The good folks at Jack Wolak’s Rare Necessities are now selling Atlantic Drone’s “A Vivified Sugar Cube Explains the Universe” 12” LP.

Check Them Out!

“A VIVIFIED SUGAR CUBE EXPLAINS THE UNIVERSE”
on CIRCADIA RECORDS (Chicago)

October 30th @ 8pm at Metropolis Underground

615 S. Main St., N. Syracuse, NY 13211

Atlantic Drone will be performing a set of improvised music inspired by “A Vivified Sugar Cube Explains the Universe”. Performers will includeSteven Cerio (drms and perc), Scott Oliver (gtrs and harmonica), Bryan Kieser (alto, tenor sax and homemade horns), Mike ((P)) (gtrs), Jethro Deluxe (bass), Georgette Nicolaides (violin), Mike Burton (drms), Greg Pier (gtr) and others TBA.

ATLANTIC DRONE was founded in upstate New York by Steven Cerio, who for decades has designed graphics and posters for such diverse acts as King Crimson, Moe, Electric Frankenstein, Ministry, Les Claypool, White Zombie, Negativland, Widespread Panic, Yonder Mountain String Band, Monster Magnet, Echo & The Bunnymen and Man or Astroman? among others. Perhaps Cerio is best known for his wealth of animation and graphics for the blinkless stare of The Residents, which were recently inducted into New York’s Museum of Modern Art but as a musician, he has left a legacy of ambitious percussion on now classic recordings with: Dee Dee Ramone’s Sprocket, Railroad Jerk and Drunktank and has also performed live with Jad Fair (Half Japanese), Ron Asheton (Stooges), and free jazz legends William Parker and Jemeel Moondoc.

ATLANTIC DRONE has achieved a synthesis of historical proportions with a cast that includes: Dave Rick (Yo La Tengo, Bongwater, King Missle, Phantom Tollbooth), Wm Berger (Love, Uncle Wiggily, Fly Ashtray), Michael Duane (Dustdevils), Laure Barges (Dragibus), Sal Canzonieri (Electric Frankenstein, The Thing) and Jim Gibson (Wicked King Wicker, Toothfairy, Unholy Swill), Scott Oliver (Deciduous vs. Conifer, Autumn in Halifax, Oliver/Reeg, Torus, Words For Snow), Jethro Deluxe (Wallmen), Greg Pier (Mandate Of Heaven), Mike ((P)) (Beauty Scene Outlaws, Words For Snow), Jason Martin (Evolution Revolution, Brown Cuts Neighbors) Bryan Kieser (Brown Cuts Neighbors), Georgette Nicolaides, and Emily Church.


This first release by Circadia Records is an edition of 500 (250 white and 250 black) on 180g vinyl. Each record also includes a signed and numbered, 11” x 11”, 3 color screen print and comes in a heavy weight, clear vinyl outer sleeve.

Pre-order package 1
This pre-order package includes an original 10” x 10” ink drawing by Steven Cerio that he completed for this release (The sample images are an example and are the first 4 completed for pre-orders. Each drawing for all pre-orders will be different.)

Pre-order package 2
This pre-order package includes an original 10” x 10” ink drawing by Steven Cerio that he completed for this release (The sample images are an example and are the first 4 completed for pre-orders. Each drawing for all pre-orders will be different.) An Atlantic Drone t-shirt in one of three colors is also included in this package.

“Like King Crimson dropping a shitload of acid and blasting off into the space-prog cosmos.”—Jerry Kranitz, Aural Innovations

Set for release on October 30, 2009.

Lush, tumbling & potently acidic space trips featuring Steven Cerio with members and contributors from: Railroad Jerk, Dee Dee Ramone’s Sproket, Bongwater, Yo La Tengo, Devendra Banhart, Dust Devils, Drunktank, Wicked King Wicker, Arthur Lee, King Missile, Electric Frankenstein, His Name is Alive, Uncle Wiggily, Bunny Brains, Dragibus and Toothfairy.

