Arrington de Dionyso

Multi-instrumentalist Arrington de Dionyso served as founding member and creative anchor of the experimental outfit Old Time Relijun. Because both parents worked as ministers, he passed the bulk of his early years inside churches, where he amused himself by experimenting on the available piano and organ whenever his parents were occupied. Recognizing his curiosity, they arranged formal piano instruction, yet the lessons left him dissatisfied; he abandoned them and set music-making aside while continuing to absorb ragas, African recordings, and any other material the neighborhood library offered on loan. After the household relocated to Spokane, Washington, he encountered live punk rock for the first time and resumed performing, now on guitar. While still in high school he assembled the informal group Ipsofoog, issued homemade cassettes on his own Pine Cone Alley imprint, and busked on downtown sidewalks. Once at college he discovered the chance to earn academic credit for four-track projects at one of Olympia, Washington’s progressive institutions. In his second year there he launched Old Time Relijun, whose sound fused the jagged attack of the Birthday Party with the freedom of jazz. Following a 1997 Pine Cone Alley release the band established ties with K Records. Although personnel shifted repeatedly, most visibly among drummers, de Dionyso’s guiding aesthetic remained the constant core. The first album issued under the name Arrington de Dionyso & the Old Time Relijun, Varieties of Religious Experience, appeared in 2003. I See Beyond the Black Sun moved in another direction, centering de Dionyso’s throat singing atop jaw-harp tones and a sustained baritone-clarinet drone. For the 2009 album Malaikat Dan Singa and the 2011 follow-up Suara Naga he reverted to an open-ended collaborative approach, bringing in guest players as his ensemble and releasing the results under the banner Arrington de Dionyso’s Malaikat Dan Singa. That project maintained an active touring schedule and resurfaced in 2013 with Open The Crown, an album that reunited the Beefheart-meets-Birthday Party rock drive of earlier Old Time Relijun work with de Dionyso’s more exploratory tendencies.