Pigeonhed

Pigeonhed is a studio-only collaboration between renowned musician/producer/studio wizard Steve Fisk and Seattle singer Shawn Smith.

Shawn Smith is well known for his inimitable vocal stylings with Brad, a project with Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard who had a CD released by Epic last year, as well as with his current band Satchel.

Steve Fisk is something of a Pacific Northwest legend, and a cult favorite around the globe. In 1984, he joined the instrumental rock band Pell Mell, who released some records on SST and have recently reformed and been seen creeping around the Geffen offices. He is perhaps best known for production work on the first four Screaming Trees records, but his real creative musical juices were released via his own pioneering work with samples and tape manipulation. While these recordings (mostly between 1980 and 1987) were originally cassette-only releases on Olympia's K Records, they were compiled on CD in Fall of 1993 and released by K as Over And Through The Night. Perhaps Steve Fisk's greatest work, however, is on the 1991 Sub Pop release Prison, by the late poet/performer Steven Jesse Bernstein, on which he uses his instinctive musical genius and studio trickery to provide a soundtrack to Bernstein's Bukowski-esque spoken poetry. It is considered by many to be the finest Sub Pop release ever.

Pigeonhed (which features guitar by Soundgarden's Kim Thayil) can't easily be pigeonholed; it is dance without being dancefloor, it rocks without being rock, it grooves without being soul, and it is trippy without being psychedelia.

The overseas release of Pigeonhed last year created quite a stir in England and Europe, where it enjoyed much critical acclaim (Melody Maker proclaimed it one of the Top 10 albums of 1993) and huge popularity in clubs. Much of this spilled over to the States, where it received considerable play in dance clubs and college radio.