198: "Various Artists" // Box

Box Boots / C.C. / Snake & Remus 2006, HP Cycle

For more than 25 years the gloomy weirdo unknown folk artist who created Box has released his music from behind a veil of secrecy, changing his alias and “record label” with each recording. In 2002, Rojvi (credited to Terry) and Music Performed by the High Mass (credited to Jim Collins) trickled out into the market, distributed without fanfare on the mail order lists of record collectors Paul Major (of Endless Boogie) and Stan Denski; in 2017, a dozen lathe-cut 7” and 12” records appeared in a thrift store, all credited to different artists, each possibly the only one of its kind in existence. His music has tended to be unearthed rather than released, with the exception of 2006’s Box, which collects three LPs originally discovered separately in 2004: Boots (Boots), No Tape Outside (Snake & Remus), and Live at the Rainbows End (C.C.). Box was distributed in an edition of a few hundred by HP Cycle, a Canadian label that, while miniscule, has endured longer than the cicada’s flight enjoyed by each of the artist’s own enterprises. In this sense, it is the closest thing the artist has provided to an intentional entry point to his work—the black peak marking a dark berg beneath the waves.

Mysteries naturally draw adventurers, and I’m indebted to the Discogs user known as envious for the information above, which I’ve drawn from his blog Rabbit Run Down the Hole of a Skull (which also hosts a near-complete digital archive of the artist’s known music). I think it’s helpful to parrot his research here not only because the story is in itself interesting, but because when I post this it will create another node for other seekers to access the next layer beneath the surface. According to envious, the first of the artist’s known pseudonyms Robyn Nice, and this name has become the catchall his small following uses to refer to him. (envious also occasionally refers to Nice as the Crystal Spider, which yes, instantly made me cum.) It’s thought that in his youth Nice spent time living on an acid-drenched Louisiana artist’s community called the Compound. The Compound was led by Damien Youth, himself a somewhat enigmatic folk musician, until harassment from suspicious local police forced its dissolution. Much of Nice’s work seems to call back to the image of an idyllic community, though its frequently bitter, despairing tone suggests the posture of an Adam mourning in exile—or a Manson in the making. envious’s blog digs much more deeply into the Nice mythos than I can here—one of my dream projects after I finish this year of record reviewing is to listen through Nice’s 15-hour catalogue in its entirety.

Moving on to Box itself, we find three 12” records in plain white sleeves, each hand stamped with a title and alias. All three records have a similar structure: free form, acoustic outsider folk songs on the A sides, lengthy jams or field recordings on the flip.

The individual records are packaged in plain sleeves with labels in blue print, like the original 2004 releases.

On the self-titled Boots record, Nice’s voice hits somewhere between early Peter Gabriel and Dylan, but the lyrics are wacked out ravings. On one track he snarls about “shitcaked corpses” and raped children before proclaiming “I’m a farm” and imitating a braying donkey. On another he bellows at what sounds like the top of his lungs about “compromised smells.” His deft progressive folk-inclined guitar playing tends to follow the emotional arc of his vocals, reserved at the outset, ragged and battered by the end. The B-side (“New Earth”) is roughly five minutes of faux-tribal New Age followed by 13 of minimal synth.

On No Tape Outside by Snake & Remus, the artist sounds somewhat older, which may indicate the albums collected in Box don’t all come from the same period. At any rate, Nice is in a more pensive mood, the trancelike songs expansive and beautifully played on guitar with various minimal piano/synth/percussion accompaniments (suggesting Snake & Remus could be a duo project). In place of Boots’s misanthropic rage, No Tape Outside is shrouded in despair at failing relationships, a fallen world. The B-side is fully instrumental, sharing the autumnal feeling of the vocal tracks but skewing more psychedelic, building through passages of rippling echo to a climax like a dozen clocks having a quiet disagreement over the exact time. Unlike the other records in the set, this record has no track names stamped on the disc’s label, leaving you with few moorings. I recall certain passages of inspired playing, snatches of strange poetry (“voice from across the sea / drips red into me / says my mother was wine”), a general sensation by record’s end of doomed peace.

The outlier here is C.C’s Live at the Rainbows End, which clearly features a different (considerably more technically proficient) vocalist. Good news, it’s also weird, though it sounds less like it was recorded by the guy on the cover of Aqualung than the others. envious speculates C.C. may be another Compound personality who used the alias Chris Cologne and recorded a CD called Horn for Blackberry, Nice’s early stab at a conventional indie label. C.C. is either a Brit or affecting an accent (I think the latter), and has a gentle, sighing way with his phrasing that suits these hushed ballads in a Nick Drake-ish mode. There is some downright gorgeous fingerstyle acoustic playing on this one and more conventional musical structures, even a few refrains (though no choruses). The guitar could plausibly be played by Nice, though the technique is cleaner and less shamanic than what we hear elsewhere on Box, but even if it isn’t Live at the Rainbows End shares a certain paranoid energy that somehow marks it as a product of the same artistic camp. The B-side offers one more short romantic tune followed by “Paul’s Jennifer is Dead,” a fifteen-minute field recording of a bonfire and distant, indistinct conversation. envious once again offers an astute guess here, suggesting this may reference the nighttime bonfires where members of Youth’s Compound once communed at the end of each day.

