Lexington’s Concentric Drone Cult was born a few years ago by local musician Michael Lunsford of Everyone Lives, Everyone Wins and Angelmaker (among others). Lunsford created Concentric when he first used the name to release material for his bands. The releases, called “Concentric Artifacts”, were originally all made by Michael, by hand. Today, an ever fluctuating number of contributors are responsible for crafting the artifacts. These contributors are the same musicians who submit their releases through the Cult’s blogspot.

Everyone Lives/Everyone Wins, Merkaba, Sonic Altar, Below, Ohlm, Lurking, Ghost Affirmation, Angelmaker, They Yearn For What They Fear, JTH, and Chris Harrison make up what is presumably the majority of the band roster. Due to the constant creation of new solo work and collaborations between members it’s hard to say if anyone actually knows how many bands are a part of Concentric at any given time. Mike maintains the Cult’s blogspot, posting new tracks and artwork from various cultists as well as announcing their upcoming activities such as tours and releases in progress.

All of the bands involved with Concentric produce some sort of extreme drone or metal alternative. Everyone Lives, Everyone Wins is definitely one of the bands to be associated with the former of the two, though some of their songs like In the Grip of the Ego bring respectable, heady riffs to the table which sit right on the boundary between metal and drone. I sat down with Mike and JTH (ELEW) and talked with them a bit about their work shortly before the most recent ELEW tour.

YANP: When did you guys start concentric? When did you first make the website, or when did you come up with the idea?
Mike: I guess the origin of it goes back a few years, from when I did the package for the first few Everyone Lives releases.
YANP: So it was birthed out of the band then?
Mike: Yeah, pretty much.
YANP: Cool. So was it something that you invited other people to be a part of it? Or did other bands and artists see what you were doing and then join in, or decide to collaborate?
Mike: It’s sort of a cloudy history. I don’t know.
YANP: I guess I’m just curious about how everything got started.
JTH: I imagine it stemmed from the close working relationships that a group of musicians had. Playing together and collaborating in live performance and on recordings. As we wanted to begin putting out artifacts of some of our sounds and ceremonies, and we started having material that wouldn’t be released in a tangible medium, we needed some infrastructure to get these releases out. We were all already working together, so we just needed the website to do that, and the record label to do that. I suppose that was part of the impetus. I suppose, the need to explain a little bit of what’s going on sort of lends itself to the blog as well.
YANP: So from the beginning, were you guys doing elaborate releases like Merkaba’s Bones Of The Sacred Forest, or was that a more recent idea?
Mike: Before that one, we had an Everyone Lives, Everyone Wins box that was conceptualized as three solo pieces on three discs, even though all three of us played on all three. we recorded them each at our own houses. That came with trinkets and artifacts from the recording sessions. Those are definitely two of the bigger ones that we’ve done. I guess the first thing that was put out was a re-release of a CD Matt had made called Birth From The Abyss which was actually the first time that he and I had ever played together.
YANP: Matt is in ELEW?
Mike: Yeah, we had been in a band together before but that was the first time we had ever gotten together like that, and he happened to record it. that got packaged in a huge oversized cardboard case, for a three inch disc.
JTH: It was just a wee babe.
Mike: Concentric was just born….
JTH: It took time to grow.
YANP: Haha!
Mike: From there, we kept kept recording, and kept looking for weird ways to put our stuff out. We collectively decided that we don’t like jewel cases.
YANP: So you’ve just been collaborating with more and more people and it turned into what it is now?
Mike: Yeah, pretty much. It’s definitely gotten bigger than any of us thought it would get.
YANP: Well, what all are you guys working on right now? I saw that you have the tour release in the works, but what else is there? Is it possible to name every single thing that every member is working on?
Mike: Uhh, no. Haha. We’ve occasionally tried to sit down and write it out, but we wind up just working on things as they come.
YANP: I see, there must be a lot to do. So-and-so’s always got a side project to work on.
Mike: So-and-so’s got four side projects.
YANP: So I ran into Nick the other day and he mentioned that the Merkaba full-length had been picked up for distro by a label somewhere in the midwest.
Mike: Eternal Warfare from Salem, Oregon is carrying it, and Pagan Flames from… somewhere in the Midwest (Cedar Rapids, Iowa). They just picked it up so now we have to mail those all of those copies out.
YANP: Right, that’s a lot of work. You guys do everything by hand always then?
Mike: Right.
YANP: Now, do you consider Concentric its own record label?
Mike: I don’t like to call it such.
YANP: What would you call it?
Mike: A group of people documenting what they do… in strange fashions.
YANP: What do you guys have planned after the ELEW tour as far as releases go?
JTH: I think the most significant release coming out at least for which work will resume after the tour is The Seven Steps to Everywhere DVD. It’s an audio and written version of our performance at the second Boomslang. So that will be our first DVD offering, and spoken word with a local guru- an educator of music will be included. It’s going to be an elaborate sort of product.
YANP: Sounds like something else. Who is this you’re talking about with the spoken word?
JTH: A teacher of music and the arts. He runs the Maupin International Conservatory for Music and The Arts. He is an incredible, dynamite human being with a lot of enthusiasm and positive insights to share. He teaches math, music, vocal performance. He was kind enough to lend some of his thoughts and ideas to that project. So some of his voice and all of his words will be presented in one form or another.
YANP: That sounds cool.

