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From The Desk Of Thalia Zedek: “Dutch Harbor: Where The Sea Breaks Its Back”

ThaliaZedekLogo It can be daunting, being in a band that winds up one of the influential acts of its day. If Boston’s Come, one of the most acclaimed groups to emerge from the early-’90s indie scene, had released nothing but debut album Eleven:Eleven, its importance for musicians in that scene would likely have been established anyway. Hard, noirish, frequently violent in its approach to blues patterns and styles slowed to a molasses-drip pace, few bands hit as heavy as Come. And few musicians, in Come or elsewhere, came as hard to the stage and the studio as Thalia Zedek. Now comes Via (Thrill Jockey), a record that finds her striking off in new aesthetic and collaborative territory. Zedek will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new feature on her.

DutchHarbor

Zedek: My longtime bandmate and viola player David Michael Curry turned me on to this one! He did some recording with Boxhead Ensemble, an improv group of musicians based in Chicago who were mining the same vein as DMC’s own Empty House Cooperative (with whom I have occasionally performed and recorded with on my clarinet). This documentary by Braden King and Laura Moya is breathtakingly beautiful, as is the music. It’s filmed in black and white and is about crab fishing and fisherman on Unalaska Island, off the west coast of Alaska. Years later, the TV show Deadliest Catch totally ripped this off. This was totally the template for that show! Braden and Laura, I hope that they paid you off for this!

Video after the jump.