#tylerdamon

It feels wasteful to do much set up with this one so I won’t: THIS RECORD IS A MONSTER. Tashi Dorji and Tyler Damon set their guitar and drums on fire in the four tracks here - during only their third (!) time playing together - in a brutally mind-exploding way, and the only thing I regret about happily letting them explode my mind is that it’s left me grasping for more accurate words to describe the pulse-pulverizing brilliance of Both Will Escape.

But because I’m a person of my word (at least when it comes to words), I’ll try some more: there’s something frighteningly blood-quickening about Dorji and Damon’s nuclear energy on Both Will Escape, such that the entire 43 minutes seems to glow with radiation and spark with high voltage. The sounds of Dorji’s earth-clearing guitar and Damon’s fist-pumping kit rocket out of the speakers in ways that feel dangerously uncontrolled, like someone playing with a plugged-in toaster over a filled-up bathtub. I’m hesitant to make comparisons because the specific language Dorji and Damon have quickly developed deserves to be savored and digested on its own, but suffice to say that there’s a rarified upper echelon of guitar/drum annihilation that for me is topped by the detonating 90′s work of Rudolph Grey and Rashied Ali, and Both Will Escape squarely belongs in that league.

By the way, as skull-crushing as this album is, It’s not all blare. There are points that sound, in an objective sense, calm and restrained – and yet there’s not even a nanosecond where you’ll feel relaxed. More likely, you’ll be ready to drop off the edge of your seat like it’s a cliff high above the ocean. At least for me, the free-fall excitement of Both Will Escape is a trip I’ll forever dive headfirst into.

– Marc Masters

TASHI DORJI & TYLER DAMON on Both Will Escape

Tashi: So this recording is from our third time playing together; it was a perfect setting at Patrick’s (Kukucka) basement studio in Asheville...I don’t think we talked about what we wanted to do, either.

Tyler: Yeah, no discussion, we just went for it and it was a wonderful day. Lots of great conversation but virtually nothing said about the music.

Tashi: I think our sound has become quite different since then, wouldn’t you say?

Tyler: I’m not sure if our sound has changed much to my ears but our recent shows have tended toward the ‘heavier’ side of things...that’s present on the LP, too, though. I’ve thought a lot about that and considered what the more jarring end of our playing may be motivated by and where it comes from...what does it mean to you?

Tashi: I think there are definitely more moments of space on the LP and it might be partly because we were still figuring each other out sonically. I think the live shows are when our ideas are actualized, I think; I don’t know, maybe it’s the immediacy, the danger of not knowing…? I think listening to a lot of His Hero Is Gone in my early punk rock days is responsible for my heavy playing, haha…

Tyler: I see it as evolving in time with our friendship as well - bonding over His Hero Is Gone, et al on the last tour probably shook our mutual punk vibe loose, haha. I know we share a lot of similar views socially/politically and playing this music seems to have helped alleviate some of the inner tension regarding the daily horror witnessed online and in real life. We're not overtly political in our presentation...there's no suggested reading list in the LP like you might find in a HHIG record but I felt that those feelings had somehow ended up coming across on the album. I do remember discussing our mutual support and admiration of Black Lives Matter during a break at the session...maybe that's where the political association comes from in my mind? I don't know. Tension/release! A friend recently heard "Both Will Escape" and shared with me that while he felt that while the music carries a certain intensity, your guitar playing, even in the more 'harsh' moments, made him think of flowers blooming instead of bombs exploding. That made me happy...placing a flower in the barrel of a gun, I suppose. That's the hippie vibe of Bloomington and Asheville creeping up on us! It’s a decidedly harsh toke, though, haha.