Mu + Peeling Wallpaper Ensemble, Mangled Guts

 

This is a tumble into educational madnesses; it's the matricide of my Buffalo Trace hangover that has mothered me all this day. It's how my bowels, neck muscles and brainwaves have functioned for 12 hours: a coarse chorus of bedlam, purposefully vindictive against my sanity. I was already in pain; this is pushing me past it.

Mu is here as Douglas Lucas, playing objects, some of them instruments, some of them not. The Peeling Wallpaper Ensemble are a pickled herring that surrounds, protracting sounds from the air made through some physical manipulations, as well. Jim Marlowe's baritone sax is murderous, clamping on and twisting. Kirk Mattingly has a guitar, which is always dangerous. And percussion is a sleight of hand performed by Raw Thug, a master of ceremonies unto its own entity, tucked behind the wrinkles of guitar feedback and cord tugs.

At points, the percussion is a jazz tap on hi-hats, while high-pitched wails cover the waterfront of the sax, moaning in tumultuous agony. Somebody left the fire going in the still and the moonshine is burnt, but I like my corn blackened. There is a calm in the confusion. A singing bowl is placed near my upset heart and wrung. Strings are plucked as a catgut harp. The beats increase as the sax begins to scale, and hover, ofttimes sounding like a wet balloon being pulled from The Blob. The guitar pinpricks the moon. And at 17 minutes in, everything you thought you could anchor to as nature, stops, strips and reassembles into an orbital crisis zone.

The second half of this barrage goes electronic whir and burr, and the noise begins. Feedback becomes our human geography, except the map was lost in the fiery still. This is when the Invaders take over. We are lost in the audial woods, and the Mu/Peeling Wallpaper Ensemble Blood Clan has the doused torch. The guitar unleashes sheets of fossilized intermetallic ballast and the road is cut. It trips. It flits. They backsource dirt fields and make them unsafe for play. Everyone is left holding their own grinding tooth in their hands, staring at the ground, hearing the ring of copper, getting lost in the guts, wriggling. So what.

This is a cassette released by Loin Seepage. It's available. Get it if you want 38 minutes of instrumentation that knows not of borders. I feel better now.

i got a candy bar. i got an apple. i got a cookie.

i got a rock.

i envy us.