This first release by Circadia Records is an edition of 500 (250 white and 250 black) on 180g vinyl. Each record also includes a signed and numbered, 11” x 11”, 3 color screen print and comes in a heavy weight, clear vinyl outer sleeve.

Pre-order package 1

This pre-order package includes an original 10” x 10” ink drawing by Steven Cerio that he completed for this release (The sample images are an example and are the first 4 completed for pre-orders. Each drawing for all pre-orders will be different.)

Pre-order package 2

This pre-order package includes an original 10” x 10” ink drawing by Steven Cerio that he completed for this release (The sample images are an example and are the first 4 completed for pre-orders. Each drawing for all pre-orders will be different.) An Atlantic Drone t-shirt in one of three colors is also included in this package.

The Atlantic Drone LP is finally in.  Just got a mess of boxes from Pirates Press on Friday with 250 on black vinyl and 250 on white.  A few more pieces to get together for the release, which is set for the end of this month.  For example, this killer, Steven Cerio, 3 color screen print that’s being printed at Monolith Press in an edition of 500 to be included with the album.

How does Atlantic Drone compare to past psychedelic bands?

I didn’t set out to comment or meditate on any past tradition but I like to think we may have been inspired by some of the same meditative spirits or psychedelic intentions as Pharoah Sanders, early Soft Machine, Can, Faust, or Captain Beefheart.

Atlantic Drone isn’t  retro fueled, I don’t do rock or blues beats and we are light years from being a jam band so “neo” psychedelic doesn’t work as a pigeonhole for us. “Post Psychedelic” is more appropriate since we create psychedelic music without commenting on the Sixties with our approach. What we do is between soundscape and song, between improv and structure…so what are we? I’m not sure myself and I’m proud of that. I’m not even sure where on the timeline we’re talking to you from. Do you?

A friend of mine called it “improg” …I like that.

As a drummer and an artist, how important is rhythm in writing
improvisational music?

I see my music as time decorated with occurrence. I see popular radio music as stories wallpapered with time. It’s very easy to disturb a person’s perception of music if they were raised on Pop. They were taught to think in what Captain Beefheart calls “the Momma heartbeat,” which is throbs of twos, fours, eights and twelves. If you give them seventeen beats per measure it will irritate them. Most people have become rhythmically challenged by any new approach after ingesting giant doses of dance and rock n roll. They demand the pleasure of easy tapping. If someone sat in a room without musical accompaniment and tapped an evenly spaced, even tempo, repetitive beat for the length of the average pop song you would think they had gone insane. If they perform that action along with the newest jingle by Britney Spears,or any other marginally talented group of business minded cut out dolls, how is that any less disturbing? Repetitive action as a substitute for ideas is moronic. Loops sound like the end of creation to me. I find them sad. They sound like the death of ideas. I grew up admiring musicianship, not studio trickery and machines.

What about harmony in a composition?

I like frequencies to compete with each other; it lessens tension though you would imagine it would do exactly the opposite. I like the focus to fade in and out. I like guitar sounds that dip in and out of the rhythm section. I wash the grit out of them and tweak them in the mixes until they fit the organism.

My approach to harmony is to use differing approaches layered on each other until a theme or passage appears from their placement. The listener can choose which line to follow. That makes the pieces dense enough for multiple listening while still retaining a bit of conventional melody.

What types of effects/sounds/instruments did you most enjoy using on this record and why?

I’m in love with using Jeff Hick’s theremin set up. He uses multiple synths and Theremins simultaneously. Sometimes Bryan Kieser runs his horn through the set up. I’ve run my trap kit through it as well and he improvises the drum mix.  Something about the way Jeff handles the rig gives the music a great sense of depth and a sonic Doppler Effect.

I generally dislike cymbal crashes. I prefer the sound of a well tuned drum. I tune mine to the specific piece we’re playing. The largest crash I use is a ten inch Wuhan since the large cymbals tend to hog frequencies. I’ve never heard a crash so beautiful it deserves to outrank a melody. They create a shimmering high pitch which isn’t really much of a miracle.

