Carbus
Donald Warner Shaw III microphones, speakers, amplifiers, electronics, objects
Neil 'Cloaca' Young microphones, speakers, amplifiers, electronics, objects, microcassette player

"Valposchiavo Pizzocheri di Spazzatura" was recorded in March 2023 on the penultimate evening of Carbus' three-week residency at UNCOOL in southern Switzerland. Young and Shaw first arrived there with some guitar pedals, cables, and contact mics - a confusing and incoherent pile of disconnected tools. Via corporate magic and the Swiss internet, they quickly acquired a pair of very cheap practice amps, borrowed some discarded speakers and sifted through debris from the village metal dumpster. They used the residency period to develop satisfying uses for the assemblage. Objects, like paint bucket, steel pipe, hinges, spent rifle shells, metal strapping, unspooled measuring tape, styrofoam blocks, saw blades, fishing line, horse hair, and loose street sweeper tines, all had unique vibrational and expressive possibilities to be coaxed out through hours of noisy research. They also discovered that their cheap-euro-internet practice amps really truly lacked the punch and range of their 80’s-era gorilla blasters back in the States. Ultimately their focus was on research and the performances, not on a definitive recorded statement, but luckily this hastily-made recording of a rehearsal had enough magic to share.
"Spruce Corner Summer Glaze" features Carbus back in their original Western Mass element, working the busted electronics arrays that the duo had developed in years prior at sites throughout the Northeast. Recorded in July 2022 onto two-track open reel tape, this piece happens to catch one more whiff of the duo’s methods before Young relocated to California weeks after.

Carbus makes noise/music using a variety of musical/nonmusical methods. The duo have collaborated in various ensembles for the past 20 plus years, starting first with drum kit and electric bass in an experimental rock context and then expanding to composing and improvising with an unrestricted palette of electronics, synthesis and sequencing, tape manipulation/collage, brass and reeds. If there was any aesthetic mission to declare it might be that Carbus is interested in playing with timbral similarities between electronic and acoustic sound, divining an uncanny organic essence from the so-called precision of a machine. The most recent iteration of Shaw and Young’s collaboration as Carbus has settled in on the use of cheap mics, speakers, and resonant objects arranged in collapsing systems of electro-acoustic feedback-synthesis. The duo works intuitively often with simple compositional constraints that allows space for dynamic and expressive improvisation. In addition to their work as solo artists, both Young and Shaw are lifelong members of now-dormant weirdo rockers Fat Worm of Error, two parts of the improvising quintet Gloyd and are tape machine operators for the audio-media-playback power trio Playbackers. They live in Western Massachusetts and Southern California.

tinyurl.com/carbusband