The self-titled album arrives on 8-Bit Blue Vinyl via SKiN GRAFT Records on 29 May 2026
Joshua Blanchard cremated bodies and played church organ in the dark. Nathan Carson ran a doom metal band and booked tours for underground acts across the Pacific Northwest. Together, from a corner of early-2000s Portland that didn’t fit any of the available scenes, they made synth-and-drums music as Point Line Plane: three years of activity, 150 shows, two albums, a haunted house documentary score, and then silence.
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.
A synth-and-drums duo that cremated bodies, played church organ in the dark, and made noise music with pop hooks disappeared for twenty years; now the album nobody could find is finally on vinyl.
The first of those albums never stood a chance. Self-titled, co-released on CD by two small labels (Xeroid Records and Sincere Brutality), it went out of print before most people outside the college radio circuit had registered its existence. It has now been restored, remastered, and will be issued on 29 May 2026 by SKiN GRAFT Records on 8-Bit Blue Vinyl, with original artwork by Portland artist E*Rock on a collectible “Footlong” OBI. A CD edition with a bonus track (“Descender 2003”) follows. The single “8-Bit Graveyard” is already out.
PLP used the instrumentation of an electro act but played with the hostility of hardcore; they wrote hooks that surfaced through walls of distortion, then vanished before they could be called pop. Between 2002 and 2005, PLP shared stages with an improbable range of acts; doom bands, noise groups, art-rock outfits, and the occasional arena-level anomaly like The Presidents of the United States of America. On any given week they might open for Thurston Moore, close after Melt Banana (read our interview with Melt Banana), or split a bill with Khanate and Deerhoof on consecutive nights. John Peel played their tracks on the BBC; the freeform college station KDVS at UC Davis charted them at #1.
Their second album, Smoke Signals (2004), arrived on SKiN GRAFT Records after a brief period as a trio. The mood had shifted; the songs sat in tighter, more oppressive spaces, trading the early short-fuse energy for slow-building tension and hypnotic repetition.
Both members were active elsewhere. Blanchard also performed as Major Hex. Carson had co-founded Portland doom metal band Witch Mountain in 1997 with guitarist Rob Wrong; the group has since toured internationally and released albums on Profound Lore Records and Svart Records. He also runs Nanotear, a booking agency, hosts The Heavy Metal Sewïng Cïrcle on XRAY FM, and has published fiction including the novella Starr Creek (Lazy Fascist Press).
The original duo resumes in 2026 with Northwest dates alongside SKiN GRAFT labelmates Dazzling Killmen, and both acts are confirmed for Caterwaul Fest (5-7 June 2026, Zhora Darling, Minneapolis).
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