The Golden Sores

Experimental / Psychedelic / Other

Chicago, IL

About

Buy our new album, "A Peaceable Kingdom" at Bloodlust!
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Chicago-based ecstatic drone duo The Golden Sores began as an exploratory collaboration between software engineer, visual artist, and composer Steve Fors (unseen|unknown, United Steelworkers Union, blstr) and schoolteacher, label proprietor, and experimental musician Chris Miller (Number None, Th’ Exceptional Child, REBIS) in 2007.

Bound by a shared love of red wine, the Kranky aesthetic, and the eclectic recordings of off-beat Christian Rock visionaries Daniel Amos, the two began life as a musical entity as the “pop-drone” Flux Bouquet. After several well-received live shows, a CD-R EP entitled first, and a scrapped full-length, Miller and Fors began to indulge their more experimental impulses, giving birth to The Golden Sores. Utilizing a combination of electric and lap steel guitar, salvaged thrift store keyboards, pedals (both broken and boutique), obscure analogue synthesizers, and other obsolete noise-making esoterica, Fors and Miller have forged deep into the realms of drone—continuing to pursue the perfect marriage of harsh and beautiful sounds, simple melodies and song structures through spontaneous and ecstatic improvisation. Thus far, their efforts have produced one full-length CD-R, Ashdod to Ekron, released in a limited edition of 100 copies on Fors’ Drone Cowboy label to broad acclaim.
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Reviews of Ashdod to Ekron:
We reviewed a record by a drone combo called Number None a while back. We didn't know too much about it or them, but what we did know was that the sound those guys produced was totally up our alley. Definitely drone based, but all over the map, wrapping various drones around all sorts of varied sonic elements, somehow creating a more cohesive whole than would seem possible.

So now we have the debut from this Chicago duo, called Golden Sores, which just so happens to feature one of the guys from Number None, and in the Golden Sores, the focus is much more defined, and the two craft an incredible collection of heavy buzzing dronemusic. Each track here a sprawling ever expanding black cloud of sound, from grinding low end rumbles, to effulgent sun dappled shimmer, some tracks take the murk of Sunn 0))) but spread it out and blur it into something more soothing and tranquil, others channel the urdrone rituals of Sunroof! through their own dirt-smeared sonic filter. Some of the tracks slip into an almost late period Earth-like gospel Americana, but rendered in shades of grey and in smeared streaks of soft focus shimmer, and still others are swirling effects drenched expanses of outer space exploration.

The closing track gets downright nasty, adding a layer of crumbling distortion to a drone that sound like it was assembled from chanted voices, the two elements wrestling against one another until finally finding stasis and allowing a lilting melody to surface amidst the grind and buzz.

Totally gorgeous. If you like any of the above mentioned bands, or outfits like Tunnels, Svarte Greiner, Eternal Tapestry, Pussygutt, Half Makeshift, and other minimal cd-r dronelords, the Golden Sores will be your new favorite affliction.--Aquarius Records
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Capturing both the spirit of summer and the just-in-time glory of home-recording and CDr technologies, 'Ashdod To Ekron' by The Golden Sores was recorded late last June, mixed in July, and released in August. Unfortunately, capturing the glory of the blogosphere and amateur music criticism, it has sat on my shelf ever since. Nevertheless, the sweltering glint of this Vaseline recording deposits the thick air of a Chicago summer without restricting the sonic excursions to an equally-seasonal relevance; what more, given the medieval Christian imagery of the cover and titles, the lazy escapism of a summer session is well placed, transporting just enough of the moment into a mythical drone epic in five parts. With a chorus of high frequency buzz and hazy guitar leads, "Arphaxad" walks backward to a pre-guitar space, allowing itself to be eaten in a wall of white noise like transport. We emerge on the other side to the two-part "Harlots of Ashkelon" - all tracks are skillfully, seamlessly blended together - a deep quavering bolsters the passing of washes like freight-trains in shape and weight. These interjections, while never breaking the rhythmic currency of the deep-wide drone, grow larger and larger, near-missing a collision of Stars of the Lid alien science and the mechanistic canvases of Machinefabriek. Totaling 25 minutes in length, these two tracks alone could fill a modest disc, as they construct a story from the heavy repression of lent to the sonorous riot of carnival located in the second half of part two: like singing knives, a chorus of sharp organ stabs kick drunkenly between each other, phasing a Riley-like dervish with the steady foundational drone. "Ur" hums an overcast cool in remarkably dynamic organ melody trapped in an icy resonance, the tonal peaks glinting like silver sunlight off the clouded bulk of the drone. Out of this, the sine-wave of "Gorgon Blues" cuts like a jet stream, a busy engine of hi-mid-lo swarms separated into distinct strata of unwavering intensity to the very end. What happened to the historical fiction I don't know, but I like where we ended up. CDr comes in a slim jewel case with thick, richly colored insert. Hand-numbered to 100 copies. Understated, esoteric, and very excellent.--AnimalPsi
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Drone is at the core of my heart. I think life is only lived fully when one embraces the drone. Music with more drone is better than music with less. And going on that premise, The Golden Sores is one of the best bands out there.

Ashdod To Ekron is an hour long densely layered drone epic that travels to all the right places and consistently takes your breath away. The instruments used are meaningless in this situation. It could be guitar, it could be a board of electronics, it could be coming from a hallucinating monk with visions of angels, or perhaps it’s a field recording of a haunted forest. The point is, it could be anything or everything. The sounds created on Ashdod are entirely unique to The Golden Sores.

Drone records are a dime a dozen these days, I know. But The Golden Sores are special, partially because they were able to create this majestic masterpiece in one take. Ashdod To Ekron is a live album (”recorded in the basement”) and the music goes from shimmering tide pools to dank caverns. That, my friends, is a serious accomplishment. The Golden Sores, you get a gold star.--Justin Snow, diskant.net
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This ensemble has an "I wish I had thought of that" name: culled from an obscure corner of the Bible, 1 Samuel 6:[various sub paragraphs]. Depending on which version of the Bible you read - (and I prefer the fire and brimstone bombast of the King James), golden sores are translated to emerods, hemorrhoids, tumors etc. These golden gores are part of a ritual offering of appeasement accompanying the Ark of Jehovah and the trials and tribulations of Israel and the Philistines and how the Ark was lost to the Philistines (1 Samuel 4).

The album, Ashdod to Ekron. Achingly wonderful drones. Touching the same place as early period Popol Vuh, but bringing a sensibility of their own to bear--The Golden Sores' music moves at a ponderous, considered pace. A passage in a John Le Carre book I have just read gives a flavor of the space this music inhabits: "...the lucid unencompassable majesty of the mountains drew me upward." This music for me is a journey through landscapes assisted by and confounded in turn by capricious divine forces, with the biblical battles as a metaphor lurking in the background. Where redemption is a possibility, but not a certainty, but vengeance and punishment for transgression is always a threat. The symbolism in the name of the ensemble/album is not literally evident in the music, it is implicit in the architecture of the sound. Building, cacophonous, moving. As moving as a Victorian hymn, or a storm under trees. That it makes pictures in my mind is a reason for me to listen to it again and again.--Landschaft

Recordings of Live Performances

November 25, 2008 on WNUR

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