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LP
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DC 835LP
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Released in 2014. "With Valdez, Birds of Maya are back in flight. And like the first song title explicitly states, this latest is a soaring blast of riffers, rife with punk rock abandon, sludge, treble, distortion, neck-throttling rock n roll solos, pummeling drums and bass and half-shouted/half-gargled vocals, all of it half on and half off the mic. Somewhere in Philadelphia, Jason Killinger, Ben Leaphart, and Mike Polizze played on. Still making it happen as always: taping everything they play -- with bass, drums, guitar and vocals fighting for space in the condensing mics of cheap recorders -- then tossing the tapes aside, for consideration at a later moment. Time is a test that Birds of Maya recordings need to pass before they see the light of day. Valdez is a good example, although it's also an exception to their regular M.O. It was recorded in 2014 at Black Dirt Studios in other-state New York. After a Purling Hiss session there, Mike and Ben talked with Jason about how it would be a great time for Birds of Maya too, so they got a bunch of tunes they liked into shape -- that is, different shapes on different days. But nice shapes. Once they got to the studio, they loaded in and set up, curious to see how they felt playing in a different room. Pretty good as it turned out -- running through the songs that first night, they accidentally recorded the whole album! At the time this was recorded, Birds of Maya were standing on the other side of ten years kicking around town, suddenly far away from the primordial ooze they'd flopped forth from. The streets where all this had happened on were changing, with new money rolling in, but they were the same old Birds, content with their libations and ear-splitting variations on old favorite Stooges chords. The cover art of Valdez is a couple images from those days, glimpses at the old grass roots before they were ripped up by developers to build condos. But nothing ever really goes away. Valdez is a totem of the wildness that refuses be tamed."
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