Full Disclosure: USF just got added to a bill on June 26th at The Josephine that features Chrome Wings, Italic Indian, Megabats, and Climax Patterns.

Portland band Chrome Wings have been on my radar for awhile now, thanks mostly to the persistence of band member Jon Jurow, who’s been kind enough to keep me satiated over the past year with a steady IV drip of their material. Their latest release, Time Patterns, builds upon the instrumental kookiness of their self-titled EP, catalyzing their knack for shifting, molten sounds into something just as varied but ultimately more satisfying and holistic. Chrome Wings specialize in sounds that are truly bizarre—relying on a veritable flow-chart of daisy-chained effects pedals to crank out a mixture of fluid beats and mellow ambient loopage.

I haven’t been the only one vibing on the Chrome Wings sound, though: eminent tape label Stunned Records put their distro/ blog muscle behind Time Patterns, releasing an already-sold-out limited run of 111 cassettes (let’s hope Time Patterns makes it to a 3rd pressing, for the Satanic connotations alone…in this eventuality, I’m calling dibs on number 666 of 666). Stunned has been responsible for tons of quality analog material from bands like Lunar Miasma, Sparkling Wide Pressure, Torture Corpse, Tricorn & Queu, Sun Araw, and more.

Jurow and bandmate Shane Mcdonell took a break from gigging with the cream of the national underground crop (e.g. Ecstatic Sunshine, Stag Hare, Yellow Swans, Infinite Body, Inca Ore, Grouper) to answer some of my questions about their production aesthetic and new release.

How did you get hooked up with Stunned? And were you stoked to be contacted by them?

Jon: Definitely, I met [Stunned co-founder Phil French] through mutual friends after he relocated here to Portland from L.A. last winter. I've always completely respected Stunned, not only for putting out some amazing under-the-radar releases but for standing their ground aesthetically and for running a label out of pure selflessness, for love of the music and pieces as a whole.

They handle the aesthetic side of everything, right? They designed the artwork for Time Patterns? [Note: Stunned’s releases all have art that’s based around a similar motif, technique, or pattern—mostly hyper-detailed pen drawings, or collage with an emphasis on striated horizontal or vertical lines]

Jon: Totally, the visual side of things is all Phil. It's great to look through the stacks and really see the evolution of his pieces and the time and thought he puts into each release.

When you're crafting two long-form pieces of music (as with, obviously, the sides A and B of your Time Patterns cassette), do you approach it differently than when you're writing shorter songs or songs for a different format?

Jon: The seven tracks on the tape can definitely be seen as two pieces or stand alone individually.
We were going for that sort of cohesion this time around, thinking of the album as one piece, a whole.

More after the jump.

Something I've always wondered: how did you get that super Growing-esque guitar/synth pattern on the "Interlude" from your self-titled? It's uncanny.

Jon: It started as a guitar loop messing around in my room one day. I later multi-tracked it in stereo while doing some manual panning and then bounced it back through a Korg Rhythm Synth modular.

Who are your favorite Stunned artists, and your favorite musicians in that whole DIY/cassette crew?

Jon: Honestly there's so much great stuff out there and I'm not always the best with keeping up with everything, but here's a few folks that are worth mention. Stunned crew: Sean McCann, Sun Araw, A.M. Shiner. Crew at large: Wet Hair,Taterbug,Tracey Trance,Gem Jones, Not Not Fun, Night People, Mississippi Records, CGI Friday.

Shane: Also, Meandering recordings, who's putting out a bunch of awesome tapes including but not limited to Mass creep, Pwin Teaks, and a collaboration between myself and Tony Remple called Sunken Colony: no. 666 in Heaven.

Stunned's blurb on the website says that the sound on Time Patterns is something "that’s taken Chrome Wings personal time & dedicated evolution to arrive at." Would you care to expand upon that?

Jon: I think it's always evolving, anytime I start to fall into certain patterns I try and rethink things all together and start from scratch. For this record we definitely took our time recording a few times a week over the course of two months at our old practice space in Chinatown, a lot those recordings didn't make it to the tape. We wanted the whole thing to leave you with a certain feeling, not really knowing what just happened.

Shane: each sound was developed as we recorded, over the course of a few months. Messing around with the speed of sounds, layering them together, zoning, until one day everything fit together. Thanks to Phil for making this happen.

You can listen to some cuts from Time Patterns on the Chrome Wings myspace, and ogle Stunned’s fine-looking catalog at their site.