drankfromtheasphalt, Sunny

You ever hear of this mushroom fella Terrance McKenna? Among his ideas, he bucks the common belief in the solar-myth and a quest towards a inevitable eschatology pushing us forward and driving a lot of modern thinking; rather, he posits the future (or source, or universe, or whatever) has a certain gravity or pull for people, and there's great joy and power in tapping into that pull and riding it forward.

Something in this universe pulls me towards a certain brand of Weird stuff. I just picked this record at random at the store. What the hell is this album? The Negativland connection is fitting. The comparisons to Zappa or proto-Ween is fitting. Certainly not the sort of pick to energize the RC base; certainly.

I'm glad I had the recording, at least, to confirm the weird level distortions on track 2 weren't some artifact of the YouTube, but, rather, a creative decision.

Don't tell me how to wipe my ass!

The album's opening cacophony is an alarming cacophonous bit prior to opening up into the larger vista most of the album hangs out in. It's a hub-and-spoke model of an album where we live and pause in that vista, and then venture out into some new sounds, instruments, motifs, lyrics then returning back as we track through the album.

Eventually a few worn grooves emerged. Some of this stuff I dig, like the wailing of "My body!" Some of the stuff I don't dig, like the sadder wailing closing out the album. A wail for all seasons.

If you write a letter to my supervisor, he won't even care at all. Write a letter to my editor-in-chief instead.

Little introductions like the banjo, and the clarinet (or oboe or something?), are little spots that disrupt any feelings like "oh, track 3 sounds familiar," because ultimately, none of this is totally familiar. Maybe a mosaic or pastiche of stuff that's familiar. Maybe that's the experimentation going on.

Slowly I have found the words, slowly

All that rapid experimentation makes a product that, on the whole, is just alright and tough to carry along for too long. Earworms are buttressed by nonsense and the typical of recognition-emotion-memory is disrupted. Among other things that lack of memorable hooks and choruses is a point towards why there's like, no evidence of this band anymore. How quaint, no? Imagine getting your band together, finally getting 1-2-3 recordings made, and thirty years later a blogger can barely find one photo of your band floating around. I'm sure Fibulator is a representation of many, many other bands; all those memories, like tears in rain. That's both a fun and an oddity of rooting around used record stores.

When things get bitter, it can only get better.