
Out April 7 2025
Half Ball Pit Half Bloodbath & Remixes
ALBUM DOWNLOAD:
PRESS RELEASE:
“I’m angry at the rich,” says Devin James Fry. “Arrogant, mostly white male twerps who build heedless corporations that sacrifice workers and the planet for profit.”
It’s anger that can turn inward for the former Name Sayers vocalist, who is entering his 16th year as owner/operator of boutique surgical sharpening firm The Sharpist. “One of the hellish parts of surviving capitalism is feeling complicit in it.”
“This song’s a Fuck You to that creeping complicity. I wanted to say it, and say it again, and keep saying it.”
Half Ball Pit Half Bloodbath & Remixes is a new single, served ten ways. Fry plays the agitator with three original versions, starting with the pared down gloom-bap of the album’s opener, and culminating in the lavish, heartstopping disco of album highlight “Can’t Say If It’s The Drugs.” Not content to go it alone, Fry, an active organizer with the Denver chapter of the Industrial Workers of The World, sought solidarity by tapping eight leading electronic artists from Denver’s heady and hard-partying modular synth scene, each of whom enthusiastically threw down all-hardware, no-laptop remixes of their own.
The result is a striking amount of variety, and Fry’s most adventurous release yet. Tracks by Denver synth maestro (and half of pioneering rap-and-electro duo Reverb and the Verse) manmademadman bookend the proceedings, quickening the pulse at track 2 before chilling the spine at track 9. A masterful rave-ready banger from Atonal Stimulant courses through the veins at track 3, setting the stage for a playful ALX-106 throwback fit for strobe-lit afters. Warped, inventive propulsion from techno purists Sxlf Destruct leaves listeners catching their breath during the opening bars of “Can’t Say If It’s The Drugs,” an ardent disco journey devised by Fry with lifelong best friend and collaborator Brendan Hunt. The album’s back half is anchored by Otem Rellik’s exquisitely hi-fi bedroom trip-hop, which goes toe to toe with hot & heavy industrial destruction courtesy Lincoln, Nebraska’s Plack Blague, the album’s only non-Denver contributor. Fry concludes this rally with the somber and sinuous taishogoto-fueled meditation No Last Warning.
Half Ball Pit Half Bloodbath & Remixes will be available on select streaming platforms April 7, 2025.
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Live at the Mohawk in Austin
July 6 2024
CREDITS
Composition, lyrics, modular synths, vocals for all tracks by Devin James Fry, with additional vocals by Cassandra Hayes
Additional composition, guitar, keyboards, and bass on Track 6 “Can’t Say If It’s The Drugs” by Brendan Hunt
Taishagoto, ukulele, bass, and percussion on Track 10 “No Last Warning” by Devin James Fry
Tracks 1, 6, and 10 recorded and mixed by Devin James Fry
Additional composition, recording, and mixing on remix tracks by their respective remixers.
Mastered by Max Lorenzen at Rare Ear in Lockhart, Texas
Cover photo by Cassandra Hayes
INTERVIEWS
PRESS

Out there with his weirdness in the best possible way."
Global Dance Electronic

"A wandering soul unafraid of the dark."
KUTX 98.9 (Austin, Texas)

"Somewhere between a horror film and an Americana answer to a young Nick Cave."
Los Angeles Times, 2008

"A musical shape-shifter ...
has moved from
a lighter sound
to something
more psychedelic,
something heavier."
WBEZ Chicago

Like Leonard Cohen on a DMT vision quest."
The Austin Chronicle

"Delivers a bitches brew of sound ... Fry's deep tenor imbues lyrics with ominous flavors, giving an eerie, radioactive flow."
Tattoo.com

"Far from the typical artist ... really, really, taking it there with his creations.
Breaking And Entering

"Multi instrumentalist & musical shaman."
OVRLD


Devin James Fry is a hardware musician in Denver, CO. He is former vocalist and songwriter for the art rock band Name Sayers and psychedelic Americana outfit Salesman.
Fry is also owner and operator of The Sharpist, a surgical sharpening firm specializing in B/HRT and OB/GYN surgical instruments.
Previously, a synth-heavy solo album titled RETRELLION was released in April 2023. In 2020, several years of collaboration with Palestinian oud master Sari Andoni yielded RADICANS, a mingling of Arab and American psychedelic and folk music influences.

