Down Is Up discusses music that falls slightly under the radar of our usual coverage: demos and self-releases, as well as output from small or overlooked labels and communities. Today, Jenn Pelly highlights a Record Store Day split 12" from Destruction Unit, Milk Music, and Merchandise.
Cover art by ZZ of Ukiah Drag
One day I woke up and noticed that things had changed. After years of filtering my underground rock tastes through a relatively pointed filter of feminism and New York-centrism, I realized that three of my favorite current bands were somehow dudes from fringes of the country: Milk Music, from Olympia; Destruction Unit, from the Sonoran Desert; and Merchandise, from Tampa. Their approaches range from desert-punk to romantic guitar pop, but what these bands share in spirit trumps style—in interviews and in song, they're actively offering reminders that music can be a way to approach the entire spectrum of art/sound with voracious curiosity; that there's value in instigating against the mechanics of modern music; that punk is not a list of rules. Basic ideas, but it's easy to get excited when a band is broadcasting your own experience back to you, which these three groups have done for many. Moreover, they all write incredible songs and totally rip live.
When Milk Music, Merchandise, and Destruction Unit toured together last summer, it felt like the culmination of something rare, and now they're releasing a split 12" to commemorate it. The record is out tomorrow via Austin's 540 Records—one of Pitchfork's Top 25 Releases of Record Store Day. Hear a few tracks below. I emailed with Destruction Unit guitarist Jes Aurelius, Merchandise bassist Pat Brady, and Milk Music frontman Alex Coxen to learn more about what binds these bands together, the evolving definition of "underground," and why Record Store Day is pointless.
Pitchfork: For those unfamiliar with the scene that Milk Music, Destruction Unit, and Merchandise came up in, this might seem like an unlikely grouping of bands. What else do you feel essentially ties these bands together?
Jes Aurelius: We share similar goals, searching for purity inward and outward. Music that brings the world to consciousness, elevating ourselves to a higher level of being. There is a lot of sickness that exists in our current times and art can heal a lot. Politics is sickness, religion is sickness. Our intention is to make music that is entirely itself, honest. It's not where you take it from, but where you take it to. It's not about looking for a demographic or pleasing a crowd—that's where art becomes a sickness. It's about creating a crowd, creating a demographic, outside of business and criticism and industry. Something real and powerful. A revolution of the forbidden and the hidden.
Patrick Brady: A lot of people may feel like we've aimed to please a demographic, but what ties us together is the rejection of that. The only thing we've sought is expression and truth, in and of ourselves and our peers. What has kept us close is the recognition of this passage.
Alex Coxen: I don't think anything essential ties our bands together. We're all friends and we did this tour together, and we had a pretty good time. The tour just happened, like the record.
Pitchfork: What were some of the earliest instances of these bands crossing paths?
JA: I met both of these bands around 2008 or 2009. I'm sure it's similar in Tampa and Olympia, but it's weird growing up in Phoenix. It is very isolated. The [Florida label] Cult Maternal and [Olympia label] Perennial scenes were some of the first contemporary music we found out about. It immediately struck a chord. It was distant and intimidating. We knew next to nothing about any of the bands—no idea if they were older, our age, cool people, shitty people—just that we loved everything we could get our hands on.
Once I started booking shows and enticing these bands to stop in Phoenix, that began to change. Eventually our bands started touring and experiencing their scenes firsthand, confirming my suspicions that we come from a similar spiritual background. The first tour I did was in 2009 with my band Pigeon Religion. We played Olympia with HPP and met a lot of the Perennial scene. On that tour we also played in Florida with Neon Blud, Slavescene, Boulder and Craow—met the Merchandise and Ukiah Drag guys at those gigs. We played New York with the Men, who were still a three-piece with Mark on drums, Chris on bass, and Nick on guitar and flute. Now Chris does Ligature and Warthog, both of whom we play with often.
This was all on one tour, well before any of our bands could fathom getting mainstream attention. But now it's happened and we're lucky to have built a community that allows us to work entirely with extremely talented friends, even in areas that can be notoriously shitty (such as PR, record contract, etc). Without having met these people we would still be stuck in the desert playing to the same 15 friends so we owe them a ton and it's not something I've forgotten.
