Garbage Music by Devon Michigan

"Garbage Music" was recorded by putting an sm57 microphone in my vagina and manipulating the ensuing signal with four guitar pedals. “The Ghost Taco” was a cabaret and noise performance of the same premise, exhibited sixty times to live audiences between 2007 and 2019.

The microphone picked up my voice, heartbeat, and movements- all reverberating through the water in my body. If the stage monitors were kept on; if I stood in the wrong place; if the room was too small for the sound system: it might mean feedback or, at least once, a fire. The volatility of the signal plus the vulnerability of the act made for compelling live performance- but it took a lot of work to make it listenable.

I was solicited pretty regularly by indie labels BITD, but never produced anything I really wanted to publish. It was a live, physical performance first- never really intended to be recorded or taken seriously. This collection is jams and compositional experiments, curated from over 170 raw files and twelve years of practice. Most of them were made off the cuff with one input. Often I'd recorded them to work out a piece of music that fell into place while the 'tape' was running. A few are multi-tracks that I built haphazardly over the years from such one-input files. These feeble recordings are practice logs and maquettes, never meant to be final products.

The earliest ones were recorded at the Secret Location on Hawks and East Hastings in 2007 and 2008. Some others were made during my time at the Hammock Residency in Vancouver, at the now-defunct ROYGBIV, thanks to Jacob Audrey Taves. There are also pieces recorded on Cazelais and on Langevin in Saint-Henri, at The Death Church in Verdun, Ari's House and The Zone (both at Fattal), The ex-Torn Curtain up in Mile Ex, and in that half-burned down portable jam space on the Canal at the foot of rue William that's probably condos now.

Garbage Music was created in the context of queer, anti-fascist, D.I.Y punk, metal, noise, & electronic music scenes in so-called Vancouver and Montreal in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The name was a hold over from my days as a drag king stripper. It was changed to “Pelvic Space” in the final years. Both names have been scrapped for this release.

Many people have told me that thought this project was an urban legend until they saw it for themselves. This is proof- if it never plays another show- that it existed.

Super weird singer.

devonmichigan.com