Soundtrack for an After-Hours Underworld
Gold Gazebo is a collaborative project anchored by Portlander Chris Williams. Chris and his mates have produced a second pandemic-themed album of improvised, psychedelia-infused electronic rock. It’s called 9PM-5AM, and it just hit the streets. (Click the pic to hear tracks.)
Whereas last year’s release, Please Fall Awake, was about the dilation of time and struggles to find consciousness in the COVID lockdown, 9AM-5AM is the inverse: it’s about the struggle to find something to do while employment and social interactions are scarce. More specifically, this is a multi-media project regarding the secret world of an abandoned paper mill in a vacant industrial district of the city — the artifacts on site, the colorful characters that inhabited the space after dark, and reconstructions of chapters from the mill’s past. The album is a colection of atmospheric instrumentals punctuated with vocal samples that give voice to the history of this place. Williams also created a series of videos and a novella to bring this story into daylight.
These themes that invoke imagination and fringe realtities are nothing new to Williams, a writer and versatile musician who uses the Linnstrument, a sort of 3D midi controller, as his tool of choice. His records are a throwback to ‘70s-era concept albums. The original sounds he creates with Mike Basil (guitar and effects), Dustin Lee (synths and guitar) and Cullen Morris (guitar) also harken back to things like space rock and freeform electronic jams, but with a modern-day sensibility reflected in varied rhythms, surprisingly sweet melodic elements and concise, bite-sized motifs.
By the way, the album’s cover is, literally, the last chapter of the mill: it features a live photo of the building’s destruction by arson, on the eve of this release.
Follow the links below to learn more about Gold Gazebo, this unique album and it’s sibling components to this tale. And keep your eyes on Gold Gazebo—there’s more where this came from.