PB: I remember Pigeon Religion and Hell Kite coming through Tampa and immediately feeling the amity between our communities. Phoenix has since been a destination where I know likeminded souls are ready and willing to corroborate, be it booking a show or sharing ideas. The Olympia scene was always inspirational. A lot of Perrenial releases had an impact on me.
AC: We played a terrible show in Tempe with White Boss a couple years back and had a really bad time. That's when we met Jes and those guys, but I didn't think it would amount to anything. We'd go back and kids would tell us how that first time we came with White Boss was the reason they started playing noise music. We've had a good time playing there since. Those freaks can roll.
Pitchfork: How would you describe the energy of the tour in 2013, and what kind of energy do you hope this 12" captures?
JA: The tour was some of the most fun I've had in my life. Whether you like all of our music, some of it, or none of it, I think people can tell it's authentic and honest. I think that comes through on the record and provides a context that makes the record really work. Even down to the presentation, artwork, production...
PB: Seeing two of the best live bands of this era on a nightly basis—crashing and breaking bread with the elements of those bands—was a tremendous source of exhilaration for me. Hopefully some people find the same amount of elation in this release.
AC: I just remember having a pretty good time. A little more so than a normal tour. Just joking and taking a little more drugs than usual.
Pitchfork: Are there any memories from the tour that are especially vivid?
AC: Acid in Kentucky, straight from the finger of a true head.
Pitchfork: I noticed the word "underground" used to describe this LP on the 540 Records site. How do you define "underground" now when all bands have the platform of the internet? Is it more a spirit than an actual place of existence?
JA: To me, the term "underground" means soul. The music industry is just a big marketing experiment. Searching for what will sell, what will be cost effective, what has the least risk. It has lost its relationship to the spirit. It's a cloud of smoke. From a distance it looks like there is substance, but when you try to reach out and grab it, you realize there's nothing to hold on to. When we talk about "underground", it's not a physical place. It's not even a refusal to interact with the sickness of the industry. Evil exists and sometimes it can not be avoided. But it can be recognized and subverted. The light can catch on. An artist's job is not to oppose evil but to imagine it. We are not politicians, we are magicians.
AC: I consider our group, and myself as a human being, to be legitimately underground. We're beatniks and we are at odds with the world. No one out there really gives too much of a shit about Milk Music, except for a small following of folks that REALLY seem to hear it right and get what it's all about. Our track record shows that we don't care too much either about forcing ourselves on anyone. Oh, and we're poor. Whereas a lot of people in the cool scene can afford this lifestyle of traveling around and looking tough.
PB: It would be foolish to deny that there is a presence in this world that seeks to circumvent the mainstream. It's impossible to entirely evade the constant barrage of conventional drivel, but finding positive ways to incorporate its influence is the endgame.
Above: Excerpt from tour poster
Pitchfork: The totality of all of these bands across different mediums (music, writing, drawing, film, etc.) is cool and exciting. Jes made a zine to accompany this record. Jes, what inspires the direction of your visual art?
JA: All of my art is inspired by knowledge, transformation, magic and liberation. Working for mutation. The evolution of consciousness. If these ideas can exist within myself, as a human being, I know they can exist in others and that's what inspires me. On another level, I'm inspired by my friends, many of whom are brilliant artists in their own respect, from Arizona and all over the world. If you follow anything I do, you'll find them as well and be inspired.
Pitchfork: Some would say Record Store Day is a ploy to profit major labels via frivolous repressings of old singles and other stuff that people don't need. How do you feel about it?
JA: I have no interest in Record Store Day. Buy records because you like them. Support a shop because you like the shop, or the people, or it serves a purpose. Not because a special day exists for it. That being said, I have nothing against it either. The Record Store Day idea was [Merchandise's label] 4AD's, and since I don't care either way, I didn't fight it.
PB: Some would say that simply living in America is a ruse to profit an undeserving few. Entitlement runs rampant all around us. To argue againt such a small and diluted facet of enterprise is ridiculous. I don't think there's any harm in Record Store Day.
AC: I think it's absolute consumer bullshit put together by a bunch of boring narcs and I'm disgusted with myself for letting this happen.
Below, some of my favorite live footage of these bands (2012-2013)...