Gasp/Sissy Spacek – Panra-Prismatic In Finite Blind 2xLP
Gasp/Sissy Spacek
Panra-Prismatic In Finite Blind 2×LP
Slap A Ham Records, #66
Shipping October 27, 2026
Gasp and Sissy Spacek formed within a world where punk was always a concept deeper than music. Not a style or sound—a method of undoing. Both groups have fervently exercised their proclivities for experimentation well beyond the margins, and this double-LP is the natural evolution of two projects now well into their third decades. If punk and grindcore are willing to throw experimentation a bone, this album is drunk on bones. “Panra-Prismatic In Finite Blind” is an unhinged, anarcho-punk aesthetic viewed through a musique concrète lens. Calculated but without rules, no genre comfort, the studio mind at work.
GASP
Gasp started in Spring 1994 when Mike Nelson’s hippie grind band Malfunction dissolved and Mitchell Brown was still in high school. After a few temporary members came and went, Nelson and Brown eventually began writing the Sore For Days demo in January 1995. Cynthia joined on bass in summer 1995, Reggie on second guitar a few months later. By then, Brown (aka Professor Cantaloupe) was already incorporating tape loops and electronic effects—an early crack in the foundation of band orthodoxy.
Everyone was going to Gilman for Fiesta Grande shows. Chris Elder from Pessimiser put Sore For Days on Cry Now, Cry Later Vol. 4 in 1996. Chris Dodge heard that track and then the demo and asked them to do an LP. In January 1998, when in the Bay Area for their first Fiesta Grande appearance, Gasp recorded at Bart Thurber’s House of Faith in Palo Alto, an album that became their only 90s full- length. By the time they played Fiesta Grande again in January 1999, the record was out. They were actively playing incredible Southern California shows with Melt-Banana, Deerhoof, Assoc., The Locust and countless others. The first active period of Gasp ended in June 1999, for various reasons. These things happen.
SISSY SPACEK
John Wiese had moved from St. Louis to Los Angeles in August 1998. He’d been trading noisecore and noise recordings by mail since 1992, already corresponding heavily in the international underground. Sissy Spacek’s first recordings emerged as a blur-grindcore duo in June 1999, the same month Gasp was breaking up. Cosmically, as one door closed another was opening. Spacek’s first show was on Christmas Day 1999, and within two weeks Wiese and Brown met at a shared a bill for a CalArts exhibition opening. Dodge and Wiese met in the early 2000s and collaborated in February 2002 while Dodge was still doing Jesus Philben. Slap A Ham would end in 2001, the post-9/11 economic downturn making it unsustainable. Meanwhile, Spacek mutated from grindcore to studio-maximalist extremity. Endless cut-up, collage, and abstraction. As releases flowed, the sound questioned “band-ness” itself.
By 2008, Charlie Mumma was collaborating with Spacek, and by 2013, Mumma and Wiese transitioned the project into a duo, touring the US, Europe, Japan, and releasing a torrent of material across the globe. Sissy Spacek has taken it well beyond genre signifiers—grindcore, noisecore, noise, free improv, collage, musique concrète—yes. Also none of those and make up just as many. Rather than a square concept of a fixed lineup, it often operates as a core with extensions. A polyglot speaking many languages at the same time.
Brown and Wiese’s collaborations are long standing, performing together as early as 2004, with Brown contributing to nine Sissy Spacek releases over the years—what would be considered a full career for most bands.
In 2004 Gasp regrouped their friendships, energy and previous recordings and the Earwig’s Guide to Traveling compilation CD came together. It wasn’t until 2017 though that they’d reform with some fresh blood and create new music. Mike and Cynthia returned, Reggie brie y too. Original drummer Brown shifted his primary focus toward electronics, the acquisition of Mike Meanstreetz covered most of the drum duties, and longtime ace in the hole Scott Martin joined on guitar and electronics, just like mother nature intended. 2017–2019 were very active years. More so in the studio than in public but roughly a half dozen performances did occur, about the same amount they’d play within just a few months back in the day.
In February 2018 at Zebulon in Los Angeles, Gasp and Sissy Spacek shared a bill. A collaborative set, improvising from a graphic score suggested by Wiese, hinted at something larger, and the idea formed to create a studio work reflecting that hybrid live experience. 2020 quarantine expanded the possibilities and what began as an idea of documentation evolved into greater expansion.
THE RECORD
An incredible amount of source material was recorded from each individual member, adding up to nearly 30 hours of raw sound, most of it captured between June and November 2021, just after shutdown eased. Wiese composed the tracks from this stockpile, sculpting 84 minutes for this double album, which represents less than half of the finished (and share-worthy?) material produced.
What you hear is painstaking. Observance to minutia, details, dynamics. The shortest tracks embody the same intensity shifts as the side-length pieces. The opening cut encapsulates the whole— deep sounds coexisting with micro-bursts. Dynamics governing everything regardless of duration. This is not a live “band” record, it is electronic, studio music. When you dream to sound like you’ve been edited, you arrive at something acousmatic in spirit—sound happening in space, procured through time and process. Band- form and extracurricular studio-form collapse into one another. The sounds on this album represent painstaking assembly—not chaos, but construction. Decidedly, this album is more 2025 than 1995— that’s a good thing.
Slap A Ham Records has resurrected for this special project. However, rest assured, the label remains defunct. Chris asks that you do NOT send demos.
(Peppermint Randy)
SHIPPING OCTOBER 27, 2026
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