Russian Tsarlag

“The mid-aughts were something of a minor heyday for musical freakery untrammeled by the concern (or potential) of standard music-as-commerce success, and damn if that didn’t allow for some much stranger strangers to step up to the mic. These days the ‘biz’ has ebbed back to a more trad pop/product faux-indie status quo, but there’s still a small pack of unsung legends keeping shit immensely real, and almost none have kept on the long and winding path as vigilantly as Russian Tsarlag aka Russian Tsarcasm aka Carlos Gonzales. A visionary visual artist/cartoonist as well as a tireless traveler, the Great Tsarlag Roadshow has hitchhiked its wares through thousands of moldy basements and trash-art toilets over the last decade, and each fresh coat of grime seems to have only enhanced his singular strain of mutant zombie-rock. Like a lot of 4-trackers, the Tsarlag discography runs deep as a prison ditch but it’s dense with dirty jewels, and his latest, Classic Dog Control Booth, is no exception. Two bizarre, esoteric sides of minimalist swamp-surf and bedroom field recordings, CDCB is pure 180-proof Tsarlag, and a bright beacon of weird in a world gone generic. Get hip to his bleach party."--Not Not Fun