“In 1993, a year after I had moved to Seattle, I began a so-called label for buying or trading one–off cassettes, called Skin records. Made more as an experiment and most likely remembered by its’ roster as an exercise in pathos, it was gone before it began. During this time I placed a couple of ads in underground music magazines for it. A couple of months later, I received a package and hand written letter from Climax Golden Twins... The only unsolicited submission for Skin, as requested for in the ads. In the package, two cassettes with no names. The cover art on one featured a distorted color copy of a very skinny person in a strange pose, from some ancient land, the other, an obscure looking image of a man with his head on fire. When I listened… ‘a wastebasket’ was whispered, I was sucked through a portal into a multiple of dimensions, entranced, for the length of this 10 minute per side per cassette. Pure Genius! I wrote back, and placed the cassette in the catalog. After I had known CGT for a short while, or maybe the first time we met (I don’t remember), I gave them ‘skin’ stickers, after which their almost-first label that didn’t really exist evaporated. I’ve been hoping the early stuff would eventually get more exposure, and very happy that now more people will also get to hear it. To me, it’s as pure as the sources which inspired them, and at the same time, wholly unique in some way I just can’t define. When I got that first cassette, there was nothing quite like it; and today, 15 years later, I think this is still true…”

---Jesse Paul Miller, visual artist/musician/sound artist/nefarious miscreant/creator of the Secret Records/member of Factums/etc… (www.jessepaulmiller.com)

A lovely vinyl reissue on Etude Records of a long obscure Climax Golden Twins gem. Originally issued in 1995, on cassette, Eerie Fragrance or Eyeless Fabrication or Exclude Frank or Eat Fuck or etc (forever) was Climax Golden Twins second official issue after a self-released double seven inch gatefold record. Cassettes--the cockroach of the industry--were a necessity at the poorer end of the music spectrum prior to CDRs and file sharing…the good old days…EF was a collage of noise, found sounds, punk rock disasters, Chinese climaxes, broken records, and tape failures mastered directly to cassette on a reverberant wooden floor in an old building in Seattle, Washington. It seemed an inauspicious start and little presaged the ambient/dreamy/art installation/field recording/Anomalous Records darlings CGT were to become with releases such as Lovely, Dream Cut Short in the Mysterious Clouds, Locations, etc. However, secret free hillbilly noise epilepsy has always lurked under the button up shirts, white wine sipping and gallery-opening snack-munching. The noise informs the dreams which informs the ambiance which informs the chaos and so back to the beginning and vice-versa. Etude Records discovered CGT through their work on the horror film Session Nine and have been wanting to release something ever since.

Part band, part art project, Climax Golden Twins were discovered lurking under a desk in a laboratory in the early 1920s. Reconstituted around 1993 or 4 (just add gin), they perpetrated various audio artifacts on an unsuspecting (and cold) world (see extensive and largely mythical list below). These days they are the CGT in AFCGT. And they released Victrola Favorites recently on Dust to Digital. Their laboratory origins lead to a an unhealthy interest in early recording and the era of music on 78rpm records and cylinders, a time of acoustic sound reproduction when oral traditions ended and the home entertainment industry and the information age devoured our puny lives. That’s a mouthful. This era was a pivotal one in understanding how humanity arrived where it is today, though Climax Golden Twins denies all knowledge of where that might be.

Official site Link: www.climaxgoldentwins.com

Related work includes pieces for choreography, radio, and installation, helping to produce Jesse Paul Miller’s Secret Records, various compilation tracks, solo records including Spider Trio on Assophon and 120 on Etude Records, work with Sublime Frequencies and Dust to Digital and two self-titled vinyl releases with AFCGT (on Ubu Audio and Dirty Knobby Recordings.)