The packaging ... well, "Ghoul Misogyny" is ... packaged just as you see here. Album As Art indeed!
LISTEN to “Gary’s Touch” by E. Danziger HERE
If I hadn’t abandoned my belief in god eons ago, I think “Ghoul Misogyny” might have been the straw that snapped the camel’s spine like a pretzel. How could something this BUCKED UP exist if there were any sort of order to the universe? I felt like I just got knife-fucked in the ear by a degenerate drunk, and that was before I listened to the latest E. Danziger joint. You should see my condition now!
I should warn you beforehand, the two sides of this coin couldn’t be more different. One is dedicated to sonic exploration and digital dragon vomit, the other a spoken-word brand of performance art/comedy/surrealism I can’t say I possess the tools to describe properly.
But here it goes: Napoleon Dynamite’s mentally disabled doppelganger starts making droolish prank phonecalls. He is reasonably funny, obsessed with Justin Pearson, Aaron Dilloway, Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon (OK, Sonic Youth in general) and other Chicago-linked bands like Microwaves. While it’s obvious to me this came from the K.K. Rampage camp on the “music” side, I was blindsided by the sheer retard gusto of the spoken word. It’s beyond the beyond of the beyond-pale, employing the sort of scare tactics that ruin political careers and scare pretenders out of the room.
Luckily, there’s also the aforementioned music side, which is much more palatable if you’re a tape trader/bottom-feeder type looking for a new scene to suck dry. Still rough as a bearded warlock, but more palatable. Lots of live drums spliced into the action along with the obligatory d-machines, plenty of fluid segues from genre to genre and idea to idea, lots of sparkling synths to get you all slippery and wanting in the night and guitar lines not doomed to chillwave hell.
And … WHAT’S THIS? There’s a moment halfway through where nearly unspeakable beauty shines through the clattering of furious tom-drumming, casio-bashing and speak-singing, and its icy keys and jarring rhythm are redolent of one of my all-time favorite never-made-it bands, Audio Ovni. It caught me by complete surprise and I’d venture there are synth-pop nuggets uptempo enough to pass for radio fodder in a pinch. THIS I can get behind. THIS I can understand. THIS doesn’t keep me up at night. Way to use that tape-length running time to stretch out those dick-stinky dogs, junior! UP-two, UP-two, UP-TWO, UPPP!!!
I’m still digesting this newfound prevalence of vocals-only insanity, however. For me it started with The Robert Delaney Radio Show 7-inch on Detox Records. Then came Kommissar Hjuler and Mama Baer (and they kept coming, and coming, and). I also count Cave Bears a member of this wooly wolf pack. I realize vocals-only albums have been done to death like every other musical possibility, but for such radical cluck-speak to make it this far into the conscienssness of even 50-100 people is a major victory for both artistic freedom and the demented side of human nature. I’ve seen people do sick things under pressure. So who (or what) is to blame when people do even sicker things when left to their own devices?
This is just the second week of operations for the Gumshoe Grove after a month-and-a-half of wrangling forced by a site shutdown, and it’s good to be back. I just saw a huge cockroach scurry across the floor like a crispy little crack monkey, and that always … that always gives me the willies. Anyhoo: I’ve got reviews of releases by Marcello Magliocchi (tape on Ultramarine), Bruce Hart (tape on Not Not Fun) and Sun Araw (7-inch on Monofonus Press) coming this week so don’t go straying too far just yet.
