Nate Carson and Joshua Blanchard on two decades away, Haunters outtakes, and the Skin Graft pressing.

Transmission 347: Interview with Point Line Plane

Point Line Plane is a Portland synth and drums duo formed by Joshua Blanchard and Nathan Carson. Across their first run in the early 2000s, the pair toured heavily through the United States, playing compressed sets built for maximum impact in minimum time, and issued two studio albums alongside the score to the unreleased haunted-house documentary Haunters. Working without a guitar, they built their material from keyboards, drums, and voice, moving from short bursts of speed and physical confrontation toward slower, denser pieces rooted in repetition and drone.

Title: Point Line Plane
Artist: Point Line Plane
Release Date: 2026-05-29
Genres: Experimental Music, No Wave, Noise Rock, Synth Punk
Label: SKiN GRAFT
Description: Point Line Plane's long-lost self-titled debut gets its first vinyl and digital release on 29 May 2026 via SKiN GRAFT Records. The Portland duo returns.

Along the way they shared bills with Deerhoof, Thurston Moore, US Maple, Don Caballero, Melt Banana (read our interview with Melt Banana), and various John Dwyer projects (read our interview with John Dwyer), among a broad cast of experimental underground acts active at the time. Their records reached number one on KDVS and drew airplay from John Peel. Blanchard had previously worked as a church organist and crematory operator; Carson co-founded the doom band Witch Mountain in 1997. After more than two decades away, the duo resumed activity in 2026 with the first vinyl pressing of their self-titled album, out May 29 on Skin Graft Records, remastered by Justin Weis from the original tapes tracked and mixed by Mookie K.

Before Point Line Plane, what were you doing musically? How did you decide to start playing together?

Nate Carson – Josh and I met when my kinda prog new wave band Moon Patrol (later Bishop of Battle) started playing shows up in Portland. He moved there from Salem shortly before I relocated from Corvallis. So we were both people who had moved to the city to make noise. His style of noise tended to follow pop formulas, but in really smart, nerdy ways. I loved his band Delano immediately, and his next group The Kremlin Bronx was so badass and underrated. Around the millennium we were hanging out a lot socially but playing in somewhat different circles. I had co-founded a doom metal band called Witch Mountain in ’97 and that group has ended up staying busy and productive, off and on until the current day. WM ended up taking a hiatus for a few years around the same time that Kremlin Bronx folded. Josh and I decided to see what making music together would be like. He wanted to go a little more outsider punk and I was eager to sink my teeth into some hooks and get outside of 6/8 for a while. It was instantly fun and fruitful and the two of us were able to accomplish a lot together, very quickly in an artistically satisfying way.

Twenty-two years after their last show, Point Line Plane return with the first vinyl pressing of their self-titled album, out May 29 on Skin Graft, and a reunion that started with a dream.

What was the Portland experimental scene like when you started, and how much did it shape the band?

Josh Blanchard – I moved to Portland as a sheltered teenage minister’s son, with a taste for strange music and media but very little knowledge beyond what I had cobbled together from the library and the radio. I started showing up at the local experimental nights and everyone there was very nerdy and accepting and probably happy just to have another seat filled. As the years went on the experimental scene became less academic and developed more along fashionista hipster performance paths, which honestly made for better live experiences but also more tendency towards snobbishness. Point Line Plane never fully inhabited that space as we were more melody focused, even if the songs could be harsh and damaged.

What were you listening to when Point Line Plane first took shape, and were there any unexpected influences?

Nate Carson – To start, The Birthday Party have always been “The Beatles of Noise” to me. There’s no higher bar. I was really impressed by Six Finger Satellite out of Providence who were kind of the godfathers of the damaged new wave noise scene that turned into the Fort Thunder community. Josh was getting deeply into krautrock and psych. We both loved The Stooges and Rudimentary Peni. As the band was developing in our minds and in the basement, we attended a few formative shows in 2001-2002 that kicked open the doors of musical possibilities. Four I recall being especially impressed by were (pre-robes) Sunn 0))), Glenn Branca’s Tentet+2, Flux Information Sciences, and Orthrelm. The audiences weren’t big for any of these yet, but you could tell there was interest building in avant garde music made with rock instruments. Of course we decided to skip the guitar part entirely and never looked back.

What was the atmosphere at your early shows like, and what kind of crowd did you draw?

