Tenses

Tenses are the duo of Ju Suk Reet Meate and Oblivia.

Ju Suk Reet Meate:
..."like a one person tank filled with a million whacked-out sounds but driven by one maniac....I think afer hearing [his solo lp] you can make more sense to the human racket of knucklehead sound of the Smegma camp. Maybe Ju Suk is the man of the crew? No way in that anarchy unit but his vision def. looms huge shadows over the group's output. The world would be a duller place if this Ju Suk dude never decided to call off his public service gig for a year and tend to his goats in his pink house and concentrate rough and long on laying down a soundtrack to his amazing wacky scattered Barnum and Bailey via bottom of the sea sound world....an inspired and inspiring listen. They should launch a thousand copies into the Earth's atmosphere just to see what the outcome would be. A generation of horrible children with scratchy vinyl skin? Eyeballs for teeth? Molten lava for Language? Carpet for Brains? Pigface Forever!!!

-John Olson/Ypsilanti reprinted from liner notes to Ju Suk Reet Meate "solo 78/79" CD reissue put out by the good folks at De Stijl


Oblivia:
Portland based experimentalist Jackie Stewart (a.k.a Oblivia) started working with sound as a medium in 1979. After early experiments involving electric guitar and vocals, Jackie Stewart found her voice on the turntables when she discovered the link between her visual collages and her sound work. Usually found performing with avant/psych/folk pioneers Smegma, her recent solo project entitled "uncracked" reveals a playfully disturbed sound world where toys and turntables are manipulated to conjure sound as faded memory, familiar to all, yet just beyond the far side of recognition.

In 1979, Stewart started performing live improv pieces, inspired by the so-called "punk" music" scene, joining Gumby Antichrist with X.J.Elliot and Jerry A. (later known as Poison Idea), where she played guitar and performed experimental vocals. In 1983 she joined joined Smegma where she also played guitar, saxophone, cow bell, tape loops, Casio, electronics, Drums, Bass, turntables and vocals and has been known under such assumed names as, "rock and roll Jackie" and "Oblivia."

As a member of Smegma, Stewart has performed live with the Dead Kennedys, the Butthole Surfers, Perry Robinson, 1/2 Japanese, Merzbow, the Boredoms, Wolf Eyes, Tom Recchion, Steve Mackay, Aaron Dilloway and Joe McPhee/Chris Corsano with many performances resulting in recorded collaborations.

Smegma is a frequent headliner at international festivals recently appearing at K(RAA)K3 Fest (Hasselt, Belgium,2005), Subcurrent Festival (Glasgow, Scotland,2006) and No Fun Fest (New York, 2006 and 2007) as well as being feature at End Times Festival (Minneapolis, MN, 2006) and Three Million Tongues Festival (Chicago, 2006).

As a member of Smegma, Stewart has appeared on more than sixty recordings including Wolf Eyes/Smegma (De Stijl Records, 2003) Smegma with Steve Mackay - Thirty Years of Service (Radon, 2004) and Rumbings (Hanson Records, 2005). Recent years have seen the re-release of several early Smegma cassettes and Lps on CD including Pigs for Lepers (Pigface, 1982/Harbinger Sound, 2006), Live 1991-1993 (Pigface Mojo 1994/ Resipiscent, 2006), and Acnode One (Poo-Bah Records 2007).

Working solo, Stewart recently performed as Helen Blazes 1904 at the Color Out of Space Festival in Brighton, UK (November 2006). She also appeared at the 7th annual High Zero Festival in Baltimore, performing alongside Jenny Graff (US) and Fuyuki Yamakawa (Japan) as well as performing solo. Other live collaborators have included The Beast, Replicock, Alessandro Bosetti, Dave Smollen, Joseph Hammer and Caroliner among others.

Her current projects include compositions for Smegma, Replicock and Rodney Forest and collaborations with Nate Young of Wolf Eyes and John Weise.

Stewart was featured on the cover of modern music magazine The Wire in conjunction with a feature article on Smegma.

Reprinted from www.soundnet.org