- Source: Dead Air Fresheners
The Dead Air Fresheners are a Portland, Oregon-based experimental and post-punk musical group with a somewhat fluctuating membership. They have been described by Portland's KPSU as "A long-time mainstay of the Experimental Rock Scene." They count Sun Ra, John Cage, Sonic Youth, Sun City Girls, and Jandek as influences.
Band history
The band formed around 1996. They claim to have first formed "in a dilapidated beachfront mansion on the Eld Inlet in Thurston County, Washington" (Eld Inlet is the site of The Evergreen State College); in any event, they first performed publicly in 1997 at Olympia, Washington's annual Olympia Experimental Music Festival.
Their instrumentation has been known to include Moog synthesizer, and tape samples, drums, ambient vocals, distorted feedback, electric guitar, computers and digital toys, and digeridoo. The Dead Air Fresheners state in interviews and on their My Space page that they do not play improvised music despite frequent perceptions to the contrary. Rather they use a process of Chance Music composition influenced by the work of John Cage (also called Indeterminate music) and their Myspace page provides several examples of scores from past performances.
They have done several live radio performances; portions of their hour-long session with poet Chuck Swaim on KEXP's "Sonarchy Radio" were included as songs in the self-released album Pleasure Is Where All Labor Ends and two performances on KPSU are on that station's archives.
= Band members
=The band has consisted of members based in Bellingham, Olympia, Seattle, Salem, and Portland. The three core members are located in St. Johns, Portland. Because of their penchant for anonymity, masks, and costumes, there is no definitive list of the group's membership. Nonetheless, several publications covering either the experimental music scene or entertainment in the Pacific Northwest have reported them to have included at various times members of such bands as Olympia's now defunct Karp, Austin, Texas' ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Bellingham, Washington's Noggin, and Portland, Oregon's Nice Nice.
In Signum magazine, writer Tiffany Lee Brown implies strongly that Olympia Experimental Music Festival founder Jim McAdams is one of the anonymous musicians in the group. Matt Driscoll of the Weekly Volcano (South Puget Sound) states this outright. Emily Pothast in The Wire states that Ricardo Wang, host of the "What's this Called?" program on Freeform Portland Radio is a member. This was confirmed in a 2023 St. Johns Review article. Wang's two sons are also considered regular members.
McAdams's wife, Deanne Rowley McAdams, died 3 August 2011. Her obituary in The Olympian indicates that she was a member of the group, and that she had also played with Texas and Pacific Northwest bands Plain Jane, [...And You Will Know Us By the] Trail of Dead, Pro-Ex Marauders, and Cherry 2000, and that she had a band of her own called Leopards.
Discography
I Try To Show My Love, Plastic Duck Records, 1999
Verses of Echo, Bastard Customer, and Pleasure Is Where All Labor Ends, with poet Chuck Swaim, (self-released) 2001–2003
An Ulcer is a String of Pearls, 2006, Kill Pop Tarts (CDR-ep)
a Slip Inside the Quiet Room, 2007, Icky Recordings
Separated by Commas, 2010, Dubuque Strange Music Society (collaborations with various other artists; CDR)
Extension Cord Symphony 9, (Postmoderncore, 2016)
Fast Radio Bursts, Personal Archives (Dubuque, Iowa, 8 August 2016)
Evidence of Superstructures II (Postmoderncore, 2017)
Brother Calls (Postmoderncore, 2019)
Come On Get Happy (Kill Pop Tarts, 2021)
Here’s to Letting Go, Bob Bucko Jr. with the Dead Air Fresheners (Kill Pop Tarts, 2021)
A Collection of Drone & Noise Sea Shanties (Personal Archives, 2021)
The Last Asteroid (Kill Pop Tarts, 2022)
tape hiss is the blow job of lo-fi (Kill Pop Tarts, 2022)
Noise + Air = Noir, Noisepoet Nobody & Dead Air Fresheners (Kill Pop Tarts 2022)
Unfriended (Personal Archives 2022)
Tales from the Elusive Hangar (Kill Pop Tarts 2023)
Also included in compilations:
Infamous Polywogs Vol. 1?, Inlet Recordings, 2002
Infamous Polywogs Vol. 2?, Kill Pop Tarts, 2004
Reek of Influence, Icky Recordings, 2006
"Five Minutes in Dog Years" track on compilation Winter Copulation 2016 (SDM-032), SadoDaMascus Records (Portland, Oregon, 2016)
Source for discography (except as noted):
Notes
References
Baxter, Jason (22 September 2010), "Thursday, Sept. 30: Dead Air Fresheners", Weekly Volcano, South Puget Sound, retrieved 28 September 2010.
Blanchard, Josh (11–17 January 2007), "We, Anonymous: The Secret History of Dead Air Fresheners", Portland Mercury, retrieved 17 September 2007.
Brown, Tiffany Lee (2007), "Bleepy-Bloopy Noises: Creepy-crawly creatures emerge for the Olympia Experimental Music Festival", Signum magazine, Issue, vol. 12, archived from the original on 15 November 2007, retrieved 17 September 2007.
Driscoll, Matt (2008), "7 on 7 and others: EXPERIMENTAL dead air fresheners", Weekly Volcano, South Puget Sound, archived from the original on 13 November 2023, retrieved 2 February 2008.
Portland Mercury staff (2007), band page for Dead Air Fresheners, retrieved 17 September 2007.
External links
Dead Air Fresheners MySpace page
Recordings by Dead Air Fresheners on the KPSU archives.
KMLP archive including a 2002 performance by the Dead Air Fresheners. Archived on the Internet Archive February 10, 2006.
Dead Air Fresheners on Hollow Earth Radio, Seattle, Washington, October 13, 2014
Dead Air Fresheners on Midvalley Mutations with host Austin Rich, KMUZ, Salem Oregon, May 17, 2019,
Dead Air Fresheners on Top Dollar Hour with Tunacan Jones, radionope.com, Spokane, Washington, June 21, 2019
Dead Air Fresheners on Backyard Deep Dive with host Eric Muhs, KBFG, Seattle, Washington February 2019.