Balrogs by Super Famicom

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In 2018, I had been sitting on a lot of songs for a long time, and I wanted to record them really well. A very daunting prospect, considering the lack of external encouragement I felt I'd been receiving to record new music. So instead of recording old, smart songs, I decided to write a bunch of new stuff without putting much thought into it. Often a piece of work isn't improved by puttig extra time and thought into it. Balrogs turned out to be, possibly, by my best-sounding Super Famicom album thusfar, and the playing on it's fairly tight, considering how it was very much thrown together. It was finished in 2019, but I had some complications with getting it released on tape. I didn't want to release it myself, because I wanted to have some form of extra help in promoting my release, and getting it heard. Also, I was hoping to collect a little more external encouragement for recording my next album. That didn't work out, so I released the tape myself.

FAQ

Q: Why do you still make tapes?
A: I like the things I create to have a physical form of some kind, something that can't be erased if I change my mind about some little detail. I like to collect things my friends have made, like tapes and books. I like having a home for those things. So I make tapes, not a lot because I don't sell a lot. If PJ Records is a business, it's not the kind of business that makes products for a profit.

Q: Why do you have a blog?
Because I want to practice writing for readers. I don't have very high standards with the words I write for just myself.

Q: Will PJ Records release my awesome tape?
A: No. This isn't that kind of label. However, I like to do splits, and I have a lot of ideas for fake bands that I could do for a split tape with your awesome music project.

Q: Will you review my album/thing?
A: Probably if you ask nicely. I don't trust authority, so I don't want you to trust that I know what's good and what's bad. Instead of writing Reviews, I like to think I'm writing Reports, like Book Reports.

Q: Why do some of your new tapes cost $10?
A: In the 1990s when a new album was released on cassette, the store would charge $10. 30 years later, most new goods have more than doubled in cost. There was once a saying 'If it ain't cheap, it ain't punk'. But physical releases used to need to be cheaper, for the sake of accessibility. That's not the case anymore. Some of my tapes cost less because they are old and taking up space.

Q: What if I have a question that isn't listed here?
A: Feel free to use the comment section.

3 Shirt Agenda by Civilized Worm

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In 2018, Porunga was slated to be without a vocalist and on a haitus from doing shows, and I couldn't very well be on a haitus from playing shows. My friend Danny McKinley was a fan of Porunga and said we inspired him to play guitar in his own heavy project, and I offered to play drums, and we got Mitch Duncan to play bass. I had a lot of band name ideas for this group, like The Schwartz and The Gods of Jesus. For a while, we were going to be called Ranglefant, but settled on Civilized Worm. We are to The Melvins what Hatebreed are to The Misfits, maybe not. However, I would call this music sludge. These 8 songs were recorded in my basement in 2019.

Self-Titled by Porunga

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In 2016 I was asked to play drums in a doom metal project with my friends Tommy and Jeremy. In 2017 we played a few shows and I did some vocals. In 2018, we got our friend Liv to do vocals, and we recorded this tape in my basement. It got a lot of good reviews, comparing us to great bands like Cirith Ungol, Candlemass, and Mercyful Fate. Since then, we've gotten our friend Anna to replace Liv on vocals, and once the world normalizes a bit more, we're going to get our next tape recorded.

Heart in Squalor by Glatisant

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I recorded this in 2018 at my house in Bloomington. It's my 2nd solo black metal album. On Metal Archives they call it an ep, but this tape is nearly 40 minutes long. I packaged the tapes in kraft paper boxes, but I might switch them over to plastic. Diamond Famicom isn't a very metal name, so I ditched it in favor of Glatisant. It must be a lucky name, because the European label, Depressive Illusions Records, put out their own version of this tape.

PJ Baby's Tour CD

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A lot of songwriters start with a solo project, and then they get a band, a band of people who are all better musicians than the songwriter of what had been a solo project. When the band breaks up, so does the solo project. I never wanted that to happen with Super Famicom, even though I had a lot of recorded songs, with carefully written parts for many instruments. So I tried to start a band named after me. We were a three piece, and I got the guys to sort of play my parts. We needed a 2nd guitarist, but I was having a hard enough time getting my two most t rusted friends to try and play the music how I wrote it. The tour cd had some the songs we played live. Other tracks were for a very long album I was recording, but never released. There was nothing I loved more than writing and recording music. It was the proof that I wasn't a slacker, and that I had in fact worked just as hard on my music as anyone could work on anything. But I don't have the power of fame or fortune to get qualified people to play my music. So the band didn't work out. After all, I didn't want to let anyone else play on my albums. Such a thing would detrimentally slow my roll.

Getting Colder by Thunderhoof

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This is the 2nd album I made with Thunderhoof, and I think turned out better than the first one. Once again, it was recorded in my storage unit, and has that 'recorded in a storage unit' sound. The songs on this one are even darker and more aggressive than on By the Flames. For this tape, we sprung for the professionally printed j-cards with the jewel cases. The coloring on my old computer monitor was pretty bad, and you can tell because of the color difference between the paper and the background on the album cover. So it may not look as pro as you might expect from a band like Thunderhoof, but that's okay. Often the pros are boring. The drawing on the cover was done by Brittany Drennan, and I think it looks awesome. Definitely worth purchasing!

As A Human by Super Famicom

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With at least as much effort as my last album, I recorded another tape in 2014. For that year, I had moved into a little house on Lovett street where I had the smallest room, so made sense for me to spend as much time as possible in the storage unit. With As a Human, I tried to write the darkest, smartest songs of my career. I even used a thesaurus for the lyrics, which might have been a bad idea. My vocal parts were extremely hard to sing, so I used a program called Melodyne to correct my notes, like on a pop album. I don't think it made my vocals sound better, by any means. So I made them somewhat quiet and highly compressed, to carry a melody like an instrument instead of a focal point. I think As a Human has some of my sickest jams. My friend Jake Brown played drums in the next storage unit over, and put out this tape on his label, Computer Club Records.