Photo by Ashleigh Mullinax
During last month’s Sonic Circuits Festival, an elbow-to-elbow Velvet Lounge got to see legendary recluse Jandek perform a very intense set with dissonant guitars, creepy vocals and a lot of keyboards. It was a beautiful thing, but the people who left immediately afterward missed one of DCist’s most exciting finds of the festival. Drummer Jason Mullinax, who performs as Pilesar, put on a set that completely warmed up and engaged the audience. The percussion-based songs with great melodies and interesting sounds totally won over the Velvet Lounge patrons still in attendance. Plus, he handed out kazoos and cupcakes while embarrassing his wife Ashleigh for her birthday.
The performance only lasted 20 minutes (and included a krautrock-esque homage to some of the other performers at the festival) but that was just scratching the surface. To go to pilesarmusic.com is to discover a Pandora’s box of 38 albums, of varying degrees of accessibility and instrumentation, not all of them belonging to Mullinax. He has his own imprint, Chameleon Dish Archives, and after some navigating we discovered that Toy Safety Recall provided a good introduction into his recorded work, rife with percussion and other surprising instrumentation and electronics. Live Volume 1 provided a good window into the live show that we found so enthralling.
We caught Jason in the middle of moving from one part of Takoma Park to another and talked about how he got interested in experimental music, how he changes up his live shows and what can be found on his website.
Find him online: http://www.pilesarmusic.com or http://www.myspace.com/pilesarmusic
See him next: At Galaxy Hut on November 15
Pick up his CDs: At Galaxy Hut on November 15 or from http://www.pilesarmusic.com
You’re in the middle of a move. Are you going far?
We’re staying in Takoma. We’re just moving down the street. But I’m excited because right now we live in a basement apartment and we don’t have a lot of room and this new place has four bedrooms, two bath, a basement and a backyard so I’m really pumped. Plus, I’m going to make the basement into a rehearsal space and turn one of the rooms into a recording studio. So, I’m going to have lots of room and my wife’s going to have an office and a guest bedroom which she’s been wanting for awhile. So, it’s going to be awesome to have all this space.