I sat down with members of another Concentric band, Merkaba. They are one of Concentric’s metal acts, more specifically Cascadian black metal. Their sound is very ambient and very heavy simultaneously, in the same vein as bands like Wolves in the Throne Room, Skagos, and Panopticon. They all make contributions to the Drone Cult and had their own insights to share about its nature.

YANP: So, Concentric. I know nothing about this at all.
G: It’s a drone… cult…
N: It’s a musical…
G: Collective.
N: Art, audio and visual. Michael created it. He and I do it together now just because I kind of forced myself into it and was like, “I’m just gonna start helping you do all this stuff.” Now we both kind of pull equal amounts of leg work. It’s his thing, but I’m just there and I help a lot. It’s a lot of fun. He created the blogspot just to kind of start to expose…
G: Unexposed artists.
N: Audio and visual. Garrett’s got a bunch of his visual art on there: some of his prints from school and certain images. Several people have submitted different pieces of art and different tracks. Everything is streamed, a lot of stuff is downloadable. We don’t post full-lengths on there or anything because obviously we put a lot of work into those, so we’re going to sell those, but Concentric put those out. Concentric put out, as what we call a “Concentric Artifact”, the Merkaba release, Bones Of The Sacred Forest was one. Michael does a solo project called Angelmaker, and that was the first thing that he put out. It kind of just started doing really good. We put out a whole series of splits for a bunch of bands in town and some of our friends from Ohlm in Louisville. It’s been a lot of fun. We actually just now put together a Concentric compilation that has 11 artists. Most of it is unreleased stuff. I’ve got a new thing on there that I’m doing that’s a solo project, Merkaba’s got a track off of the full length… several bands.
G: Who all is in the drone cult? There’s Merkaba, Everyone Lives…
N: … Sonic Altar, Below, Ohlm, Lurking, Ghost Affirmation, Angelmaker, TYFWTF, J-Loss, Chris Harrison.
YANP: Are you guys trying to turn it into a label at any point or is it just kind of free-floating?
N: It’s still just kind of free-floating at this point.
G: It’s sort of like a label because it’s producing physical things but it’s also not focused on that. It’s focused on the music, and I think that’s how it’s going to stay.
N: It’s a really communal-based kind of thing. We want everyone to be involved in it, so it’s kind of like whatever anybody has to offer, that’s what we’re gonna do.
YANP: For you by you?
N: Yeah, and everything we’ve done with the packaging we’ve done ourselves. It’s totally DIY. We use recycled materials- I’m making 50 cassette cases right now out of cardboard.
YANP: Do you guys have a base of operations?
N: Just our house.
YANP: The Merkaba house?
N: Mine and Michael’s house, Concentric House. We have Merkaba house, and Concentric house.