Drainolith

Drainolith

Drainolith's Montreal

Celluloid Lunch

***On The Electric Hearse (2020) Drainolith time-travelled through various phases of gentrification in the Saint-Henri neighbourhood of Montreal to pay homage to a bygone era, distilling it’s essence out of time. With Drainolith’s Montreal both spatial & historic scope have broadened for a stranger & sparser psychic cartography. Opening with a rendition of les objets mutantes a 2010 poem by the mysterious Cassie Cornette, Moskos sets the scene of this record as exploration of the titular city’s terrain vague. I write from a public standing desk beneath a hardwood awning where the bike path ends & metaverse offices stand. When Electric Hearse was recorded this location was still an ambiguous dirt and gravel pit where free impromptu dance classes took place on a makeshift wood floor. A well manicured and overpopulated nursery now grows where weeds once wrought their chaotic & resilient networks. The piano that bridges these two incarnations of “guerilla park” now sits with a lock and chain over its keyboard cover. This is the best I can describe the state of Montreal’s terrain vague at the time of this release.Following the plaintive notebook synth wailing which closes side 1 we’re introduced to the no music crew “they can’t hear music, they only hear words” in Alex’s own. Chilling stuff. The sounds of spray paint cans & interstellar radio tones crinkle in the background.Separating the sci-fi sprawl of the album’s first part and the b-boy bouillabaisse of it’s second are Bourbs the street and Bourbs the guy “two...

Drainolith

Macbeth

She Sells Records

***Perhaps best known for his guitar playing in the Montreal noise-rock band AIDS Wolf, Alex Moskos has been producing records under the name Drainolith since 1999. He has released countless cassettes, CDRs & 7" records on various labels culminating in two full length albums: Fighting (2012) on Spectrum Spools and Hysteria (2015) on NNA Tapes.More recently Moskos has performed and recorded alongside Max Eilbacher (Horse Lords) and Duncan Moore as SEF III, and with Nate Young, John Olson and Pulitzer Prize winning composer Raven Chacon as The Difficult Messages Band. He has also played alongside Neil Hagerty (Royal Trux), Charles Balas and Nate Young in Dan’l Boon (Drag City). Moskos is an amateur historian and works in community radio at CKUT 90.3FM—Montreal’s oldest freeform radio station. He lives in Hochelaga, an east end neighborhood of Montreal with artist Jessica Mensch and Boots The Cat.Macbeth was initially intended as a double LP. Though now whittled down to under thirty minutes it somehow remains both epic and kaleidoscopic. It is by turns dissonant, comedic and elevating. Moskos uses poetry and song to recount the lives of Montreal’s many wayward souls, the uncelebrated history of its street life and personalities, addiction, and the tension of maintaining an inner life while living in the metropolis, all set to a backdrop of electronics, raw guitar playing, and samples.Macbeth features Moskos’ own production work alongside two tracks produced by the mysterious Collections Crew (who have played on more legendary Montreal records than you would believe). An...