Phil Elverum and his longtime friend and collaborator Arrington de Dionyso are releasing a new album. The Washington artists will share Giant Opening Mouth on the Ground on August 8 via P.W. Elverum & Sun. Watch a video for the new song “Sand Made From the Old Bank” and a trailer for the album below.
The new music video comes with two all-caps directives: “WATCH IN ULTRA HD IF YOU CAN” and “VOLUME ON MAXIMUM.”
As will as its digital release, Giant Opening Mouth on the Ground will be pressed onto 1,000 vinyl LPs. The album artwork was made by J. Pogue.
Though this is its first release, the 33-minute album dates back more than a decade. It was recorded in 2014, and the story stretches back even further.
“Around 2010 I made this self-playing loud sculpture by connecting a giant gong (48″) to a giant subwoofer (2×18″) via a contact mic, a crossover, and a powerful amplifier,” Elverum explained on Substack. “I don’t do much besides find the frequency where it wants to resonate infinitely and let it go. I like the opportunity to walk away from ‘playing a show’ while still playing it, and I was delighted at the weird stuff it does on its own.”
Elverum had his gong sculpture set up while recording Sauna, and he connected with Arrington de Dionyso on May 13, 2014, while the latter musician was in Anacortes, Washington. Together, at the Unknown, they spent the afternoon improvising, with Elverum adjusting a knob on his sculpture and de Dionyso walking around the space, playing contrabass clarinet and lalove, and using his voice.
The recordings sat untouched for a decade until Elverum recovered them in December 2024 and split them into the six songs of Giant Opening Mouth on the Ground. After mixing and editing, the album was mastered by JJ Golden in Ventura, California.
Elverum and de Dionyso go back decades. The latter appeared on the 1998 Microphones compilation Tests. Later, Elverum included his cover of “Mystery Language,” originally by de Dionyso’s band Old Time Relijun, on the 2010 Mount Eerie compilation Song Islands, Vol. 2. Perhaps most importantly, we can all thank Arrington de Dionyso for uploading Elverum’s karaoke performance of Lil Wayne and T-Pain’s “Got Money” to YouTube.
Remarkably, Giant Opening Mouth on the Ground will mark the first album that Phil Elverum has released under his given name. His latest album as Mount Eerie, Night Palace, came out last year, and he revived the Microphones, in 2020, for the album Microphones in 2020.
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