THE GOSPELS OF THE GASH - 11.21.11

ANNIHILVS POWER ELECTRONIX presents

APEX FEST IV - drones+death

featuring

NYODENE D
(oppressively tense pe/darkambient/deathindustrial)
www.nyodened.bandcamp.com

REQUIEM
(ultra-brutarian ambient doom from david graham of HUMAN QUENA ORCHESTRA)
www.requiem2872.bandcamp.com

PLANNING FOR BURIAL
(plaintive shoegaze-tinted drone/post-metal)
www.planningforburial.bandcamp.com

YOU.
(obstinate beat-driven minimal synth/coldwave)
www.myspace.com/treverchrisshow

THE VOMIT ARSONIST
(unrelentingly miserable pe/deathindustrial)
www.thevomitarsonist.wordpress.com

DECIMUS
(minimal analog industrial noise from pat murano of MALKUTH)
www.decimus.bandcamp.com

STATIQBLOOM
(experimental ambient/industrial noise from fade kainer of BATILLUS)
www.myspace.com/statiqbloom

PIGLIKE
(droning ambient electronics from montana masback of TOURNAMENT)
www.piglike.bandcamp.com

SUNDAY DECEMBER 4, 2011
DOORS 5PM • $10
SAINT VITUS BAR
1120 MANHATTAN AVE • BKLN, NY

MORE INFO TO COME


Tonight, i received a message from a person in the multiple capacities of concerned friend, fellow power electrician, and irritated customer. this person wished to express to me his support and agitation regarding the long delay in the receipt of items he ordered several months ago. in his message, he offered examples of how i am risking excoriation on online forums and an overall loss of credibility as a reliable outlet for music. he added that martin bladh of IRM had been surprised to learn of the existence of the tshirts i produced in 2010, which i know to be a ludicrous assertion, being that said shirts were produced with his explicit blessing.

it is true that in many ways, i have fallen short of my goals for annihilvs. it is true that, during the past 14 years since i founded this label, there have been numerous periods during which the machinations of my daily life have held me back from following through on a variety of obligations related to these activities. i make no secret of these facts.

just prior to receiving this message, i'd posted the following on the annihilvs facebook page:

"Listen up, you sonsofbitches,
I will be prepping the majority of remaining pending orders over the forthcoming holiday weekend, and everything i can possibly ship will be sent off by the first weekend of december. If not, i will kill myself and nobody will get a fucking thing.
Thank you for your patience and continued support."

the following is an excerpt from my response to this person:

"...i've been doing what i do in one form or another for more than 14 years now, and i don't feel obligated to explain myself further than i have. i've not a speck of concern for what the peanut gallery of the internet has to say about the matter. i will still be doing what i do long after the internet has outlived its current incarnation. as chris from sickness once stressed to me, the internet is not "real" and those who spend the majority of their time there are of little concern. if the ntt "fans" on last.fm are any indication of the kinds of infantile losers who populate the internet, i've got very little to worry about. let them roar their loudest, i'll still be here when their voices go hoarse and silent.

obviously, i am aware that this is and has been an untenable scenario, however it's irrelevant to attempt to go into the minutiae which has led to where i now stand.

for every one person who complains about this situation, there are five who have been with me from the beginning and understand completely where i am and don't feel the need to complain. think about exactly what it is you're complaining about. there are far worse things in the world than waiting for something to show up in the mail, particularly since you can rest in the knowledge that it WILL show up in the mail, at some point. it's not as though i don't think about this, it's something of which i am constantly concerned, and irritated, but here i am. i myself have been ordering merchandise directly from artists for many, many years, and if the items take time to arrive, i understand that there are circumstances behind this.

i could probably count on one hand the number of times i've written to an artist to complain outright about an undelivered item, and i know of only one instance where i've filed a paypal dispute, for a limited tshirt which cost me $45 from a belgian artist. for fuck's sake, i ordered an "antichrist" shirt directly from lars von trier's production company, which cost me more than $30 with the conversion from euro, and i've still never received it. i'm not excusing my own actions with these examples, merely reiterating the fact that there are certainly worse things in the world than having to wait for a package in the mail.

