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the finale this saturday, 5/9 | 8:30p | $10 @scrlettband , @bluegill.nc , @strumbrush brandon and i’s captions were both too long, so i’ve appended them to the flyer because we are not cutting that shit down because we care too deep about you and this place. i do hope you read them, though i hope more to see you this weekend to help us blow the candles out on what has truly been the birthday cake of a lifetime, or the bath of a lifetime, whatever context you first imagine candles in iguess i’m more of a cake gal but it is just a metaphor and there isn’t really a cake, but there is a show, and, if we’re measuring, i remember lots of shows but i do not remember any cakes. if you agree, i’ll see you there :) if not, i challenge you to a debate, at the show this saturday it is a pretty special occasion, so we might bring a cake or something. no promises though. about the cake, that is. i promise itll be fun :) the show see you there <3

long live mean sweetie exactly one year ago today, in greer, south carolina, the melon barn hosted what was unquestionably the greatest DIY event in the history of our scene: mean sweetie’s final show. listen, i’m an optimistic person, you know that - i cannot fathom a better show than this. set a reminder for 50 years and ask me what the best set of my life was - i won’t hesitate. it is this one the pit coalesced into a single organism, rippling outwards, collapsing, repeatedly pinning me against the bar. we catch the motion, reverse it, the cycle repeats. the front row uses their bodies to shield the edge of the stage, its wires and pedalboards, the row behind them locking arms to form a wall, protecting the protectors. for nearly two hours, mean sweetie harnesses this heat of passion and uses it to absolutely fucking rip one after another after another until they have ascended to a level no one knew was possible. bodies are collapsing, but we’re all more alive than we’d ever been. and then they played one more. and that was it. to finch, brayden, chapman, zac, hunter, jackson, gabe, brandon, scrlett and daisy - thank you for everything. you’re all legends. i love you forever

frost-kissed

𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡. | 𝟑•𝟖•𝟐𝟒 jersey legends @high.asfuckband at the spaze in march of last year. love them. played a stacked bill with fellow gazers 8H & SMM - a perfect night if you ask me earlier in the day, heather’s cat played a surprise game of hide-and-seek in the washing machine. after the show, gabe, laurent, violet, heather and i departed on a 12 hour midnight-to-noon journey to philly to see the union transfer shoegaze fest. i met up with @czukphoto for the first time there, a longtime internet friend (and stunningly talented artist) who happens to be a close friend of high. all that to say, those 48 hours were something of a fourth-wall-breaking crossover episode for me, and that it was filled to the brim with beautiful music and beautiful people - the two hours of sleep i got were more than enough. we all crashed pretty hard afterwards though also, that philly public transit… i miss you…

𝖌𝖆𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖊 | 𝔭𝔢𝔫𝔲𝔩𝔱𝔦𝔪𝔞𝔱𝔢 this day - the one pictured - is august tenth. it is the first night, the inhale, of gamine’s final breath. there are about fifteen minutes left until midnight. we sound check. the room fades into a potent, eager silence. replacing it is footsteps, bodies, warm with anticipation, sour with the unspoken awareness of impermanence. now is the time to remember: 𝐣𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐲 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞: 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐚𝐲 𝐨𝐜𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧: 𝐭𝐨𝐮𝐫, 𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐨𝐧𝐞 [𝐗] = 𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 today is the day we leave. [X] never to be out-done, the state has decided today is the day to grind down what is left of the stump of the oak tree, showering the entire porch and surrounding areas in a cloud of sawdust. [X] heather and cassidy sit in the middle-room. they harmonize as heather strums an acoustic guitar. the drive is simple [X] the venue is a record store [X] a small alleyway divides shelves and crates and tables full of cassettes and vinyl and CDs [X] rug gets a case of PBR’s [X] heather notices a one-eye’d-jack’s poster on the wall [X] laurent points out the same poster to violet and heather, and they laugh [X] i mention the poster to laurent, and now everyone is laughing [X] clearly no one is paying much attention 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞: 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐫𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐚𝐲 𝐨𝐜𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧: 𝐭𝐨𝐮𝐫, 𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐰𝐨 cassidy and heather play battleship [X] a vigil of sorts she found outside [X] a record store called vinyl conflict [X] we walk to GWARbar [X] cassidy, arriving a bit later, takes a risk on beans [X] heather and i do our makeup in the front seats [X] i find a hotel for us [X] cassidy, heather and i walk to a pub called Penny Lane [X] spent 10 minutes banging on the wrong door [X] fall asleep. 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞: 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐭𝐡 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐚𝐲 𝐨𝐜𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧: 𝐭𝐨𝐮𝐫, 𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 i go get coffee as cassidy is, unbeknownst to me, having the ‘sticky table’ moment she will later write about for her column in the paper [X] heather pulls out her laptop and launches webkinz [X] we name the kitten ‘Both,’ [X] the computer dies. another rest stop [X] amidst the woods [X] a light mist coating the air [X] we prance about

