I’ve put up a blog (mostly about music) here:

http://aleatoric.backporchrevolution.com

All three current members of Chef Menteur  will be playing with Archipelago this Saturday, opening for Sir Richard Bishop and His Freak of Araby Ensemble.

Archipelago is Backporch Revolution’s improvisational folk/drone large ensemble that features many experimental New Orleans musicians.

Sir Richard Bishop is known best for his work with Sun City Girls, but has also had a remarkable solo career as a guitar stylist/virtuoso and world traveler. This will be the first tour he’s played with a full band.

Also playing will be Oakland noise outfit Oaxacan.

The show starts at 10pm, at the All Ways Lounge in New Orleans. See Backporch Revolution for address and more details.