The oxen mentalists rose from the fecund ashes of a collegiate chemical mindfuck bonfire. tortured by their actualized entry into the adult herd, these thinking cattle sat down in the simmering glow of their home studio, lit candles, smoked pot, drank beer and gin and whiskey, dodged insane women and federal agents, programmed drums, played guitar and bass and cheap keyboards, and sang their dying fucking hearts cleanly out of their chests.

Their first album, Mid-Tempo, Mid-Twenties, was recorded in the living room of a tiny house in Scotts Valley, California.

Microscope, Telescope, their second album, was recorded in the rat-infested studio known as the murder room. a moist, moldy, nearly windowless, cinderblock walled room in a house in Boulder Creek, California.

Once thought lost, both of these albums were recovered, cleaned up by Emerald Cocktail, and made available here by the Oxen Media people.

After nearly five years without contact, the boys called me from a gas station in Garberville, California. They told me they had just spent the weekend in a deep woods cabin with a battery-powered 4track, a handful of acoustic instruments, and "enough food and drink to be almost so comfortable as to nearly neglect recording."

I told them a bit about this site, about how their old albums were still being listened to. The one I was talking with repeated everything I said to the other, sentence by sentence. They were both, at best, undeniably and profoundly drunk. Finally, the other took the phone from the first and asked me "You still live at the same place?" I said "sure" and the call went dead.

About six weeks later I receieved a package of CDs in the mail, eleven total, numbered with a red marker Roman-style, I through XI. A brief letter explained what the CDs were and asked me to forward them to the "website people." I put a copy of the CDs in the mail the same day, Ian F of Emerald Cocktail did his magic, and that's how we have the first music from the oxen mentalists in over half a decade: Shelby Creek I.

sincerely,

Doug "Big Ugly" Schmidchek
archivist, theoxenmentalists.com