Overall, your mileage with Box will vary depending on your yen for the wilfully obscure. My interest in a savage, disoriented record like Boots is ultimately curious (maybe even prurient), in the same way I like to collect strange postings on street poles around my city. No Tape Outside on the other hand is a genuinely entrancing avant-folk record, while Live at the Rainbows End houses a delicate collection of misty-eyed tunes forked by morbid suspicion and trembling yearning. I think both are superb in their own ways. I am haunted by my questions about Box’s provenance, but also by its contents—both of which make for a strong endorsement to new listeners attuned to similar currents in the musical underworld.

198/365

i'm watching the new Sister Wives and at one point Meri is reminiscing about how she used to be in charge of the Thanksgiving turkey every year bc Kody loved the way she made it *until* he met Robyn and then, in her words, "he just liked hers so much better" or whatever so Robyn did it from then on

and like the full weight of Meri's situation has never really hit me until I heard her say that tbh. bc I also have particular thing I make for holidays only because my husband likes it, so much so that he'll make comments the whole year about how he can't wait for it, and thinking about going from that to where Meri is now.........

like at first they were each others only special person. and then the years went by, he married 2 other women in rapid succession, and by all accounts she no longer felt very special to him but at the very least, every Thanksgiving she had the turkey. Kody loved her turkey and it was one day where she could feel like the special person again.

and then Robyn comes into the picture and she doesn't even get that any more. Like after Leon leaves, she doesn't get anything and to think that every year at the holidays she maybe had a knee jerk "oh I can't wait to make Kody some turkey" thought only to remember that only Robyn's is good enough for him now just made me tear up more than a little.

The wind whips past Robyn even faster as she plummets towards the ground, stealing the breath straight from her throat.

She barely has time to register what she’s done—

—when something—someone—slams into her from behind and strong hands grasp under her arms, yanking her out of free fall.

“Well, there goes my streak of not getting caught by the cops,” Robyn blurts, followed by a half second of panic that Winter might just drop her.

The ground is much closer, now, and somewhere behind and above them the Nevermore screams its displeasure.

Right.

Priorities.

Been updating my portfolios lately, which means these ladies have some reference slides!

To be honest, one of the things I'd really like is to have a reveal of all hpma kiddos' birthdays.

So far we only know their zodiac signs, like that Cassandra is Cancer, Daniel is Scorpio (bc of course he is),Frey twins are Gemini (bc of course they are). They do give some sort of indication as to when they were born, but I really wish we got actual dates.

crash and burn girl

ROBYN ROBYNN!! WHOO PROPOSEDDD WHO?? howw did it all go down... 🤭🤭

(honestly mikey is such a dumbasss..... he'd have a crush on you and kenchin would be the one making him realize.... smh... kenchin that makes so much sense)

he is such a small cute dumbass!!! 🤧🤏🥺 OKAY SO...

I'd say that both of us played a role on it? 🤭 Mikey knows that I hate cheesy proposals, attention of big crowds, and he just simply knows my no's and yes'es... he realized that he prefers something more intimate too, which drove him a little crazy when it came to planning the proposal. it came to a point that it's all he can think of and it finally slipped.

So while we were having Silvana (my absolute favorite filipino desert) in my favorite resort in the country, (i took him to meet my parents), he casually says, "we should serve this at our wedding."

"You wanna marry me?"

"What? No— I mean... duh, but I was gonna—..."

"Then marry me." I spoke in his behalf in the middle of his nervous breakdown.

no one got down on one knee, no one asked a question; just us being our authentic selves and offering it to each other. 🖤

(after a very long emotional speech, he remembered the Vivienne Westwood ring he's been carrying around for months and slipped it to my finger so we could get a free desert from the chef)

i want so bad to get into sea of thieves but i cant get anywhere in the damn game without somebody meaninglessly blowing up my ship when i haven't even got anything

it makes it not even fun :/

Scheduled holiday dates for Jon Robyns through July 2024!

Is there an explanation for why Robyn is wearing a Hufflepuff uniform? Or am I seeing things?

Kind of spent the morning trying not to kill myself and my friend went out and bought me Susan Sontag Illness as Metaphor so I could read it when I felt better. Got called into work so I literally cannot cry rn but oh boy do I feel like it.

My eyes is twitching BECAUSE WHO IN THE DEEP FRIED BLUE FUCK WOULD STEAL AN ENTIRE SERIES….to aim it towards South Park fan😨😭?

LIKE AT LEAST MAKE IT BTS OR SMTHN 🫤 if it was jungkook as jaemin at least i would be looking thru the plagiarism like 🥰🤭🤬 instead of ⁉️😟🤬

All red beautiful!! Beautiful blog!!

💖 Thank you! 🥰 I was going to use that other tumblr username but you were right 😭😭😭😭 That one was a no-go!

Okay so I’m halfway through (roughly) writing the dinner and I’ve decided it’s not really gonna be a slowburn but more “two idiots who are mutually pining but think the other one doesn’t like them that way even though it’s painfully obvious to everyone around them” so hopefully I’ll have it done by the weekend

hiii tumblr!!! how are the vibes

may flowers? my birthday is in may :D!