About this item

Prison have been active since 2015, but if you didn’t catch them live in NYC, then you didn’t know - until late in the Summer of 2023, when ‘Upstate’ dropped. Prison hit HARD, with jams so long and varied, they had to have two titles each and the album was only four songs long, one per side. ‘Upstate’ was heavy, but always the fun kind. And there are so many other kinds of heavy yet to be.

‘Downstate’, the second official Prison stint, shows you some, stretching to insane new places while pumping out even more of the toughest jams around. Leap-hogging from one vibe to the next, Prison cop a variety of grooves, from minimalist (like Guru Guru), sweat-shaking (Stooges) and chaotic (No Trend) - it feels like they’re coming from everywhere! They switched it up in almost every way they could this time. But that’s just Prison being Prison.

At its core, Prison are a multi-headed beast, and ‘Downstate’ is built to showcase their swarming freakscene. Recording this one in Rockaway meant they could get Prison family and friends to drop in. Going ‘Downstate’ with core Prisoners Sarim Al-Rawi, Matt Lilly and Paul Major are guitarists Marc Razo and Adam Reich, bassist Matt Leibowitz and Dave Smoota Smith on trombone (his first time ever in Prison). Also present is the late, lamented Sam Jayne, a fellow lifer whose spirit will act as a guide for the rest of Prison’s time. All he brought to the session was a bottle of tequila. He just wanted to jam - and on all borrowed stuff too. He didn’t care.

With this many hands on deck, Prison play all kinds of things, from insane distorted rock to dreamy psychedelia, plus some jazzy and gutsy blues shit too. They got some of the lighter side of Prison in there, of course, in addition to screaming and slamming. It was all recorded in a day, with a couple of overdubs, but it took a while to get the mixes right. There were a lot of moments that they didn’t know would lead to anything, but when listening back later, then they heard where they were going. All that had to get in there somehow. Plus, they had to get the drums and the reverb right.

Another level to the sound on ‘Downstate’ is in the hard cuts and savvy fades in the edit. Matt Lilly sequenced the mixes at home using two CDJs fed into a Numark DJ deck and dubbed down live to cassette, then they sent the tape to engineer Matt Walsh to duplicate timings and fades and all that. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by critical mass while you’re listening, this could be why. It’s for sure part of what makes these forty-three minutes of time give anyone who listens an entire night’s worth of dreams! Like trapdoors taking you from where you thought you were standing to someplace entirely different, wondering if what just happened was ten seconds or one million years long.

TRACK LISTING

Millions Of Armies (Wipe 'Em Out)
Crocodile (Alligator)
Traveling Lady (In Prison)
Up In A Tree
Eyes For Keys
That's My Noise
Where's My Food
In The Tall Grass
Made For You
Down To County