Finally Greg and I have something nearly finished, well, close enough to give a taste (about 3 minutes worth) of anyway. The track is called 'A Bomb In That Suitcase' and it will be the opening piece on the upcoming album 'Presences of Absences'... hope you enjoy it!

It's pretty early in the morning but the coffee is kicking in and it seems to be motivating me enough to write. Recent developments include:

The note I wrote to our supporters in Europe and United Kingdom:

To Whom It May Concern;
It is with great regret that Asva has decided to cancel our upcoming April and May tour dates. Over the last several months we've watched the itinerary grow and our excitement at the prospect of playing so many cities to which we had never traveled grew in kind. We watched the forums and saw the progression of the tour as YOU worked to promote our show(s), even before we had been formally informed of the dates. Regrettably we, Asva as a band, as individuals, and our label Southern Records have been hit very hard in the recent economic downturn and we've found it impossible to secure our passage to Europe. Our last ditch efforts directed at third parties (including relatives) as well have been fruitless... simply put; we're out of money.
Its our hope that in the future you will continue to be interested enough in Asva's music to offer and lend us your support.
Best,
Stuart Dahlquist

We left Prague the next morning; getting out of the city was easier than getting in... we took a large, grimy freeway that narrowed down to two lanes through hilly countryside. In a couple of hours we were in Germany and on our way to the last show on our short tour: CMT transmediale in Berlin. This is the show that caused all this music, the change in band members, the total rebuilding of Asva (obviously there is much more to this aspect of the story) and these are the people who were kind enough to fly us over in the first place.
Berlin is amazing, one of my favorite places to visit... somehow Berlin now strikes me as Paris must have struck the expatriates who flocked there after WW1. It seems like the entire city has the aura of new thought coursing throughout it, open minds passionate for advancement in all aspects of what makes a city thrive. I feel comfortable in Berlin, more so than any major city I've ever visited.
CMT was held in a huge club called 'Maria' and after a little bit of fucking around we figured out where the front door is and unloaded our gear into a huge main room. Stephen O'Malley was there with his band Aethenor (who positively smoked!) getting ready for soundcheck; always good to see him especially early on in the day. My friend Andreas showed up as well with some additional gear I had asked for- he's the only European I know who drives an American car, a Buick I think. It's a good thing; he had so much stuff jammed in there and it would have been impossible in a fucking Opel. We soundchecked (which went well) and went across the street to our hotel rooms for a little rest before the show. I couldn't sleep so I walked back to the club and caught Lichens (GREAT! From Chicago) and Mono (A hard act to follow... incredible!), got a few beers and ate something in the green room. Next up was Attila who did a solo voice performance which was stunning. He has got so much versatility and sings with power; he does not let anyone off the hook easily- once he commits to an idea he wrings it out and fully exposes every shred hidden within. I loved it.
Asva was next and what a way to end our tour! Big crowd of people and even though our music was considerably more pedestrian than the other things that were happening on that stage we seemed to not only hold the audience but win them over. We felt great and had a lot of fun up there and I suppose it showed...
Back to the hotel around 4:30AM for a 6AM wake up call. Rick, Dave, and I got our bags into the lobby, into a cab, and found ourselves in New Jersey about eight hours later. I'm only now sleeping as I should, I think we all had some catching up to do.