I pick instruments for texture. We used synth, drum kit, percussion,contrabass, violin, cello, guitar, bass, organ, xylophone, sitar, harmonica, theremin, voice and six varieties of brass on this latest disc.

Is it a challenge to use so many different instruments without the mix turning into mud?
The challenge with using all of these instruments is too keep some air and space in the performance. The key in the initial recording is to avoid habitual approaches by relaxing, reacting in the moment and avoiding wanky bursts of practiced virtuosity. I spend months on each tune getting all of the instruments to come to agreements with each other. I weave them in and out and under and over each other like a school of fish. Nothing is mapped out so each instrument has to earn its position organically. It’s Darwinism in action.

I noticed that vocal lyrics are minimal on these songs, what effect does that have on your songs?

Pop music uses musicians solely as soundtracks to sit the lyrics on. When a verse comes on in a radio tune you must have noticed that all musicians minimize the detail and volume of their approach. Elvis, Patsy Cline, and Brenda Lee could have played with almost anyone and the discs would have sold.

There has to be a struggle for importance, volume and clarity between every instrument and voice for any recording to be vital.  Though I often write many pages of lyrics for most songs only a small fraction make it through the editing process. I use the lyrics to introduce you to the landscape that is the instrumental. The landscape comes first, then the signposts.

Is there any specific process to your writing that helps you get to where you want to be in the song?

 Formula cannot get me there since I’ve never figured out “why” my stuff works…and I hope I never do. It isn’t a factual exercise. Our music has such a large amount of improvisation that our process demands those instinctual reactions for each piece to be successful. I’m very critical. I throw out almost ninety percent of everything I record. I can afford that luxury since I have my own studio. We have no expectations when we begin a session and I have none when I begin the mixing. Each has to be treated with its own set of rules that reveal themselves as the mixing and overdub process goes on.

 What kind of music do you find the most stimulating or inspirational?

The music that influences me most are compositions and textures that confuse me with their logic. I rarely perceive those qualities in any traditional approaches. When musicians using traditional forms occasionally vary their approach from that learned norm it is usually met with hostility when it is what the forms demand in order to move forward. If they don’t, the listener gets told the same thing over and over again until even small children get bored with the message. All the music I love can be traced back to Coltrane; he laid the tracks down and built the roads. I read some old reviews of “A Love Supreme” when it was released and was shocked! The traditionalists that have always believed that they own the intellectual right to jazz, they called his work “anti- jazz” and said he was killing it but as it turned out Coltrane, Ornette and Cecil were giving it a new life.

All of the traditional forms are symbiotic with the new interpretations. They define each other. After a form evolves out of its box and the top closes, it gets a nice place in history which benefits both forms equally. Would anyone dare to compare their own work or anyone else’s to Hank Williams, The Carter Family, Led Zeppelin or the Beatles? Never, they exist in an envied, quaint mystical place in the past whether they are still working or deceased.

What sort of state of mind/feeling would you like your listeners to get from listening to this record?  How does it make YOU feel?

I compare music to the temperament of a person’s speech. Atlantic Drone whispers in your ear but you hear only every other word. You catch a phrase or two-get a glimpse of the landscape- then build the story for yourself.  I’d like them to go somewhere that they’ve never been and feel blissed-out and energized and hypnotized by their own phenomena when it gets stirred up. Of course you can never account for where someone goes, like in any art form there is no exacting communication. Every note, image or sensation creates a different response in every person that experiences it. I can only hope that that I can cause a new connection in a brain somewhere: maybe two memories that have never met get stuck together with some synaptic super glue.

I can only know what “I” like and “I” can feel when something is “my” brand of psychedelic. I feel a bit confused, pleasantly lost, excited and very awake. This release makes me feel a sensation like moving forward on a bicycle without the bicycle. Everyone has their own triggers just like in sex. A series of fetishes: a series of notes, a guitar effect, a nice pattern, a certain word. You can’t account anyone else’s triggers but I know mine and I hope they are resonant to someone else, or I just might be drawing and recording for myself.

