Seattle sound engineer Scott Colburn has gained notoriety for his
studio sorcery with Animal Collective, Mudhoney, and others, but his
most interesting work occurs under his Jabon guise. Dressed in a
“dark wizard robe and weird harlequin mask” and manipulating a
stack of analog keyboards, Jabon subsumes his ego—and his
surrounding environs—in chthonic tone poems written in
ectoplasmic free verse. It’s chilling, immersive stuff that deftly
jumps beyond the horror-film audio corn to which much “dark ambient”
music stoops. (Sunset Tavern, 5433 Ballard Ave NW, 784-4880. 9 pm,
$6, 21+.)
Dave Segal is a journalist and DJ living in Seattle. He has been writing about music since 1983. His stuff has appeared in Gale Research’s literary criticism series of reference books, Creem (when... More by Dave Segal