Various

"David Nance’s doom spiral tour of the supermarket. The spectral glade fashioned by the Spatulas in “Heaving Chimes." The hazy, chattering, crypt-riot of Bruce Russell and Peter Wright’s Escalation. The warmth and momentum of Liam Grant’s barn dance. These intensely physical spaces are all conjured through song, an unexpected venue for such somatic expression. It’s a bracing, welcome tangibility, a mark of exceptionalism shared by this music. But what do these songs have in common, beyond their visceral substance? They demarcate the terrain of Carbon Records (generally) and The Sun is Not True (specifically).

For three decades, Joe Tunis has mapped the edges of music via Carbon Records. The submerged bottom, absolutely (see Greymouth); but also the airy spaces above clouds (see Rock Candy) and the hazy, languageless beauty outside of civilization’s reach (see murusonus). For The Sun is Not True, the label’s 300th release, Tunis shares a cross-section of this surveying. Thirteen songs selected not for their genre or nationality or process, but instead for their presence, their intention, their shared sense of working toward the edge. The outcome is revelatory—this is not an underground music proposing “another world is possible,” this is an underground music actively building another world, space by space. Each song on CR300 adds another chamber to this world, developing this unexpected, deeply necessary realm of disorientation, disquiet, and delight." - Ethan Swan