Sometimes I’m firing really well, not even an exhaled cloud of smoke goes up without me finding faces in it. Other days I’m in this irritating reality of reality television, banks, diseases, pick up trucks and beer drunks…..

Thought I might share a little Q&A with Steve Cerio.  It’s a lengthy piece so maybe breaking it up in chunks is a good way to approach this?

What is the idea behind Atlantic Drone?

Seems I’ve always wanted to do a prog-improv-ambient hybrid. I wanted to play with my friends in all different parts of the world and found a way. I knew that improvisation would need to be an important part of our process but we had to approach it in my own way, with written bookends and various approaches that remove the horror vacuous “wankiness” and din that is associated justly with free form. I decided to tape everything we did: catch their “births” on tape. Then I listen back and save the prettiest butterflies…..

How did you find people to collaborate with that understood your intentions?

I have had a difficult time finding musicians in our area that know music theory beyond classic rock and pop traditionalism. They either become threatened by the challenge of my prescribed approach or they revert back to more traditional approaches. My solution was to call friends of mine from New York and Europe that I know from my touring days and have them contribute. With home studios being so common nowadays we can record with people all over the planet. Lore Barges contributed from Paris, she has an amazingly twee band called Dragibus. Michael “DustDevil” Duane who was the brain behind The DustDevils recorded his overdubs in England. Sal Canzonieri (The Thing and Electric Frankenstein), Dave Rick (Yo La Tengo, King Missile, Bongwater) and Jim Gibson from Toothfairy met me out in Jersey to lay their tracks down.     

Working with seasoned experimentalists yields far better results and I don’t have to waste time babysitting. We pretend we’re performing songs we’ve already written and that seems to keep our mind on composition. We play our thoughts as best as we can and avoid any habitual approaches.  I haven’t, won’t, will not and can’t play with stereotypical rock musicians anymore. I had enough of that in my Matador records days. They can all keep their leather pants, scary skull tattoos and teen angst. Pretty is much harder to come by…..

I just want to feel “fine”, “good” and “happy” occasionally and find a way to trap it for documentation and study. Who knows, maybe I can get it to multiply in the correct environment…… I want to make a benevolent music.  

What kind of direction do you give your contributors when you create a song?

Some tracks require teaching the composition while I prefer to get most tracks on tape while the musician is hearing it for the first time… this insures freshness. They are there in the original improvisation or as close as can be arranged. 

I think it’s very important and very thrilling to get the genesis of a track on tape. You’re taping its birth. We don’t play jazz but the same thoughts and freedoms are up inside of it all. 

Wanted to share the design Steven Cerio created for the Atlantic Drone, “A Vivified Sugar Cube Explains the Universe” t-shirts.
Really excited about it. Thanks Cerio!

Reviewed by Jerry Kranitz
Atlantic Drone - s/t 
(Noiseville 2007, CD) ….

Atlantic Drone are based in upstate New York and consists of the duo of Steven Cerio and Jim Drago (plus various guests), who have released one of the best space-psych-krautrock-progressive albums of 2007. Among the highlights is “Little Miss Expanding Universe”. Simultaneously dreamy and rocking, it’s a completely mind boggling synthesis of ambient surf waves, off-kilter power percussion, metallic power chords, and a banquet of other groovy happenings. “Moth Activity” opens with potently acidic psychedelic guitars and heavy tribal drumming. But the music soon settles into a calmer groove and throughout its 8 minutes weaves a path that is calm and melodic, yet always intensely on-the-edge, even in its quietest moments. Simple yet luscious trip guitar melodies combine with trumpets and heavy organ on “For Arizona”, to create a dark, droning, stoned psychedelic march. “Mary Pickford Waking Up In A Burning Barn” is one of the most high energy space rockers of the set. Like King Crimson dropping a shitload of acid and blasting off into the space-prog cosmos. This sucker will FRY your brain! And “Sunshine On Softserve” is a psychedelic blend of deep space atmospherics, Eastern influenced ragas, wandering psych guitar solos and bits of free-jazz. Nearly 10 minutes of meditative bliss.