Josh Blanchard – It was an odd brew of metal burnouts, synth nerds, drag queens and DIY punks. I don’t think there was one type of PLP fan. You either hated it or you felt energized by it. We had a goal of playing pretty much any gig we got offered for the first 3 months and then start getting choosy, so there were some strange gigs early on. We landed a solid opening slot for our first real show but we played a “new band night” a few days earlier at the old Satyricon to work out our bugs.

Point Line Plane has been dormant for 22 years. What brought you back, and why now?

Nate Carson – Even though we haven’t played music together since 2005, Josh and I have stayed good friends the whole time. In September 2025 he texted me that he’d had a dream about a PLP reunion. I said that sounded good to me and we just started making plans. Both our other main projects are a bit sidelined right now, which helps. Life is busy, but we’ve been making time for this because it’s fun, and honestly it ended too soon the first time.

Two hundred shows in three years, many of them just 20 minutes long. How did playing so many live shows in such a short time shape the way you wrote and performed?

Josh Blanchard – We got really good at riding the chaos of those shows. If something went wrong with the sound we just leaned into it. If the crowd was more physical and responsive then the show could become as much about performance and group catharsis as it was about music. After a while our songs were getting faster and shorter and more brutal. At some point we got burnt out on that constant intensity and wanted to get more into slower, denser music, which was the beginnings of the Smoke Signals album.

What did the restoration process feel like, going back into those recordings after so long?

Nate Carson – It was cool to be back in touch with our engineer and co-producer Mookie K. He did such great work tracking and mixing the album in the first place. We were so broke and so fortunate to have a benefactor with his ears and gear. My brainstorm at the time was to rent a giant wooden hall for three days and record there. That way, even though the album was recorded digitally, all that spacious reverb was totally natural. Every slow part on the album reveals how big that room was. Listen to the drum tones. Even though Mookie’s been having some pretty serious health issues lately, he dragged his oxygen tanks into the garage for us and unearthed all the original tracks. We didn’t “fix” or remix anything in particular, but we did make sure to get the best original mixes and send them off to a pro mastering engineer in the bay area who I’ve worked with many times named Justin Weis. After a few rounds we came up with the best sounding version of the album, particularly the vinyl. I just heard the test pressing for the first time tonight and in my opinion it is definitive. Only took 23 years to get to wax!

How has the dynamic between you evolved over 22 years apart?

Josh Blanchard – Nathan is still a little bitch. I am still a nihilist drunk. We love each other like family. We have been friends for 30 years and that never changed for a moment.

How did the haunted house documentary score come about, and what did it open up for you?

Nate Carson – Some good friends of mine had been working on Haunters for several years. By the time we got to it, it was close to final edit. They gave us a small budget and, along with our short-lived second synth-player Howard, got to work in my brother Merlin’s home studio. The three of us composed and recorded a bunch of spooky library music for the film. We also demoed most of the Smoke Signals album at the same time. I think the directors were happy with our work, but they were unfortunately out of energy to sell or promote the film, so it never came out. Maybe we can include a DVD as a bonus disc with the soundtrack album at some point. Even though it’s dated at this point, it is a really charming movie with great (and all too real) characters.

You’ve both done significant work in other projects since. What does returning to Point Line Plane give you that those projects don’t?

Josh Blanchard – I have been working with drum machines or click tracks for probably 15 years now. I played in an Italo disco band for years followed by an EBM industrial band for the last 7 years or so. I have missed the chaos of playing with a live drummer; hearing the 4-count of the sticks and just launching into it with this urgency, as opposed to slowly programming a drum sequence for hours. It’s also been great to scream again. I thought it might be a struggle but I am angrier than I’ve ever been, and rightly so.

Nate Carson – After playing primarily at 80bpm in Witch Mountain for the last 20 years, I had forgotten how goddamn fast I used to play. Jesus.

Where do you think the sound was heading before the band went quiet?

Nate Carson – Well, at that time we had made a blue album and a red album, so the next plan was to go green. Discussions in 2005 were of making a more ambient/drone record. I don’t think that’s where our heads are at now, though. We’re more likely to make new music that splits the difference between the red and blue ones and just sounds like us. To me the best bands sound like what comes out of the combination of the people playing in them. We never had particularly preconceived notions about PLP music. This is what Josh and I sound like together, and it is good.

Are there recordings from that period that haven’t been released yet?

Nate Carson – There are lots of demos, all the Haunters soundtrack material, and then singles, comp tracks, live recordings, rehearsal tapes… I made a point to document this band better than I had with my previous acts, so we definitely have it in mind to assemble the best of the rarities into a future release. There are a few songs that were written and performed but never recorded. Probably gonna have to do something about that…

Photos courtesy of Point Line Plane

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others