Dilate April 24, 2001

Dilate, the fifth Bardo record, is titled in their tradition of using a drug reference as a title. For the band, these titles are less about using drugs then they are metaphors for lifting one out of one’s self, opening up, dilating. While new drummer Ed Farnsworth may be the only physical manifestation of how the band has changed, the record shows a stupefying leap forward. Their ominous and solipsistic intensity keeps breathing underneath, yet their sound is something new and expanded.

Although they existed for a couple of years beforehand, Bardo Pond was christened with a name near the end of ’91. Clint Takeda had come up with the name after reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead and fell in love with the word “bardo,” which is where a Soul arrives upon its corporal self dying. While in the bardo, the soul negotiates different stages and encounters various visions, created from the souls prior life experience. The soul either ascends to nirvana or returns to another corporal existence. Clint decided this would be a fine place for a pond — especially for fishing. Over time the name has acquired entity status.

Their method of working is discovery through improvisation, then remembering, recreating, practicing. Sometimes a tune continues mutating, yet still retains the basic shape of its original conception. Many tunes intentionally open up for lengthy exploratory passages.

Though neither of them took up an instrument until they were in their twenties, Michael and John Gibbons were always interested in causing a racket. John initially got hooked on percussion, while Michael was in art school at the time and started to get interested in Ornette Coleman and his Electric Band Primetime, No Wave, Material etc. He started experimenting with music while he was living with his then girlfriend, whose house was filled with electric guitars, synthesisers and such belonging to her brother.

Michael soon moved from Chicago to Philadelphia to meet up with John and to impress on his brother a passion for free-music-making, all the while encouraging his California friend Clint to come out and join them. Eventually, Clint moved out, with the excuse of wanting to attend graduate school. Isobel was attending the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where John was also a student. Upon hearing about a local band that never looked at each other, she was intrigued and joined up. Joe Culver soon answered their ad for a drummer, and they went on to record hours of rehearsals as they slowly shaped a sound wholly unique and mind blowing.

And now we have Dilate which represents a major shift. While theyıve established themselves as the premiere lurching noisemakers, with their new record theyıve created something so utterly expanse, so ponderously beautiful, it could be argued all their past work merely exists as a build up to this release. The band has always worked by using sludge to their advantage, but never has it been fashioned to such mastery.

Set and Setting August 10, 1999

“Unlike most of the other art bands that go out of their way to sound like a car crash, Bardo Pond also throws in helpful dollops of structure, rhythm and a clear echo of the blues.” — NY Press

“Long before precautionary measures can be initiated, the Earth is caught under Bardo Pond’s torrents of molten rock and handily annihilated.” — Magnet

Bardo Pond wages intensity like none other. The music is a foaming, unbridled creature, constantly reinventing itself to unexplored parameters of Outness. Any musicians you can mention - be it High Rise, Sun Ra, Dead C, Masonna, Ives, etc. - can only indicate the forceful uniqueness at play here. Bardo Pond is your band. It’s the one you put on while sleeping late in your parents’ rec room basement, soaking up air-conditioning and watching wrestling on mute. They don’t just scare the shit out of people. They’re also damn incredible.

It’s best to have no other distractions because music rarely reaches this level of mindfulness, showering down equations of hypnotic effluvia to all entry points and filtering transcendent beauty through a dirty undergrowth. So many bands attempt density simply through effects and fractured singing. To consider Bardo Pond in that realm is like calling John Coltrane occasionally interesting stoner jazz. Each song on Set And Setting carefully builds a monolith of beauty, indulging the parameters of sound with thoughtful consideration as to what will buzz between the drumbeats before being obliterated.

Over the years, Bardo Pond have morphed into a unit with a singular vision, allowing for a wide range of sounds while pushing the furthest extremes of experimentation. "Again" shows how far they can push the rock, while "Datura" takes ambient repetition to deeper, inner levels. In a lesser band’s hands, this might be indulgent. Bardo Pond, however, are the skilled abstract expressionists of rock; from their violent, discordant gestures comes an art of immense maturity and inexplicable beauty. Listen in through the layers of confusion to hear the inner structure of how the noise is contained--it’s not unconditioned feedback but composed chaos, seething with soulful emotion set to slow tempo.

Lapsed October 21, 1997

We’re pretty damn proud of Bardo Pond’s fifth album, "Lapsed." This album is their Liege & Lief, Live at Star Club or Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table. It’s their Statement, their Holy Grail, whatever, what have you... and considering how great "Amanita" was things are kind of exciting right now. The album was recorded in their home town, Philadelphia, Pa, and the result is some kind of heavy, hard-to-pinpoint solid action that we haven’t heard since, say, their last album or when we last listened to High Tide, Slayer or early Skullflower.

Bardo Pond has been baffling up-and-coming and down-and-out-going musicians, not to talk about MUSIC LOVERS, all over the land for quite some time now. Wasn’t there some idiot who said that the band’s live sound is as loud as "the line at Pat’s Steaks 3. a.m." and as fucked up as "the line at Pat’s Steaks 3. a.m." What ever, we still think that going to see Bardo Pond live is one of the healthiest and excellent things you can choose to do these days.

Amanita April 9, 1996

Just two years ago, the mention of the name Bardo Pond may well have triggered no more than an upturned, quizzical brow from anyone living outside the city of Philadelphia. Drop that same name today and an ever-growing host of fans worldwide will bestow the discerning nod of approval to a band whose muzz-soaked psychedelic dunt routinely sends its listeners exploring the interiors of cerebral space. For the past five years, Bardo Pond have diligently mounted their tantri-sonic campaign on the drug rock microverse from the smoky confines of their Fishtown basement. However, the last eighteen months have seen the band emerge from their self-imposed, practice space exile to a forum nearly approaching the public’s eye. In the early days, the band was content with merely tossing a brick of dank on the hibachi, plugging in and letting the tape machine roll. Even though the same creative m.o. is still practiced today, these five celestial travellers have since committed themselves to share their sonic numina with the outside world, as evidenced by their critically acclaimed debut album, Bufo Alvarius.

This past fall, the band went into Philadelphia’s Studio Red to record their third and, to our ears, finest album, Amanita. This extended-length excursion through modern psychedelia includes long-wave rock blasts ("Sentence," "Tantric Porno," "Be A Fish"), etherized blues swaggers ("Wank," "Yellow Turban," "Rumination") and spacious, free mantras ("Limerick," "The High Frequency," "RM"). The dimensionality of Bardo Pond’s music on Amanita has increased several fold. Earlier inspirational antecedents such as Ash Ra Temple, Amon Duul II and The Dead C are now less apparent as Bardo Pond continue to define their own, unique sound. Bardoıs patented, distortion-sequestered euphony is now fortified with even more layers of otherworldly guitar from the hands of John and Michael Gibbons, as well as beautiful, extended susurrations from Isobel Sollenberger’s voice and flute. Tether this to Clint Takeda and Joe Culver’s dynamic bass and drum foundation and Bardo Pond’s sound is instantly expanded into the fourth dimension. The band’s live performances have also taken on added improvisational scope; no doubt a reflection of the band’s continued interest in free rock expression. Amanita is Bardo Pond’s latest trophy of smoldering, psychedelic blare and shows a band continuing to perfect its inimitable sonic style.

This spring and summer, Bardo Pond will again pack up their van and take their live show to a town (hopefully) near you. Additionally, the band’s music will be found on Drunken Fish’s forthcoming Harmony of the Spheres box set as well as a compilation put together by England’s Ptolemic Terrascope magazine. — Mike Trouchon