Chad VanGaalen Preps Side Project, Black Mold, for Public Viewing

Chad VanGaalen is tall, Canadian, and strange. A fervent devotee of home-recording, the Calgary-based carrot-top is fond of assembling instruments from society's refuse, building self-styled sound-machines to his hand-made song-forms. Last year, he issued the rather-fine Soft Airplane, his third album for the Sub Pop empire. He also produced the debut self-titled set for Women, fellow dwellers of Stampede City, whose rag-tag lo-fi rock tuneage VanGaalen captured on various fuzzy ghetto-blasters and archaic tape-machines.

Now, VanGaalen is set to release his more experimental home-recording experiments under the name Black Mold. His debut Black Mold LP, bizarrely titled Snow Blindness is Crazy Antz, will be released on VanGaalen's hometown hipster imprint, Flemish Eye, on August 11. Released on CD and double-LP (two slabs of brown wax!), the set will come with download codes for a couple of hours(!) of bonus improvisatory instrumentalism.

Flemish Eye describes the album as a "unique auditory soundscape, strewn with musique concrète pastiches, creative use of circuit bending and manipulation... reworking the tradition of modular synthesizer pioneers such as Wendy Carlos." Fans of VanGaalen's bruised folk-songs and husky croon consider themselves duly warned. Those in search of home-fried, hand-built electronic bleeps and circuit-frying synth adventure, be excited.

Snow Blindness is Crazy Antz Track List:
1. “Metal Spider Webs”
2. “Dr. Snouth”
3. “Uke Puke”
4. “Toxic Lake”
5. “Tetra Pack Heads”
6. “Rotten Walls”
7. “Memes”
8. “F**k Ebay”
9. “Wet Ferns”
10. “Smoking Rat S**t”
11. “Barn Swallow Vs SK-1”
12. “Gummed Desk”
13. “Virtual Prison”
14. “No Dream Nation”
15. “Pristine Boobles”
16. “Snow Blindness is Crystal Antz”
17. “Left Behind By the Digital Ships”
18. “Swimming to Food”
19. “Finally Someone Invented A Teleporter!”

• Interview: Chad VanGaalen
• Interview: Women