So we woke up in Paris... I was up early and walked next door to a cafe, sat outside in the dark and drank my espresso and smoked watching people. Mostly older ladies with little dogs and oddly dyed hair, fur coats, gloves. It was nice. We had to get up early; our show was in Dudingen, a small town in Switzerland about 7 hours away. I finished and went to wake the others up.
We all met downstairs in the lobby for the hotel breakfast- I had written a post card and walked around the corner to the post office to send it, came back and found Rick and Dave had decided to walk around a little. An hour went by. Greg, Andrew, and I split up and went looking for them while Serge watched our stuff out front of the hotel. We were now going to be very late. Finally they showed up; there is a very old beautiful grave yard near the hotel that I looked at for a few minutes. As it turns out Jim Morrison is somewhere in there and the fellows were looking for his grave. We left Paris in a hurry.
We headed North and drove out of the farmland and into the mountains. Somewhere up there in the fog we stopped to gas up and Greg and I switched so he began driving. Five minutes later the van started acting up and died just as we pulled off the highway and into a toll area. WTF! I called Ollie from Rebelvans (who we rented from) and told him that there was a problem, it couldn't be my fault, and he said to call Mercedes. Mercedes said they would send along a mechanic ASAP so we waited in the cold and looked under the hood. Nothing seemed wrong until I pulled the gas cap and sniffed... I had filled up with petrol instead of diesel! Operator error. Not covered by insurance. Crap. So we waited. I called Mercedes again, told them the problem, and over the phone they quoted 2000 Euro to get things up and running. We were hosed... the show in Switzerland was key to us being able to pay for everything and it looked like we wouldn't make it, even our next show in Prague was now up in the air. Mercedes showed up with a flat bed tow truck that I wouldn't put my car on much less a huge van with 2000 pounds of gear stowed inside. The driver managed to get the van up there, the tow bed riding literally 1" above the rear wheels and the front end of the truck barely touched the pavement it was so over loaded. Two of us rode in the cab and four of us rode in the van to the shop which was about 45 minutes away through some of the most beautiful scenery I've ever been in the midst of... wine country. That sexy Brit in the GPS kept telling us to turn around...
We made it to the shop safely and Mercedes went to work immediately; this would NEVER happen in the US. Not only did they fix my fuckup, they did it for 250 Euro (I guess things weren't as bad as the operator thought they would be) and had us back on the road in about 45 minutes. Now thats good service.
We called the club 'Bad Bonn' and let them know we would be late arrival, only time for a line check. As luck would have it Serge had ran sound there many times and knew the room and PA well. It was a long drive, Greg at the wheel, but we made it in good time, early enough we were able to catch the opening band 'Sum Of R'. They were great and really nice guys to boot as after we played I had a chance to speak with them, trade music, etc. Bad Bonn ended up being the best show of the tour I think; sometimes a little stress helps a band own itself, own its music. We certainly did on this night. Andrew had his sights set on a gal who liked to chew bubble gum while she drank beer. I wouldn't try it but I think he did... When in Rome.

So we woke up in Diksmuide, ate a good breakfast provided by 4AD and headed for Paris. Its a short drive, about five hours, through mostly very flat farmland. The drive was pretty uneventful; we saw some geese and a few sheep. We got diesel. Yup, thats about it. Then we got to Paris. As usual the English Lady in the GPS took us right to the door of the club- La Maroquinerie- (so we saw nothing of the grand city) where we were met by the promoter, a very friendly fellow called Vince. He got a few people together to help us get our gear into the venue and then took me aside to discuss things like meals, hotel, set times and the dreaded 105db sound limit. Now this is kind of fucked; a squarely hit snare drum will go over that mark and Asva has played at 140db wide open, peaking at 172. He couldn't be bought (I tried) and Serge convinced us he could make it work even with everything at literally half volume. Sound check went ok and we had a little time to kill before dinner so we walked around and looked at Paris. My guess is we weren't in the nicest part; lots of cheap clothing shops, bakeries, bars... it reminded me of downtown LA a little bit but for the rain and the cathedral nearby. What I wanted was a real French dinner and we had one coming. We got back to the club which had a nice place to eat right upstairs. The waitress asked if we wanted tuna... "hell yes! Tuna in France must be great!". Well it was tuna helper I think, on a cold bed of noodles. Kind of disappointing. I ate a little and went out for a cigarette.
People started showing up soon after our 'dinner', my old bandmate Stephen and another friend Rodolphe were there and some friends of Daves as well. Great seeing those guys for sure! When it was finally time to play it was a little strange playing quieter than our usual rehearsal volume but after a while it felt ok, pretty good actually, and we managed to pull it off in spite of our tuna helper dinner.
Things got messy afterward; Stephen and his buddies got really loaded and I got lost walking to our hotel. I've got to leave it at that, anymore explanation and somebody might stick a knife in me yet... Good Times!
More of this drivel later.

