CHARITY BINGES

Vinyl LP pressing. Downtown Phoenix can be a strange and dark place, which is where the Dressing Room is located, the DIY performance space/studio where Slow Moses, an eclectic collective of four or five (give or take) musicians led by Wally Boudway and Ross Andrews, recorded their Jealous Butcher Records debut Charity Binge. It was a permeable space, with frequent comers and goers, folks wandering in from the nearby mental ward to listen to the strange sounds bouncing out. "It was an open door policy," Boudway explains. Things quickly went south. Gear got busted and stolen, people got confused-things broke down - "demolition in motion," Boudway says - and the album manages to reflect some of that process, gloriously beat up and curiously joyful. Like Califone, which counts Boudway and guitarist Ross Andrews among it's amorphous roster, Charity Binge is the result of thorough deconstruction and assemblage: guitars and vocals smooshed and pulled, rhythm sections twisted and manipulated, the makeshift recording studio serving as an instrument- it becomes a mirror to those sweaty Dressing Room nights: filled with transient characters, blurry images, and constant, fitful creativity.