AVOLA - Zone

With its 50th release hot off the press, Brooklyn label Sleeping Giant Glossolalia misses no beat, continuing to build its diverse catalog via a summer's worth of new releases from across the spectrum of avant-rock, metal, noise, and electronic music.

Next up: the July 27th release of Zone, the debut album by Avola. 

Avola is the newest incarnation of Portland-based musician/producer Vern Avola, known for her work under the name EMS, and as a member of Elrond and Prizehog. 

Stream "The Feels" from Avola's debut album, Zone, here:
https://sleepinggiantglossolalia.bandcamp.com/album/avola-zone

SGG boss Michael Reisinger describes the Avola sound as "a squalling, disorienting world of heaviness... The journey is enthralling."

Zone is a place of high tension, where contrasting layers of sound combine in thrilling ways: the soft and the harsh, the light and the heavy, the playful and the profound, coexist and take on new forms. Epic, cinematic synth swells (e.g. "The Feels") and transcendent guitar drones (e.g. "Shhh" and "Sunrise") layer with glitchy beds of arcade-game beeps, white noise, and gunshot snares. Anthemic, soaring potential is kept in check by dissonance and disjointedness.

The end result feels quite urban – a symphony of city life, with all its simultaneous horror and magnificence – but Zone is in fact music of the desert, recorded and mixed by Avola at a house near Joshua Tree, California.

Zone is not music of any one genre – it is electronic in nature but possesses a deep heaviness that makes it relevant in the context of bands like Thrones and Oxbow with whom Avola has shared stages in the past.

Sleeping Giant Glossolalia will release Zone on cassette (as part of the label's ongoing cassette series that has also included Mick Barr, Growing, Opening Bell, and more) and on glow-in-the-dark vinyl (a split release with Nadine Records).

The album artwork was created by Kellesimone Waits.

Avola kicks off a US tour tonight in Long Beach!

Avola on tour:
July 12 - Long Beach, CA @ Que Sara Bar
July 13 - Los Angeles, CA @ LA Rec Center
July 16 - Oakland, CA @ Golden Bull
July 17 - Berkeley, CA @ Dildoh Faktorie
July 18 - San Francisco, CA @ Rumpus Room
July 27 - Portland, OR @ The Firkin Tavern
July 29 - Portland, OR @ HFBW
Aug 2 - Portland, OR @ Atlantis Lounge
Aug 4 - Moscow, ID @ Pritchard Art Gallery
Aug 6 - Billings, MT @ Smiling Dog Records
Aug 7 - Minot, ND @ 62 Doors Gallery
Aug 10 - Minneapolis, MN @ Feel Field
Aug 11 - Iowa City, IA @ Gabe's Upstairs
Aug 13 - Minneapolis, MN @ Memory Lanes
Aug 14 - Minneapolis, MN @ Kitty Cat Klub
Aug 15 - Bismarck, ND @ Rhythm Records
Aug 16 - Bozeman, MT @ Haufbrau
Aug 17 - Spokane, WA @ Object Space
Aug 18 - Portland, OR @ High Water Mark Lounge
Aug 23 - Portland, OR @ The Waypost
Aug 24 - Portland, OR @ Xhurch

Zone tracklist:
1) It's Chill
2) The Feels
3) A Good Deal
4) Someone Already Did That
5) Shhh
6) Sunrise
7) Twin Moons
8) Fahkd
9) Who Knows

"Portland-based musician Vern Avola makes electronic music that combines a ferocious wall of sound with a deceptively subtle sense of dynamics. One could call it noise music, except that Avola puts enough into weirdly shifting harmonics as she does into abrasion. One could also call it drone, but Avola's approach to synth music is too rhythmic, itchy, and restless to fit easily under that label. She's recently shared bills with artists including electro-pop eccentric EMA, metal band Big Business, and long-running experimental rock outfit Oxbow, to give you some idea of the difficulty of pigeonholing the project."
–Tone Madison