So we made it home... a fast tour and a hell of a lot of driving, five shows in five different countries! We drove ourselves which was really easy, even in Prague where our GPS was replaced with a map (I'd never used GPS; it was both amazing and really disconcerting. You never actually know where you are, just follow the instructions and you end up at the clubs front door. I was never much for trusting new technology but that hot English voice saying 'Turn left after 50 meters' was pretty hard to refuse) and by driving ourselves we saved about 500 Euro; very worthwhile!
We landed in Amsterdam and after about an hour of hanging around in the airport our friend Gijs (who supplied our gear, Thank You) showed up in our Mercedes Sprinter Van, grabbed the five of us and our soundman Serge who was waiting very nearby as well. Serge is funny, has an amazing ear for live sound, is always in the moment, speaks three or four languages very well, and wears cowboy boots. He will be going out with us in April and May as well and we all feel very good about his contribution to what we're doing. Gijs drove us to the gear storage, we loaded up the van and got started. First we drove to Gent...
Gent is about 100km's away from our first show in Diksmuide at the 4AD. It seemed like a good place to spend the night and get rested up for the following day. My friend Peter from White Heat magazine lives nearby and wanted to do an interview so it made good sense. We checked into our hotel, the sleaziest Formula1 I've ever seen. I was actually hit up for money by someone who works there! Peter picked us up that evening and we went out to dinner (kick ass Indian food) then a bar, kind of infamous for its Jazz music but I'll be damned if I can remember the name of it. Peter, Greg, and I left the other fellows there at the bar to drink and check out the scene a bit while the three of us did the interview. The questions were great and instead of the normal rushed interview it became a discussion about art, irrationality, right vs wrong... if it ever comes out in print it should be pretty interesting. Thanks to Jeroen for providing his comfortable apartment and a few beers for us. We walked back to the bar and found the others thoroughly enjoying themselves; Rick and Serge pretty loaded, Dave on his way as well, Andrew trying as he did throughout the tour to get laid... Greg and Dave ended up getting pretty sick at the hotel. Good times!
The next morning we went to the 4AD. This club is located well of the beaten path in a relatively small farming town. I'm not really sure how they do it; lots of people showed up and they must have driven for the most part for some distance in order to get there. Good turn out and we played very well... this is always good, things starting off on a positive note as they did. It would be difficult for that not to happen at 4AD; Great venue, great PA, good food, helpful staff who want you to be at your best. This is much different than US clubs I'm afraid, European clubs go out of their way to give you every opportunity to sound good, to feel good, no matter your stature. In the end I was the only one who stayed up at the bar drinking. Six of those Trappist Ales into it I stumbled out the door and into our apartment for my one good long sleep of the tour.
Reading back I realize this is pretty dull writing but I've been awake since 3AM. I'll come back to this and describe Paris, home of the 105db noise limit when I'm a little more awake.

Thanks to Page for these great photos!
http://secondpagephotos.wordpress.com/2009/01/10/asva/

Thank you TRIPWIRE!

Best Records Of 2008, 13 - Asva
What You Don't Know is Frontier
Southern Records
Release Date: 05.05.08
Seemingly coming out of nowhere, G. Stuart Dahlquist and assorted cronies (including Mr. Bungle's Trey Spruance) have crafted an album of barren sonic vistas and harsh, funereal bliss [Asva]. What You Don't Know is Frontier is filled with slow-rolling doom dirges that soothe and storm in equal measure, and despite being almost completely unheralded, it remains an ugly-beautiful masterwork built on the resonant pillars of echoes, silence, patience and grace. –Jason Jackowiak

Hope to see you all at King Cobra in Seattle or Someday Lounge in Portland this weekend...

This very kind article is featured in the January 2009 issue of Frieze Magazine

Frances Morgan
Publisher of Plan B and a regular contributor to Terrorizer and New Statesman. She is also a musician and a curator of live music.

Surveying a year in underground music can feel a little like observing organisms multiplying under a microscope – fascinating, yet exhausting to catalogue. There is pressure to note the niche developments yet also to acknowledge innovation in the mainstream, and there is always a taxonomic imperative to name fresh genres and hybrids.