it's also irrelevant to compare my situation to that of cold meat's "loss of credibility," which was due in large part to the dissolution of roger's marriage, which spanned decades and impacted his business directly because his wife was part of that business. his depression became unmanageable and this so-called loss of credibility is the result. so be it, i'm sure he's got plenty of other things with which to concern himself, and he's been doing what he does long enough that the "power of the internet" is merely ancillary.

as for martin, he's been well aware of the existence of the shirts, and i know full well that i have been remiss in providing artist copies, not just to him, but to a few other individuals. this is between myself and those individuals, and frankly it's none of your business.

have you ever heard of lsd organisation? frozen empire media? possessive blindfold recordings? hive records? culture shock magazine? permission magazine?

i've known dozens of people during the last 14 years who have fallen by the wayside, people who've had to fold their bands, publications, and labels for this reason or that, while i've continued to endure, through my own personal struggles; determined that the same will not happen to me, because i do what i do from a NEED to do it. however, that doesn't mean that i am immune from the pressures of living in this particular time, and i am subject to both internal and external circumstances, which have brought me to this point.

in closing, this discussion is made further irrelevant by the fact that within the coming weeks, there will no longer be any reason for this discussion to have happened at all.

satisfaction is the death of desire.


thank you for your continued patience and support."

THE GOSPELS OF THE GASH - 11.07.11

Greetings from Hell.
Yes, it's been ages since i posted an update, and yes i know many of you are more than frustrated by my lack of communication, especially in regards to overdue orders. i've recently received quite a few messages regarding this, including one this morning which asked, "what is wrong with you?" i hope that the following will explain precisely that.

I have been, as is always the case, struggling to come up for air from the depths of depression for the past six months. that's as frankly as i can say it. several weeks ago, possibly more than a month ago, i announced that i was packing and shipping several orders. with a bit of help, the packing part got done, at least some of it. i was then promised additional help, which never came. then i got sick and tried very hard to make it through the week at work, having to leave after a few hours each day and spending the rest of my time in bed. then i kept planning to get back into packing and shipping, but with each week that passed, i found it more and more difficult to follow through on much of anything. the following week, my mother, who was diagnosed with lymphoma last year, was having some health issues and my attention was focussed on what might come from that. we're still waiting on test results to determine exactly what's going on.

In my last post, i stated that i was fortunate enough to have art to turn to in these moments of despair, but lately i've been up against a wall, creatively, and i have once again found myself thinking about suicide on an almost constant basis, as i was prior to and during the summer months. again, i'm being as frank as i can. each time i have attempted to move forward, i've gotten bogged down in an emotional and mental quagmire. it seems that in spite of my general disdain for humans, i still allow myself to be tricked into thinking certain of them are worthwhile, and end up being disappointed by them over and over.

This past weekend, sparked by an aberrant rush of motivation, i had intended to put all the effort i could into moving ahead with preparing as many orders as possible, however this plan was derailed by — finally — an actual happy event: the birth of my best friend's daughter.

I have already begun packing orders, so i will try to ship as many as i can get out next weekend. following that, i will make efforts toward completing several in-progress releases so that these can also be shipped. by the end of november, i will have posted the last batch of preorders for the year 2011, and by the end of the year, i will be prepared to start working on a shitload of new material that has unfortunately been allowed to fall by the wayside. i need to do this because it's all i have. i managed to make some small progress with some audio work on sunday morning, though it wasn't as far as i'd hoped to get.

To those who have been waiting patiently, and even to those who have been less than patient, i sincerely apologise for the delay. as my disclaimer says, the operations of this endeavour are subject to many pitfalls, and this primarily refers to my lifelong battle with depression. although i have a lot of amazing projects in the works, i find that i generally live life with nothing to which i can look forward. it often becomes necessary for me to retreat inward so that i can protect myself from the real and imagined elements that cause me grief. the circumstances of my life, my job, where i live, and most saliently, the way i am treated by those who profess to care about me, are all far from where i need them to be in order to feel the most remote sense of contentment. there are those who would say, "life is what you make of it," and to those people, i would respond: go fuck yourself.

i wake up every day and wish that i had not. that is my life.


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