From: http://amplitude-phonography.blogspot.com/2009/04/paint-copter.html

Damnatio Memoriae
This album is all the more touching because of the passing of Johnithin Christ one of the co-founder's of Savage Jaw Records. This album is testament to his good tastes. This album is dark, broody & beautiful. Andy Brown the main man behind this project is a veteran in the basement of the underground rock movement, harkening all the way back to his participation in Jessamine. This band appeared on the land mark Drunken Fish compilation, Harmony of the Spheres, an inestimably important album.

On this album, Andy is in good company. Besides the other members of Dave Tollefson & Jason Frank, the trippy magical duo of Monte & Mae (of Rollerball & Moodring fame) also grace this album. The album opens with “Rarefied Air”, which features swirling bass sounds & keyboard wails that channels the spirit of Kraut Rock. It is as fleeting as it is heavy. “Times New Roman” is still dour, even with the sounds of an accordion breaking the facade. The vocals come in with the lyric, “It is my last chance, give me one more year.” Mae harmonizes beautifully with Andy. It is as heart- breaking as it is beautiful. Suspira is a very different song. While I would not call it upbeat, there is a very tangible drive to this song. Mae sings, “In the Canyon” The wood wind instrument winds itself through snake like bass lines & drum beats. At one point the woodwind nearly goes into a free jazz freak out but still manages to ride within the waves of the rhythm of the song.

“Sacred Geometry” features heavily delayed vocals, keys, drums & a guitar letting out squeals of feedback. Mae's vocals are at their most ethereal and meld well with Andy's slightly monotone vocalizations. “Remote Viewing” features Mae in her full on lounge singer mode, if said lounge was on the banks of the river Styx. It goes into a nice tunnel of delay and feedback with the drummer keeping things moving until the abrupt end. “Cymatics” is a much more abstract piece. A thudding digital keyboard and Andy's swirling vocals create a thick fog that hangs in the air until a keyboard line starts leading the way out of this delightful morass. “Determinacy” is the most pop-y song off the album so far. It feels like dub caught in molasses, which is a surprisingly pleasant sensation. Listeners might catch themselves bobbing their heads or tapping their toes to this one.

“Wizard” is still dubby feeling, but this time it is entirely menacing. The blown out guitars ride over distorted drum loops. A squealing electronic sound swirls in the feedback, while plaintive notes from a wood wind is played. The ominous beginning resolves itself in a somewhat gauzey feeling ending. It almost sounds like The Cure at their earliest and most abstract. The song once again gathers a head of steam and starts pummeling forward. Andy's buried vocals tunnel through the mix. The last song & my favorite has a Spaceman 3 style vibe. Andy sings about getting “Back to Nature” With each new project Andy manages to explore new territory, whether it be the stoner/drone of Jessamine, the funk with Fontenelle, to the Baroque dark cabaret of this endeavor. Since it is such a change of pace, it might take a few listens for listeners to acclimate to these sounds, but once they do they will be justly rewarded.
(Dan Cohoon)

Savage Jaw Records co-founder and longtime musician Johnithin Christ died the other day due to pneumonia and related issues with brain cancer.

Thanks for believing in us, JC.

From http://www.terrascope.co.uk/Reviews/Rumbles_December08.htm ------- From the space-rock heartlands of Portland, Oregon come two albums by Paint And Copter, a trio of sonic alchemists with many years of underground music between them. The first release, "Damnatio Memoriae," is a groove-laden melting pot of guitars, pattering drums, synths and various acoustic instruments (oboe, harmonica), with vocals dropping in and out as the tracks evolve. It's like a slow, gothic Hidria Spacefolk, or a tripped-out Transient Waves. Dark and melancholic is the mood, and the theme. Occasional female vocals are provided by Mae Starr, and these bring an alternative feel, particularly on "Remote Viewing," which sounds a bit like a darker and rockier Portishead. Elsewhere, "Determinacy" bounces along in funk Hawkwind style. Variety of tone and sonic originality make this an enjoyable release. Next up is "Semper En Obscurus," the follow-up to "Damnatio Memoriae," a release collecting new work and two remixes. As before, the mood is slow and reverberant, as seven cuts of bleak rocktronica skulk by. Opener "Always In The Dark" is a highlight, with strange, droning vocals, while later "Bad Intentions," with its terrific descending chord sequence, and the intense "Don't Ask Any Questions" grip the listener in macabre fashion. "Ghost Squadron" is what The Doors might have sounded like had they survived into the early 'eighties; a very good track, this, but too short! Great handmade artwork complements the release. Fans of Massive Attack yearning for more rock and less technology might like this band, while devotees of the earlier Porcupine Tree sound would also appreciate them.

From Willamette Week...

The music of Paint and Copter has a decidedly amorphous quality, a slippery, formless sound akin to watching a splash of half and half warp into long white ribbons in a cup of black coffee. It's that same nebulousness that allows guitarist Dave Tollefson to admit, with a straight face, "We're a jam band."

The tracks on the Portland trio's latest album of ambient psychedelia, Damnatio Memoriae, were the result of long improvisation sessions between Tollefson and multi-instrumentalists Andy Brown and Jason Frank, edited down into song form after the fact. "The arrangement happens in the computer," says Brown (a former member of Portland experimental pop acts Jessamine and Fontanelle), "but 80 percent of our recorded output is first takes."

The strategy worked brilliantly on tracks like the dubbed-out "Determinacy" and the gorgeously trippy "Times New Roman." In keeping with the free-form structure, Paint and Copter's live performances often expand on the groundwork the trio laid down in Brown's home studio. "It's pretty jazzlike in that way," says Brown. "You get the basic structure and you play around in it."

P and C finds itself altering the songs as a reaction to both the space in which it is playing and the films that Frank creates for the band to play against (which can be anything from heavily distorted Vietnam War footage to homemade secret-agent movies). "These days, I'm sampling a lot of religious footage," Frank says, "dispensationalist preachers who say the end times are coming."

Onstage, the door of influence swings between the audio and visual inspirations. P&C finds as much inspiration in current events as it does in its musical interests, Brown says: "Half our band practice is spent with us going, 'You hear about this?' or, 'You hear about that?'"

Tollefson agrees: "It's always fun to see who can bring in the story that's the most shocking," noting the story most on their minds lately was the recent beheading of a man on a Greyhound bus by a fellow passenger. "I listened to the last practice we did after we talked about that," remembers Brown, "and the jam was totally dark and evil sounding. We definitely react to what's going on."

http://localcut.wweek.com/?p=3343