Thirsting Quench Pisses off Hardcore Punks with New Album
I've been making little recordings under the pseudonym of Thirsting Quench since I was 17 when I formed a band called Dr. Kamikaze and the $35 Sound with my friend Jeff. He was the good doctor, so I needed an alternate identity as well. The formula for DK&$35S was usually that Jeff was the chaos/noise and I was the order/orchestration. Lately I've been recording solo and get to throw in a bit more of the noise myself, but there's definitely a through-line from Kamikaze to TQ material. But when Kamikaze performed live, occasionally Jeff would also like to add in visual or performance aspects outside of the music.
For example, in February of 2003, Jeff booked us for a hardcore punk festival in Madison, Wisconsin knowing that musically we were the furthest from hardcore punk a band could possibly be. For that show we played about 15 minutes of improvised loops of ambient synthesizer and piano drones accompanied by trumpet solos and spoken word with no drummer. If I remember correctly, there's a good chance neither of us even used any distortion pedals that night. Of course, our pretentious way of thinking of it as barely twenty-year-olds was that pissing off an entire room full of punks and not doing what was expected of you was just about the most punk thing one could do.
Somehow, the crowd reacted favorably and some mohawked students even came up to ask us about some of the sound sources we used (we'd also packed the place with friends, so by the end of our set there was enough applause to encourage others into thinking it was acceptable).
Not everyone was in favor of our crashing the hardcore party though. As we packed up our gear, on the last trip out to the car, while wheeling my amp down an ice-coated sidewalk, some of the attendees who were less liberal in their definition of "hardcore punk" saw us as they exited down at the opposite side of the building. They yelled some accusatory obscenities as they took off across the snow-covered grass to chase us.
Jeff slipped and fell on his ass. I kinda tried to ride my amp down the hilly sidewalk until it fell over. We were, all us, a little drunk (see, we did have common ground with these punks, if only they took the time to get to know us), so it's a bit blurry, but our friend Elliott, who I mentioned having attended his amazing-tastic wedding in a recent post, somehow saved our asses, and I believe he did it by choosing to stand his ground, yelling something like, "Back off," and, fists clenched, kinda rushing back towards the charging punks (who, in reality, weren't moving that quickly, trudging through several inches of snow). The punks slowed, almost paused, probably not expecting an actual standoff but just good natured chasing to put some fear in the outsiders, giving Jeff and me enough time to regain our footing, unlock the doors to my classy, green Chrysler LeBaron, and toss in the amp, before Elliott stopped in his tracks and hauled ass (he had been a track runner in high school--again, I think; it's all getting a bit blurry at this age, drinks or no drinks, nevertheless he was svelte and quick) and dived into the back seat (he was, for a matter of fact, on the diving team, this I do remember). Then we all went to a house-party and did many a stupid things. Later, Elliott fell into Lake Mendota. But that's a story for another time.
Anyway, that's just one of the myths from the Dr. Kamikaze book of legends. It's all just fair warning that if, dear reader, you identify as a hardcore punk, this new recording, called ʃmæltst may make you want to trudge through snow in the dead cold of a Midwestern February night to beat the shit out of me. Then again, hardcore punk, we thought we were going to piss off an entire venue of you once, and most of you came around to it. Maybe give a listen, eh? So try clicking here to listen and/or download the album for free. The sample track below is probably the most hardcore I've ever gone in my music and it sounds very little like anything else on the album. So click that link and check the rest out.
ʃmæltst Cover