Jensen Tjhung & Tom Lyngcoln - Escapist Blues

Escapist Blues is a collection of spoken word verse by author Jensen Tjhung and scored by Tom Lyngcoln. Ambitious and exhaustive, the collaboration began in 2019 and three years later is due for release on November 24th 2022 via Solar/Sonar Records. 

Whilst primarily notable for the musical spaces both Tjhung and Lyngcoln have occupied (Deaf Wish, Lower Plenty & Harmony, The Nation Blue respectively), Escapist Blues is long form and comprehensive in it’s construction. Missives from other worlds, hammered down one-way phone conversations and writ large with big sounds.

Twisted wit and weary wisdom are mashed into verses of hallucinatory confessionals. These pieces employ a sonic and descriptive architecture that builds tangible environments and situations that you can move around in and inhabit. Like it’s happening to you. But yes, these are claustrophobic spaces and you’ll be crawling or at the very least stooped.

The follow up release to 2021’s Old Fashioned Superstition (Hex Enduction Books) Tjhung’s words are drought dry and dense. At once hilarious and heartbreaking. Tjhung’s words tilt the borders of reality and yet somehow seem to smoke out the truth.

The instrumentation and production is all supplied by Lyngcoln, who bends field recording, electronics and his bastardised guitar into movements through which the readings pass. With guest appearances from drummer Lee Parker (Rot TV, Tol, Slug Guts), flautist Isobel D’Cruz (Hex Debt, Hantu), Saxophonist Maddy MacFarlane (Plaster of Paris) and Erica Dunn (Tropical Fuck Storm, Mod Con)

Recorded and mixed by Lyngcoln and mastered by universal converter Mikey Young, Escapist Blues is a collage of sounds and moments, from places that are at the same time lost and familiar, fictional or imagined but unmistakably Australian.

Limited to a single pressing of 300 hand numbered copies and manufactured locally by Program Records, Escapist Blues also features an 8 page booklet so you can read along. Artwork and typesetting by Duncan Blachford of Tempohaus.