SKANTAGIO

by SQUANDERERS

David Grubbs (Gastr Del Sol, The Red Krayola, Squirrel Bait, Bastro)    Wendy Eisenberg (Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet, Editrix, Whait)  Kramer (Butthole Surfers, John Zorn, Laraaji, The Fugs, etc...) 

Shimmy-2032  (Release date: August 22, 2025)

This is the 2nd LP from Squanderers.                                                

Their debut LP was "If a Body Meet a Body" -                                  (Shimmy-2028)                                                                                  released November 22, 2024

As on their first LP...

THERE ARE NO SYNTHESIZERS ANYWHERE ON THIS RECORD.

Squanderers is a trio featuring two guitars, and one bass. 

The 1st pressing is limited to 111 hand-numbered LPs on 150gm black vinyl, available exclusively HERE in the Shimmy-Shop & on Bandcamp. 

A Crystal-Clear vinyl pressing is also available. 

A download link for the LP is included with each Vinyl purchase.

"Skantagio is a word from Ancient Greek that means 'sounding lead' -- a rudimentary navigational instrument to determine depth in water -- and I learned of it through an interview that I did with Tony Conrad, where Tony had this to say: 

"All of this is a part of dredging the past up into the present and, like a sperm whale, taking in a huge mouthful of stuff and spitting out the water to leave the food behind. That idea of time as something that you see ahead or behind and then may not see at all straight ahead is an interesting metaphor. You can think of it that way, or you can think of time being visible in all of those aspects in the present."

It appeals to me as a word for taking a measurement, understanding the depth one finds oneself in, and doing so with the simplest means possible.

This new album follows upon the more active, preliminary explorations of “ If a Body Meet a Body “ with a deepening of trust and comfort with one another that one can practically hear unfolding in this sequence of improvisations -- still part of our first meeting. "First meeting, best meeting.” - David Grubbs, 2025

“We were in the studio for one day, and performed all of the pieces on that first LP ( Shimmy-2028 ‘If a Body Meet a Body’ ) prior to breaking for lunch.

This LP, 'SKANTAGIO', contains the pieces we performed AFTER lunch. We may be Squanderers, but we don't dally. And we don't labour over our spontaneous inventions while we're in the studio. Following the one-day recording session, I took the audio home and selected what I knew to be the best of what we'd done together on that day. It was not difficult. Listening to it afterward was more of a review and editing process, than a stressful series of hard choices that had to be made. There were no hard choices. The LP came together as seamlessly as the performances themselves. In a way, I’m making the LP in my head simultaneously with the making of the recordings and the live performance in the studio. I can see where an LP is going before the recording process is done. It's like 3D chess. I naturally think several moves ahead.“                                                      - Kramer (Quoted in Kaput Magazin)

Front cover painting by Vincent Van Gogh

Photography by Kramer

"...Tonal and textural shifts can be subtle, but the album rarely stagnates. What we’re left with is not so much a pristine work of collective genius as a testament to the transcendence that can occur when a group of individual geniuses sit down together with no greater aim than melding their minds for a while. ..."

-Pitchfork reviews "If a Body Meet a Body"