bleiachra

bleiachra (pronounced blay-ah-kruh), started out as a two-person hardcore band, and ended up as a three-and-a-half-person hardcore band. jason cirimele and i first got into hardcore music when we heard the band "munla", which was practically a continuation of the band "peyote calamity". the name comes from a late-night session of making up stupid names for girls. we thought it was really funny to imagine that there could be a girl named bleiachra.

anyway...

one day (probably two or three actually), we decided to give this hardcore music a try. what resulted was a collection of five very unpolished instrumental songs. we switched off playing drums and guitar; no bass. at one point in "cows with stomach pains" you can hear the kick drum change from a bass drum to a metal box completely void of bass, because the drum head broke. the only song that carried on from this point was "bleiachra (the voodoo princess)". where does the voodoo princess part come from? well, we'd just met this girl, annie hodges, who was very attractive and had amazing huge curly blonde hair. in some conversation about her between jason, aaron zonka (azura), and i, we referred to her as bleiachra because we couldn't recall her name, and that name was fresh in our minds. i guess our description of her had creatived the image of voodoo princess in aaron's head, and he mentioned something about that. long story short, she's the girl on the cover. it's a terrible picture of her though... and a terrible cover in general.



bleiachra - bleiachra

1. ferensic the builter
2. bleiachra (the voodoo princess)
3. cows with stomach pains
4. jazz club missile crisis
5. slant the cat against the plate glass window


jason and i never considered bleiachra a band; just a weird recording, until a sporatic hardcore jam session at our friend brian's practice space ignited the hardcore flame. it was me - drums, jason - guitar, brian williams (heart cross love) - guitar, and mike amaro (clearing autumn skies, tell the truth, tearable noetic) - vocals. we through a bunch of time signatures together and made a few different parts. what a thrill we had when we played through them for the first time. i remember getting to the end of what we'd written which concluded with a build-up without any next part. there was this moment as we played of "oh, shit. this is big. what comes next?!". at that point i remember flipping out and jumping off the drum stool into the wall out of pure excitement. we decided to make this a regular thing and not having a band name, used bleiachra until we found a better one... which we didn't because it stuck. we tried several times to make recordings of our new material, but none of them ever satisfied us. "they rock ya ver. 1.0" best captures the energy from this period, but the recording was just made from a little digital recorder with a stereo mic during band practice. version 2.0 sounded a bit more professional, but our performance wasn't great. the sessions were abandoned and never mixed.



bleiachra - they rock ya ver. 1.0

1. do you have something warm i can donde?
2. the train math problem
3. doom flower
4. bleiachra (the voodoo princess)
5.



bleiachra - they rock ya ver. 2.0

1. do you have something warm i can donde?
2. the train math problem
3. doom flower
4. bleiachra (the voodoo princess)
5.



we did a handful of shows (one acoustic where i played tabla drums. ha ha ha). this got us connected to the band, "buckle". we decided to do a 7" split together. although no 7" ever emerged due to expenses, we recorded our best work to date for these sessions. we did it at an analog studio in oakland run by bart thurbur. we layed down the instrumental version of the songs, and were very excited how well they'd turned out. up until this point, we'd jammed with vocalists, but never really locked one down. we had mike hale (old and gray) come in and do vocals. we'd had a couple practices with him prior to recording, but i had no idea what he was gonna add to these tracks. i figured if i didn't like it, i still had my cd of the instrumental versions. i can safely say that the vocals took it to the next level and totally exceded my expectations. mike was never officially in the group. i think the plan was to keep having guest vocalists forever. that way, our sound would keep fresh. but things went sour shortly after the recording, and it was never mastered, or released in any form, except on this site. the picture below (by jason murphy) is a mock-up of the artwork to be used for the record.



bleiachra/buckle splt

side b: bleiachra

1. jump rope audio
2. fly swatter audio

side b: buckle

1. sport in education




the end. that's the story of bleiachra. so far? no. probably for good, but you never know.