Javelin consists of two cousins, Tom Van Buskirk and George Langford. They started making music together in Providence, RI in 2004, although their earliest collaborative tapes date back to a bunk bedroom near the sea shore. The duo currently live in the booming metropolis of New York.
In performance, Javelin use colorfully painted boomboxes that form large speaker totems (“boombaatas”) which can hang from the ceiling or stack up on the floor like pyramids. The signal from the show is broadcast via FM transmitter, thereby fostering audience participation (B.Y.O.Boombox) or fueling battery-powered, mobile parties. The duo has played venues as diverse as the children’s branch of the Olneyville Public Library (RI), to the Museum of Modern Art (NY), both of which happened in the same week.
When not performing, Javelin is busy producing. Together they have amassed a vast catalogue of music, varying in its aesthetic range. Songs resemble the record collection from whence they spring, if not literally as when sampling, then figuratively as when past forms are cited and re-contextualized. Sounds range from broken dance jams to relaxed instrumental cut-ups, created with love on their MPCs. Long forgotten samples are chopped and re-assembled with drums, wooden recorders, old keyboards, handmade thumb pianos or whatever instruments are readily at hand. The result is a kind of mix tape fantasy (residing in the mythical “dollar bins of the future”), where R&B impresarios, amateur booty bass producers and Andean flautists hold equal sway.
Their first release is a self-titled 12” limited to 500 copies and housed in old used-bin record sleeves with hand-screened artwork. Some sleeves are willfully obscure and some are easily identifiable but all are unique! Keep an eye out for a second Thrill Jockey 12" early next year and then a full-length on Luaka Bop shortly thereafter.
