Biography
An anonymous resident of Colorado operates under the alias Longmont Potion Castle as a maker of prank phone calls. He has maintained this activity from the late 1980s onward, issuing more than a dozen albums that have cultivated a devoted audience drawn to eccentric and unconventional comedy. His approach shares little overlap with the confrontational tactics of prominent figures like the Jerky Boys or Crank Yankers, favoring instead an absurdist sensibility akin to the radio pieces of Scharpling & Wurster or the uncomfortable anti-comedy of Neil Hamburger. Common routines involve phoning businesses to request nonexistent merchandise, contacting random individuals with vague menaces, or impersonating a UPS worker who attempts to deliver outlandish shipments such as tanks filled with insects while insisting on payment. Every line emerges in an unflinching monotone, with his voice seldom rising, and his command of rapid one-liners and non-sequiturs stands unmatched. Recipients typically respond with confusion or fury, though occasional amusement surfaces, and in recent years some immediately identify the caller as Longmont Potion Castle. Early tapes sometimes omit his own voice entirely, preserving only the reactions of those confronted with his outlandish requests or remarks.
Beyond these activities, Longmont Potion Castle demonstrates considerable ability as a musician and studio engineer, incorporating thrash-metal instrumentals and collages built from samples throughout his releases. He further modifies his voice with a Digitech RDS 8000 digital delay unit, heightening the disorienting quality of the calls. Numerous rock, electronic, and experimental artists have drawn from his recordings, among them the Orb, Doormouse, Tit Wrench, and the Amino Acids. Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow counts himself a dedicated admirer, featuring LPC selections in DJ sets and receiving a remix treatment from Longmont Potion Castle on the track “Windshield Smasher.” Longmont Potion Castle also supplied guitar for a song on Electric Six’s 2007 album I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me from Being the Master.
As an idle teenager in the 1980s, he began capturing prank calls on his mother’s answering machine. His debut cassette surfaced in 1988, presented as a collection of material recovered from a dumpster. A second volume followed in 1992 and a third in 1995. All three appeared as ninety-minute cassettes on his own D.U. Records imprint and circulated mainly through mail order. Word-of-mouth interest prompted Vinyl Communications, the California noise label that issued early material by Kid606 and Lesser, to compile two Best of Longmont Potion Castle compact discs. Post Replica issued Vol. 4 in 2002, its artwork nodding to Black Sabbath’s fourth album of the same name, while Insides Music released the non-numerically titled Late-Eighties-Vein in 2003.
Beginning in 2004, Longmont Potion Castle reissued earlier albums on CD-R, trimming them slightly from the original cassettes. That year also saw a split 7-inch with the parrot-fronted grindcore band Hatebeak on Reptilian Records, followed by Vol. 5 in 2005. In 2006 he staged several solo thrash-metal performances, and the limited box set Longbox Option Package appeared, encompassing his complete discography plus a bonus disc of metal interludes and a DVD; at the time he described it as his final release. Vol. 6 nevertheless arrived in 2008.
Thereafter a new album has surfaced nearly every year, typically as a CD-R or digital download accompanied by bonus material. The double-LP 9 emerged in 2012 and contained one of his better-known pieces, a call placed to the Clown Motel in Tonopah, Nevada. Late in 2015 D.U. Records put out a split double LP pairing an album by the Seattle instrumental-rock outfit the Albert Lerner Trio with Longmont Potion Castle’s remix of that same album. Another limited box set followed later that year, compiling all prior releases with extra content, two DVDs, and a shirt. Around the same period he granted interviews to outlets including Rolling Stone, Vice, and The A.V. Club, and disclosed that work had begun on a documentary titled Where in the Hell Is the Lavender House? After 15 appeared in 2018, Burger Records issued the accompanying Lavender House soundtrack. The film premiered in 2019 and toured venues across the United States and Canada, after which each location placed a phone call to Longmont Potion Castle for audience questions and live prank calls. Selections from these exchanges surfaced on 16, while the five-and-a-half-hour Tour Line Live gathered every one.
Beyond these activities, Longmont Potion Castle demonstrates considerable ability as a musician and studio engineer, incorporating thrash-metal instrumentals and collages built from samples throughout his releases. He further modifies his voice with a Digitech RDS 8000 digital delay unit, heightening the disorienting quality of the calls. Numerous rock, electronic, and experimental artists have drawn from his recordings, among them the Orb, Doormouse, Tit Wrench, and the Amino Acids. Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow counts himself a dedicated admirer, featuring LPC selections in DJ sets and receiving a remix treatment from Longmont Potion Castle on the track “Windshield Smasher.” Longmont Potion Castle also supplied guitar for a song on Electric Six’s 2007 album I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me from Being the Master.
As an idle teenager in the 1980s, he began capturing prank calls on his mother’s answering machine. His debut cassette surfaced in 1988, presented as a collection of material recovered from a dumpster. A second volume followed in 1992 and a third in 1995. All three appeared as ninety-minute cassettes on his own D.U. Records imprint and circulated mainly through mail order. Word-of-mouth interest prompted Vinyl Communications, the California noise label that issued early material by Kid606 and Lesser, to compile two Best of Longmont Potion Castle compact discs. Post Replica issued Vol. 4 in 2002, its artwork nodding to Black Sabbath’s fourth album of the same name, while Insides Music released the non-numerically titled Late-Eighties-Vein in 2003.
Beginning in 2004, Longmont Potion Castle reissued earlier albums on CD-R, trimming them slightly from the original cassettes. That year also saw a split 7-inch with the parrot-fronted grindcore band Hatebeak on Reptilian Records, followed by Vol. 5 in 2005. In 2006 he staged several solo thrash-metal performances, and the limited box set Longbox Option Package appeared, encompassing his complete discography plus a bonus disc of metal interludes and a DVD; at the time he described it as his final release. Vol. 6 nevertheless arrived in 2008.
Thereafter a new album has surfaced nearly every year, typically as a CD-R or digital download accompanied by bonus material. The double-LP 9 emerged in 2012 and contained one of his better-known pieces, a call placed to the Clown Motel in Tonopah, Nevada. Late in 2015 D.U. Records put out a split double LP pairing an album by the Seattle instrumental-rock outfit the Albert Lerner Trio with Longmont Potion Castle’s remix of that same album. Another limited box set followed later that year, compiling all prior releases with extra content, two DVDs, and a shirt. Around the same period he granted interviews to outlets including Rolling Stone, Vice, and The A.V. Club, and disclosed that work had begun on a documentary titled Where in the Hell Is the Lavender House? After 15 appeared in 2018, Burger Records issued the accompanying Lavender House soundtrack. The film premiered in 2019 and toured venues across the United States and Canada, after which each location placed a phone call to Longmont Potion Castle for audience questions and live prank calls. Selections from these exchanges surfaced on 16, while the five-and-a-half-hour Tour Line Live gathered every one.
Albums