Joseph Shabason - "Jaime Thomas"
We don’t normally do this, but the album description of Joseph Shabason’s new album and single are just too good…
Joseph Shabason is releasing his new album Welcome To Hell on October 20th via Western Vinyl/Telephone Explosion Records. The album is both a tribute to and reinterpretation of the seminal 1996 skate video from Toy Machine that helped launch the careers of skaters like Mike Maldonado, Elissa Steamer, Brian Anderson and more, as well as Jamie Thomas, featured in the gnarliest section of the video.
Like for many people, this video had a tremendous impact on Joseph (that’s him in the attached photo), who watched his VHS copy hundreds of time growing up. And as someone who creates jazz, he likes the improvisational, full-body experience of skateboarding to jazz, where a shared language exists between the wheels and woodwinds. And for him, both skaters and musicians are often a noisy, creative bunch and this relationship lead him to ultimately ask: what does hell sound like?
The answer lead him to try something new, much like skateboarding itself; re-scoring Welcome To Hell. The video’s original soundtrack featured active, aggressive mix of songs from bands like The Misfits, Black Sabbath, and Sonic Youth that likely influenced an entire generation. On Joseph’s version, you’ll find that re-contextualized, softened, yet no less energizing. Over the album’s ten songs, Shabason plays with the angular and ambient, exploring large group melodies that move forward with the on-screen action, shifting the mood in subtle and substantial ways that reframe our understanding of this culture-defining skate video and the skateboarders in it.
Thomas' career-defining performance here would set the stage for a decades-spanning career and a level of influence in skateboarding that is still felt today. Shabason meets Thomas’ epic with a commanding, angular rhythm that builds and flows with the momentum of his skateboarding. Airy group melodies mingle with a wonked-out vibraphone and tight percussion that lets loose in florid bursts before devolving into a finishing sequence of muscular improvisation — a fittingly bold interpretation of the work of one of skateboarding’s most daring practitioners.
