Durham Label Begins Production on Poxperiment A

Poxperiment A is a recording project involving randomly generated bands featuring many of the Indie superstars from the Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh music scene, including members of Superchunk, the Rosebuds, the Sames, Cold Sides, Jett Rink, and many more.

Soon after the release of the critically acclaimed "Compulation: Songs from North Carolina," Durham label Pox World Empire began organizing a recording project called Poxperiment A.

Zeno Gill came up with the concept while gardening. The idea was to assemble dozens of respected musicians from the lauded Triangle music scene, randomly group them into "bands," then randomly assign an order in which for them to write and record their parts. The nice twist was that none of the band members would know the other members until the song was complete.

Gill began contacting people, and every musician he contacted was terribly enthusiastic. Soon, he had a roster of close to 60 musicians. He generated the bands and the orders within the bands, contacted the first musician to record for each band, and the project began. Oiginally, there were 13 bands with five or six members each, but Gill ran into a popular drummer whom he had overlooked, so he generated a "bonus band" by asking the first five additional musicians he thought of .

The process may take a few months, since many of the musicians involved tour regularly.

People can chart the progress of the project at www.poxworldempire.com/poxperiment-a.

Members of the following bands are involved: Superchunk, Polvo, Portastatic, The Rosebuds, Ben Davis and the Calculators, Cantwell Gomez & Jordan, The Carbines, Dom Casual, Evil Wiener, Cold Sides, des_ark, Family Dollar Pharaohs, Farblondjet, Goner, Jett Rink, Laramie UK, The Nein, Pleasant, Razzle, Regina Hexaphone, Roxotica, The Sames, Schooner, Shallow Be Thy Name, Shark Quest, The Sleepies, Sorry About Dresden, Utah!, Work Clothes, The Balance, Bellafea.