It is easy to forget the power of one record's ability to still the critical babble and exist in a space of its own making. In April 2008, the Seattle-based metal band Asva released their second full-length album, What You Don't Know Is Frontier, which served as a reminder of both this fact and of how there is an emotional force that extreme sound can wield when it is conceptually thorough and deeply felt. Consisting of four long tracks that work extended, doomy riffs into experimental soundscapes and vocals (by singer Holly Johnson) drawn from Javanese traditional music, What You Don't Know Is Frontier fits well alongside other releases said to redraw metal's boundaries. The album was released by Southern Records, which in recent years, along with Southern Lord, has played host to impressive work from paradigmatic metal bands such as Earth, Om and Sunn O))). Yet it is Asva's album I come back to with compulsive regularity, each time uncovering new detail and complexity beneath the monolithic foundations of G. Stuart Dahlquist's bass and B.R.A.D.'s drums.

As both Dahlquist and B.R.A.D. had been members of cult 1990s' doom band Burning Witch (alongside Sunn O)))'s Stephen O'Malley), previous form dictated that the two would produce music that plumbed depths and scraped edges both tonally and emotionally. But What You Don't Know Is Frontier contains a different kind of depth: the sonic illusion of vast, dark space that could be said to represent the frontier of the title. It is not abject extremism, nor the harsh, elegant architecture of previous album Futurists Against the Ocean: it has an emotional depth that suggests the infinite terrain of human loss. What You Don't Know Is Frontier was, in fact, written in the wake of bereavement: Dahlquist lost his brother Michael in 2005. The bassist explains: 'It seemed to me that the best thing I could do was write something that related directly to my love and respect for him […] an homage. I'm not sure that What You Don't Know Is Frontier didn't become more homage to my personal grief in the end.'

The record's emotional affect lies in the intersection of Dahlquist's understated use of melodic forms and attention to texture – the acknowledgement of noise, feedback realized by the guitarist Trey Spruance and, most crucially, producer Randall Dunn (who also worked with Earth on their album The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull). Dunn is responsible for the volcanic rumbles, oceanic roars and earthy hums that provide a distant but essential environment for the music to inhabit, as well as the album's impressive realization of space – an effect achieved by the careful layering and panning of multiple tracks. Dunn, says Dahlquist, 'has an extraordinary talent for looking ahead in the studio. Many of those details can seem superfluous at the time, but when it comes to mix-down, frequently that's the tone or texture the track needed.'

'Communicating atmosphere and feeling is where things get difficult because I don't consider the two as being the same thing. Atmosphere is the physical space a recording evokes. Feeling is the step beyond atmosphere. It's the subliminal workings – things that aren't seen or heard but are sensed as coming from beyond the work – that create feeling, and feeling can get lost if there's too much adornment.'

The presence of Hammond organ throughout the album seems, at times, a direct response to over-complication – stately drones and contemplative melodies that reference devotional music more than rock. Says Dahlquist, 'A lot of ideas become much better after trying to play the part on the keyboard; the bass and guitar parts become more controlled, and the music becomes less abrupt, less jagged.'

The use of organ is also illustrative of the process by which doom metal's conventions have been expanded – shifting the focus away from the guitar, while still channelling the weight and power integral to the form. Critical appreciation of the genre has, in the last five or so years, increased: yet often it has been tinged with a morbid concentration on metal's theatrical props and esotericism – explored, maybe exploited, most for the art music audience by Sunn O))), whose use of black metal aesthetics comes close to Performance art. Less acknowledged, now that the critical limelight has faded somewhat, is the achievement of bands such as Asva in approaching metal with the methodology of modern composition and using 'heaviness' as a redemptive quality rather than an abject one – in itself a neat détournement of doom metal's initial motivations.

It does not feel right to position Asva's What You Don't Know Is Frontier within a zeitgeist, for its power seems to have no fixed temporal point other than its own. For that very reason, it is 2008's most compelling record in the field of extreme music.

Daniel Trilling and Frances Morgan