Between 1998 to 2005, Dave Bellard and I recorded and released four albums under the name Jesters Longevity. Since we haven’t lived in the same state since college in the early 90s, the music was the result of periodic intense weekends filled with creative experimentation, sonic exploration, and lots and lots of alcohol. We recorded wherever my home studio happened to be set up at the time starting in Murfreesboro, TN and ending in Mount Joy, PA.
For the most part, Jesters Longevity was a vanity side project for both of us bringing together my experience with audio production, songwriting, and music performance mixed with Dave’s experience with sound collage, beat manipulation, and experimental art. The resulting music combined a vast array of influences from art rock and post punk to industrial and ambient. It can likely be described as experimental psychedelic ambient dub. I know, that’s a mouthful and doesn’t really do much to understand what the music actually sounds like.
Since we were both actively involved in other personal creative projects, we didn’t put much energy into promoting the Jesters Longevity albums as they were released, short of garnering some press from zines and websites that focused on independently released and home recorded music. For the most part the music was recorded, released with little fanfare, and forgotten, with the only exception of using various tracks and soundtracks for different podcasts I produced over the years.
Dave and I recently decided to dig through the archives and compile all of the Jesters material we could find to build a proper online repository dedicated to the project. More on the archive coming soon.
Additionally, we agreed to pick our favorite tracks and begin working with the master files to remix and remaster a Jesters Longevity compilation for a 2021 release. I’ll be documenting the progress of these projects here on Erase the Filter under the JL blog post series. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a sample of our work from the Analog Dub Report album (1999). Video by Bellard.