Celesteville's MySpace page

My journal page (frequently updated)

What is Celesteville?

Celesteville is an imaginary band. Celesteville is me, Jake, plus other people (sometimes). Celesteville shamelessly rips off the following styles and conventions: indie-pop, ethnoforgery-folk, skronk-noise, delay-pedal-workout-drone, universal-rock, language-master-abuse, suburban-garage-punk, four-track-manipulation, etc.

RECORDINGS:

Major works

• Soft Rock is Forever: Self-conscious noisesploitation record written and recorded in three or four hours prior to Gang Wizard's European tour, this one is the purest distillation of Language Master essence yet.
• Transcriptionists: Recorded in November 2006 as part of NaSoAlMo, this one builds on the Language Masterisms of Spirit Duplicator, the pop sounds of years past, and the wankatoristic sounds of Wankatorium.
• Spirit Duplicator: Here is where the focus shifts to a more Language-Master-centric sound--magnetic peals, the pursuit of memory, repetition. Recorded in a brief few weeks before a Celesteville/Yuma Nora tour, this one is definitely in the running for favorite Celesteville album in many people's eyes (including my own...)
• Malmo 3": Recorded in a church in Malmo, Nebraska, full of optimism, rototiller sounds, echoey acoustics, real songs about silly topics, this is perhaps the easiest place to jump into the Celesteville sound.
• Vast and Sad: The newest Celesteville live album, both rocking and extremely uncomfortable. I had to get it out of my system.
• A House on Stilts trilogy, consisting of the following:
  
  • Purest Blue Light: Upwards of half an hour of Eastern-tinged omphaloskeptic mayhem live on KBOO, this is a record that you need to hear at least once, although it may be overkill to play it more than once. Make sure that one listening is in the dark, and make sure that you are feeling kind of desperate. Tons of references to Tualatin, OR.
  • Lingua Ignota: The difficult album recorded just after returning to Oregon. Some moments of transcendental pop beauty, some moments of my heart falling out through my feet and clattering. Like throwing a handful of seeds onto your garden, but you're not sure if the seeds are geraniums or cockleburrs.
  • Sing Like Birds: The triumphant return to form, recorded with amazing Bellevue, WA-based band luv(sic). Sweet jangly pop, some gnarled moments but they fit right in. This is the album I play for my coworkers and my parents and one of Tape Mountain's finest moments thus far.
• Kohoutek: The belabored result of my lost last years in California.  It was going to be on Blackbean & Placenta but it got too old and we had to put it out to pasture on the Tape Mountain.
• Unconsumed: 7" on Tape Mountain.  Nicely-recorded semi-pop songs served up on a lathe-cut. Rereleased as a CD-R, attempting to keep the same packaging scheme.
• Invisible Tape on Unread Recordings of Omaha, Nebraska.  Wobbly lost songs served up on a bed of hiss.

Compilations etc.

• "Black is the Color of My True Love's Mail", original 12-string version, on As Yet No Title cassette on Unread.
• "White Shoulders" on Hard on the Eyes, Easy on the Ears comp CD on Blackbean.
• "Away in a Manger", a scary version on It's a Blackbean Christmas 12" on Blackbean.
• "Appear to Be" on some Blackbean CD or other.
• "24 Lines about 24 Lines" on Granted Passage cassettes.

Celesteville has been around for about ten years or so; before that (and contemporaneously to Celesteville), I've been in many, many other bands, almost all of which labored in complete obscurity. The short list: Gang Wizard, the Minor Thirds, Yuma Nora, Minmae, Bronwyn, the Taken Girls, Yak Ampersand, Yak Brigade, Meringue (PA), Accident on Jamboree, the Cruise Missiles Named Bob, the Winchester Geese, Lobstora, Deteste, Harold and the Purple Crayons, Thermos(R) Xerox(R), Mujahedin, Gastric Bovine, the Dimmesdales, Digitus Impudicus, the Hallmonsters, Reserve Puppy Team, and there are many more that I'm sure I'm forgetting. Oh, and I, um, was definitely never a part of the Raunchy Young Lepers, uh, yeah.

Manifesto

1. Down with cool!
2. Down with practice!
3. Up with inept attempts at breakdancing!
4. Up with ineptness in general!
5. The smell of manual typewriters!
6. Robots made out of tin cans and old calculators!
7. The future!
8. Trees!
9. Take only the music that you need for it is a limited resource!
10. Up with sitting in dark rooms lit only by the moon through skylights!
11. Up with the lost things you thought you'd never find!
12. All these things, we want:  Eventually!