Old Time Relijun
Thurs Aug 4
Berbati’s Pan
10 SW 3rd
A biblical oldster once prayed, “God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights with stringed instruments.” It seems to me that Old Time Relijun’s founder Arrington de Dionyso may have once wished for similar blessings, but somehow ended up creeping in the depths with the voice of a goat.
In my experience, Olympia, Washington is not the most God-fearing place on the Earth, which makes it the perfect pulpit for Dionyso to spread his deviant brand of Relijun. Despite being the son of a Methodist clergyman, Arrington is an unlikely minister–his musical temple more likely to take on Captain Beefheart and Doctor Moreau as patron saints than Peter or Paul (uh… or Mary, too, I guess). Both his live and recorded eruptions are a forced marriage of free-jazz squawking, junkstore punk, and blown out mountain music. Fittingly, the lyrical images he brings forth read like long-lost holy books, populated with ominous creatures, alchemists, and other various teeth-gnashers.
The band’s most recent recorded outing, Lost Light, released with OTR’s long time co-conspirators K Records, is as gnarled and uneven as anything else in their discography. Not that the album is lazy or without vision, but trying to truly understand Dionyso’s work can feel as inane as critiquing a volcano; it quakes and belches up flame ceaselessly without regard for who might be around to observe it.
OTR, despite collaborative stabs by bigwigs like Microphone’s Phil Elvrum, has always been about its frontman, and his aforementioned goat voice. Arrington is a long-time student of “Tuvan throat singing,” an Eastern trick where singers create two or even three different growling tones with just one set of vocal chords. Throw in a little punk angst, and some cryptic wordplay about snake-handlers or vampires, and it’s a voice that could make Yoko Ono cringe (and who wouldn’t enjoy seeing that?).
While most of you Mercury readers might not be the bible-thumping types, Old Time Relijun is unlikely to try to convert you with their strange rituals, though after a touch of their sacramental wine anything is possible.