Mount Eerie is Washington State’s Phil Elverum, and various friends with whom he collaborates on records that blend grandiose artistic ambitions with lo-fi introspection. Mount Eerie is also the title of the last album Elverum released with the Microphones, a band that similarly consisted of Elverum with friends. A conceptual successor to the Microphones’ underground classic The Glow Pt. 2, 2003’s experimental Mount Eerie found Elverum dying, and ultimately discovering “the face of the Universe.” The album, which consisted of five long songs that confounded some fans, appeared to represent the culmination of Elverum’s output with the Microphones. “I went on an endless tour and stopped for the winter in northern Norway and died,” he once said. “The next spring I returned and pretended I was a different person and a different ‘band’ and ‘artist’ and ‘singer’ and everything. I began calling my songs ‘Mt. Eerie’ songs and working slowly on a new idea: Dark mountain, Mount Eerie, cold songs, grandmother’s face, and so on.” In both incarnations of his musical persona, Elverum is a cult figure adored for the cerebral musical riddles he presents, as well as the unusual packaging of his work—like the No Flashlight album, a vinyl release wrapped in a 6’x5’ double sided explanation sheet covered in notes, poems, drawings and photos alongside a CD version of the record. Possibly culminating this stage of his evolution, this year saw the release of both Mt Eerie pts. 6 & 7, a photographic coffee table book (plus a 10” record) and Don’t Smoke/Get Off the Internet, a 7” issued under the Microphones moniker. If all this seems confusing, you’ll just have to experience Elv(e)rum’s current songs of contented solitude for yourself when he rolls into Soundlab on Halloween, along with Privacy and Al Larson.

Wednesday, October 31 at 9pm. Soundlab, 110 Pearl St. (www.bigorbitgallery.org/soundlab). $6 with costume; $8 without.