midsommar, one year ago the day before, i thrifted a pair of white dresses at something about noon, madeline and emily helped me cut and assemble wreaths from scratch discount flowers and twigs a few hours later, we drove around in search of a field we walked through the tall-grass which momentarily revealed a scurrying family of deer it was a class assignment, to emulate a movie i felt unforgettably seen by dani’s afflictions and revival in midsommar when i saw the movie years ago i shouldn’t go into why that is i coated film with citric acid and shocked it with static electricity and enlarged these photos onto it i’d like to be walking through a snow packed forest glowing in the moonlight and it is 80 degrees in late october

**OUT NOW** our debut single, “grasping genesis”, releases this month on Halloween. It’s been a long time coming, so we’re so very happy to announce its forthcoming release. we have so many people to thank! shoutout to every single one of you who has come to shows and supported us. we’re forever grateful to Richard for being such a pivotal member of the band - though you are no longer playing with us, you’re always welcome. thanks to all the venues both local and out of town for letting us share our sounds. thank you to @clovescence for documenting us since our inception and for creating many designs, including this one, for us. you can presave the track here, /hyperfollow/eighthhouse2/grasping-genesis vocals & lyrics by Heather guitars by Gabe bass by Laurent drums by Rug mixed & mastered by eighth house graphic design by @clovescence

voltagrams mary jo, a classmate and friend, showed me how to make these. a humble, badass woman, casually making 100-day pinhole exposures and showing up at the lab at 1am to conjure up something beautiful. love her it’s a very low sensitivity (ISO) film exposed to static electricity via either a van de graaff or wimshurst generator. these 10 slides are from my first round of tests — slide 6 was folded accordion style, 7 & 8 were crumpled up, and so on i miss you. it’s been… interesting, lately. i’ve been fortunate enough to have been extended an array of responsibilities catered to my interests and passions, but haven’t quite found the harmony amongst the notes yet. if anything slips out of tune, i am plagued by dissonance, which is hard to work within. it’s a growth process, but what isn’t?

oruã at the spaze, 8.10.24 VOL. IX • ACT III in the heart of Rio de Janeiro, at Rua da Constituição, 64, is Escritório — Oruã’s DIY venue & recording studio. while in Rio some years ago, Doug Martsch, frontman of indie-rock legends Built to Spill, met Oruã’s Lê Almeida and João Casaes — soon after, they would join forces in recording Built to Spill’s 2022 record ‘When the Wind Forgets Your Name.’ Oruã, led by Almeida’s stridently trilled vocals and the hissing echoes of his Brazilian Giannini Supersonic, have since traveled the Americas opening for Martsch, most recently in support of their fourth album, ‘Passe.’ Bigú Medine’s hypnotic bass-lines glide through João Casaes’ oscillating, fogged synth sirens, as Phill Fernandes pierces the fog with glassy, melodic drums. somehow, all of this history & assembled musical talent made way to a small DIY venue known locally as the spaze in Columbia, South Carolina, predictably via the ever-attentive ears of Brandon Jolley. after the show, i went to my kitchen to fetch glasses of water for Oruã. suddenly, gambino, my attention-seeking orange-black bengal cat, had made friends with Bigú, who started purring with him. i have to say that Bigú’s purr is impeccably sharp; i did not know humans were at all capable of such a sound, so, personally, this was wonderful news to me in the morning, violet and i made breakfast for everyone. bagels (sausage, eggs, and cheese), black coffee, some whisked with honey and some without, and an assortment of fruit. we chatted for a few hours, Lê and the others singing praises of the spaze as their favorite spot on tour. Escritório’s bandcamp is full of gems — a full shelf of unique records and gorgeous album art. credit for the first-slide ‘Oruã’ graphic belongs to whichever band member left it on my chalkboard before departing. i didn’t notice it until a day or so later, and i will hold it close to my heart forever <3

