TIMES NEW VIKING "Dig Yourself" LP

My first encounter with Times New Viking was in the form of a cassingle. I found it lodged in what appeared to be a shrine to them on a street corner during our annual litter crusade. Inside the cassette’s handmade case was scrawled “This am band. Good band!” Next to that was a crude drawing of what appeared to be three people playing instruments. It smelled musty and had a real creepy, cultish vibe to it. I was intrigued. Playing the cassette I was at once taken back at the raw primitivness of the music. The organ wheezed and croaked, the drums snapped with sickness and a guitar hacked through it all like a serrated, gangrenous knife. On top of this was a frantic male/female vocal drama. It sounded like demonic incantaions or really elaborate recipes being delivered in a frantic, almost mantra-like chatter. It was unlike anything I’d heard in a long time. I needed to get to the bottom of the Times New Viking mystery. Long story short, in the following months I saw TNV perform numerous times and got to know them rather well. And yes, I have found many more shrines (and continue to find them to this day). What you have here is a collection of songs found on the various shrine cassettes. They’ve all been lovingly fucked with my Mr. Mike Rep, (the man behind the lo-fi genius of Guided By Voices’ Propeller and Get Out Of My Stations among other things) and as the old saying goes “the proof is in the pudding.” TNV successfully skirt the current homogenization of the rock press pigeonhole. Neither are they new-weird-america, nor are they new-noise-underground. I suspect Times New Viking are at the forefront of a new, yet-to-be defined movement. It’s only a matter of time though. And when that time comes I want to be there. My shrine needs a motherfuckin’ name! (Siltbreeze)