only drummed on a third of the new album's studio tracks, and for the remaining songs his parts were handed over to a pair of session drummers. In January 1993, Andy Bernick departed to pursue ornithology for the remainder of the academic year and Damon's former roommate Morgan Andrews was brought in to fill in on bass guitar and assorted noises. It was this lineup that toured to support What To Do About Them and that appeared in the video for "Bell" from Blonder Tongue Audio Baton, which had already been completed but was not yet released. Named for an obscure piece of vintage musical equipment, Blonder Tongue Audio Baton made use of Mellotron, Moog, and other analog artifacts that the group had unearthed in the studio. During sequencing the band threw in numerous lo-fi compositions, soundbites, and rants, and collaged together an album jacket from arrays of found images and objects that matched the album's eclectic aesthetics. Hailed for melding "the high waters of shoegaze creativity and the mounting currents of indie rock", Blonder Tongue Audio Baton quickly rose to prominence in the American noise pop canon. After a semester of birding, Bernick returned and Swirlies enjoyed a brief period of performing as a quintet made up of two guitars, two bass guitars and a drum kit until Andrews left in June 1993 to become a radio DJ. At this point Blonder Tongue Audio Baton was released, and the band embarked on their first nation-wide tour with the original line up of Bernick, Carmody, Drucker, and Tutunjian. Later that year Swirlies released the Brokedick Car EP which contained remixes of songs from Blonder Tongue alongside a couple of outtakes. In Fall 1993, Ben Drucker was replaced by Anthony DeLuca on drums, and the band did a series of short tours on the East Coast college circuit. In January, 1994, the band did their first tour of Europe, which included a session recorded for John Peel. Directly after the tour, Seana Carmody left Swirlies to lead the pop group Syrup USA. 1994–1999: Sneaky Flutes and Salons Christina Files joined Swirlies on guitar, synths, and vocals in early 1994, and that summer the band began work on their next album. After being branded both "shoegaze"' and "chimp rock" early in their career, the band was exploring new musical directions and invented a name for their ethos, emblazoning it in the title