dad bod at the spaze, 8.10.24 VOL. IX • ACT II from salt lake city, utah, dad bod is the personification via music of what happens when you give an acoustic guitar a pedalboard: folksy rock. it’s wonderful ~ you click a button. the tape recorder begins to whirr as it rewinds itself May 20th, 2023: the first spaze show. murch gurl, rugg, the band that evelyn played in, and gamine. gabe wears a sweet pill shirt and carries his stickered-yellow bass. sammi is on keys, rug is on drums, and on guitar: cassidy. she’s singing too, and i would come to learn that this combination is a rare occurrence. in our shared memory, it has happened only a handful of times: a set at melon barn (as evidenced by a polaroid), a set at indah coffee (that night, they played with a band named secret guest. mistakenly, i awaited the announcement of this secret guest until the day of the show), and their first appearance at 804 south edisto. on the night of gamine’s climactic finale, i went to the venue a few hours before the show to vacuum. gamine was practicing, and when they came into my sight-lines, so did the guitar on cassidy’s shoulders. just for ‘your opinions,’ she told me. in march, i watched the century-oak tree in my front yard bloom for the first time. i awoke the morning of april 3rd to its’ shattered remains strewn across the road. a midnight storm, a silent death. i left for a short class, came home, and cried for longer and with more intensity than i knew i was capable of. i felt truly paralyzed. i put on cassidy’s solo acoustic album, ‘i won’t try forever but i will try for a little bit longer’. a lyric from ‘buzz cut’ split me open: ~ change is grotesque, but it’s the only thing now reminding me how life can surprise, life has its’ own right to make me feel alive ~ it tore me open. the guard fell, and i sobbed. this change does feel grotesque. but: i *feel*. i looked up instead of down, out the window instead of at my knees. there is beauty in depth. to be moved so deeply is to be alive. i lost my tree. but cassidy gave me perspective, and although it too can be withered by an unexpected storm, it will never leave me. <3

total pony at the spaze, 8.10.24 VOL. IX • ACT I Gamine. for some months now, this thought infected me: the awfully bittersweet notion that, at the time of these photos, gamine had an expiration date. much of the past two years i’ve spent working within and around music i have been completely infatuated with this band and its members. we’ll delve more into that specifically as this documentation evolves throughout the week, but, for now, here’s the start of this story (from my own perspective, however limited that might be) of the weekend that belonged to gamine, and the events which led up to it. over the past year or so, cassidy and i have grown to notice similarities in our approaches to art, creation, and life, among other things. i’ve known of her undying wish to attend graduate school to further develop her writing chops for some time now, so when the news came that she had been accepted into one of these programs, i was and am still over the moon for her. it didn’t somuch dawn on me until later the fate this spelled out for her band. how do you begin to willingly step out from your foundation, your curated and labored passions, your music and your columns and, most importantly, your friends? this is of course in reference to cassidy’s dilemma, and having spoken on it we have found this to be the answer: neither of us know, but she has to do it. it simply is a blind toss of the dart: you cannot possibly know where it will hit, how that will feel. you only know the hand it leaves, but you have to throw it. so, over the weekend which contained august 10th and august 11th, we gathered en masse to be the hand that throws gamine into the horizon, for now. oh, right. and total pony kicks ass. these pictures are proof of as much, and you should believe me. don’t? go to one of their shows, i dare you <3

a few more from tour reminder that the shows on 8/10 & 8/11 at the spaze are your last chances to see gamine