The Azusa Plane

"Lou, Nico, Sterling, John and Maureen"

by Brian Glaser

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Published: Nov 8, 2006

There's a famous optical-illusion drawing of a pretty young girl; embedded in the same drawing is a picture of an old, haggard woman, and once you see her you can never go back to seeing only one side of the image. The first time I heard Jason DiEmilio's psych-noise recording project The Azusa Plane, it sounded aimless and formless. It was one side of a 33 rpm single, 1997's "Lou, Nico, Sterling, John and Maureen," and it kinda pissed me off — all old hag, with nothing to grab onto. Then I listened again, and suddenly there was the young belle. DiEmilio had layered guitars upon guitars, which sounded like a soup of echo and feedback until it didn't anymore. Each guitar abstracted a different role — melody, harmony, consonance, dissonance, even a pulse that flirted with rhythm. DiEmilio wasn't just thrashing and letting the pieces fall where they may, he was doting on every sound in his head, making them into new music. Recently, he was afflicted with medical problems that made it physically painful for him to hear those sounds or make that music, and last week, sadly, The Azusa Plane moved off of this earthly one. DiEmilio was a good guy and a crafter of sonic puzzles that, if you looked at them just the right way, were both haggard and beautiful.

 

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