I've been frightened at a concert twice in my life. The first was in 1987 while regretting my fragile mortality in a sea of shifting humans standing on metal chairs at the Pontiac Silverdome during a U2 concert, and the time in June 2023 at Acme Records when one of the musicians, dressed up like an alien cannibalistic swamp dweller, ran off stage directly at me on his way out of the building, screaming at the top of his lungs the whole time. Outside, on the sidewalk, he kept on screaming for a minute or so.
That last moment is captured in surprisingly good fidelity on this recording, where this enigmatic and anonymous duo opened for Derek Monypeny at Acme Records.
I'm afraid I can't quite explain in mere words how strange Ak'Chamel is. As an illustration of how they might perceive themselves, let me quote in full their promo material for their most recent album That will give you a picture of what we're dealing with:
Ak'chamel, The Givers of Illness plunged into truly deranged extremes to summon the decayed, otherworldly essence captured on Spiritually Unemployed, embracing unhinged and esoteric methods during the tracking process. Recorded in a makeshift adobe studio amid liminal border-zone ruins. Nocturnal treks along forgotten stretches near the U.S.-Mexico line, through derelict border outposts and sun-bleached vehicle husks, yielded unique recording opportunities: Ak'chamel dragged tape decks like sacrificial talismans, to capture gravel crunch, distant javalina fights, and unintentional EVP-like anomalies. Harvesting the psychic weight of migration, abandonment, and geopolitical limbo. A half-broken oud, double-reed pipes, a battered hurdy-gurdy, and self-built spike fiddles were "tortured" pre-recording; strings detuned to unstable microtonal chaos, reeds soaked in questionable desert-sourced liquids, and instruments were kept outdoors to absorb ambient dew, dust, and wild temperature swings, ensuring every take carried an unpredictable, haunted instability. Vintage cassette decks and reel-to-reel units were powered through erratic, low-voltage setups (literally dying generators) which introduced random voltage drops, speed fluctuations, and ghostly dropouts mid-take -- turning tracking into unpredictable spirit interventions. Fresh analog takes were dubbed onto tapes previously buried in arid soil throughout the hot day, then exhumed and played back while layering new overdubs; creating a palimpsest of temporal erosion where past decay bleeds into present performance. Live performances were blasted through overloaded, malfunctioning analog chains (cranked cassette walkmans, battered spring reverbs filled with gravel, warped echo units), then physically "mauled" by running the tape through sandpaper-wrapped capstans or crushing segments underfoot before resplicing -- resulting in tracks that feel compressed, twisted, and ruptured. Thus the desert claims its due: instruments tortured into prophecy, tapes interred and exhumed in chapels of malfunction. Spiritually Unemployed is the resulting artifact -- a sonic border autopsy where enlightenment arrives not as a sealed doctrine but as an open infested wound.
Honestly, it was an amazing experience. I've thought about this wild show often in the last three years and can't wait to see them again.
Purchase their most recent album here.
Recording information:
AK’CHAMEL, THE GIVER OF ILLNESS 2023-06-08
Milwaukee, WI
Acme Records
The two musicians of Ak’Chamel wish to remain enigmatic and anonymous
Setlist:
01 Section One (9:12)
02 Section Two (7:46)
03 Section Three (6:44)
04 Section Four (6:08)
Total time = 29:50
Recorded with permission by Richard Hayes for this blog
Microphones: Beyerdynamic MC930 in ORTF
Additional source: mono mixer feed
Recorder: Sound Devices MixPre6ii
Software: Audacity, Fission, xAct
video of a recent performance in the Czech Republic:
