Aokigahara by X-Bax

X-Bax is the (mostly) solo experimental outlet of Phil Dole. Launched in 2004 after a weekend spent immersed in a borrowed copy of Earth 2, Phil was determined to strip down & explore ideas he’d been thinking about for years, but had no other place to explore them. The first recording, In Search Of The Brown Note, was seen as an experiment in frequency & texture culminating in a 32-minute sludgy guitar drone. The notoriety of Brown Note may have had as much to do with its scatological cross-marketing as with the audio itself, but it caught the attention of a number of guitar players in Chicago who were in the process of forming a massive “drone collective” called Chord. Phil was asked to participate & over time the collective evolved into a 5-piece power-ambient group that has since recorded for Neurot Recordings, Important Records, & others. Dole relocated to Los Angeles in 2010, but still works with Chord & has spent more time recording & performing as X-Bax as well as sporadic work as part of the duo Dots. The entire X-Bax back-catalog (excluding Aokigahara) is slated for a single repackaged release in 2015 called Box.
The Aokigahara EP was recorded specifically for Silber Records’ 5in5 series. X-Bax recordings are always initiated by an overlying constraint, & doing 5 tracks with a total running time of 5 minutes provided the framework. Thematically, the tracks draw their inspiration from cutting edge Japanese cinema & the grey area between longing & death. The EP’s title refers to a forest near Mt. Fuji that is a suicide destination for the Japanese. The pieces vary from mind-melting drones (“Gozu The Killer”) to angular aggression (“Yakuza”). Drone on & bang your head.

Silber has been getting drone, experimental, & other fiercely independent music out to the masses since 1996.

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