Late last year AWESOME VISTAS dropped an inconspicuous LP by Brian Mumford's Dragging an Ox Through Water.  Chris Johanson, the Awesome Vistas label boss, has a policy of putting out super plush, limited vinyl with absolutely zero fanfare.  Locally, Brian got nothing but enthusiastic press for his first LP, but it seemed like a lot of the rest of the world just didn't notice.  It's always hard locating the stellar records these days in the heaps of shit that keep spewing from all corners of the globe.  Still, Brian won a #2 most slept on release of 2008 for FADER as well as being one of the top six Portland albums of 2008 in the Portland Mercury placing him in league with a bunch of indie rock hotshots including Grouper, Au and a bunch of bands I've never heard.

Rewind back to my return to Portland in 2006, Brian was EVERYWHERE.  He played noise shows, folk shows, punk shows, and at each gig, he managed to hold his own and gain a healthy chunk of converts.  His music is straight out of all conceivable American garages and appeals to fans of all of those possible traditions.  The bulk of the tracks on "Tropic of Phenomenon" are based in structured song.  You'll catch a lot of junk acoustic coupled with a real velvety voice that seem to pull from Arthur Russell's country rock era and also touches on Mayo Thompson's "Corky's Debt to His Father."  All of the accompanying instruments and a few instrumentals on this album are realized through home built electronics that he's managed to bend to his will.  The chirping, sweeping oscillators and noise boxes he's built manage to remind me of more recent Nerve Net Noise or Ursula Bogner.  I've seen Brian pull of impressive live acrobatics going from almost purely acoustic plunking to bent, ultra rough synth actions without missing a step.  It's this confusion of ultra pop sensibilities while simultaneously grappling with electric x-factors and turning them musical, that inspired me to approach him about working together. 

In the Ox sound world, the noise is a musical element, and driving force of the song.  The guitar can be dropped, the melody lost to hover in the chaotic chirping of electronic creatures that is some how in tune and time with whatever he was doing on guitar. His sets can be all acoustic, or all electronic. Grouper, New Bloods, and Pulse Emitter are all artists he's managed to play with locally and totally OWN the most orthodox crowds.  On Tropic of Phenomenon, Brian demands that the listener meet him on his own grounds and follow the controlled chaos that rests on this aluminum disc.

- Pete Swanson, Freedom To Spend

Dragging an Ox through Water has played shows with Silver Apples, Earth, Michael Hurley, Jackie-O-Motherfucker, Jean-Louis Costes, Tara Jane O'Neil, Xiu Xiu, Janet Pants Dance Theatre, Final Fantasy, The Oh Sees, Katie Eastburn, Inca Ore, Calvin Johnson, The Sic Alps, Grouper, Ida, The Dead Science, Little Claw, Fred Thomas, Thao and the Get Down Stay Down, Horsefeathers, Panther, Argumentix, Tall Firs, The Enablers, Scott Kelly (Neurosis), Radar Bros., Castanets, Jazzfinger, and tons more