Audio collage, snip-snip, dance, and classical. Stirling and Romain - stuff for each of you here. Evocative and fascinating double album from Chicago-based videographer, audio artist, and label head Scott Marshall. Every track is a journey... and just as you figure out what’s going on it’s miles away and accelerating. Disc one (“Black”) is more enervating while Disc two (“White”) is more hypnotic—less snip-snip and slightly more traditional song structures. “White” also includes Marshall’s classical score for the ballet “The Sorceror’s Apprentice” by Scott Rink, based on the Dukas piece it’s named after. All in all, stunning. A significant addition to our music library. No FCCs, in my opinion. Start with: disc one: 2, 6, 12; disc two 1, 4, 6; and 10-16 as a piece.

Disc One “Black”
1. An instrumental space-dance track that begins with an extended collage of commercial messages... including “crunchy diarrhea.”
==> 2. Film noir heaviness. No beat per se for the first two minutes, then turns into a slow, smoky, Twin-Peaks-esque nightmare, then evolves to a female vocal trippy dance track.
3. Quick pat-a-pat percussion, then flashes of samples in an arpeggio fashion. Gets increasingly shambolic and psychedlic.
4. Jungle-ish. Cheesy house-style synth, then bass, then odd vox, then jungle-speed hissy percussion. Gets dreamy.
5. Starts with spoken word mash-up. Constructs a bizarre system of tensions using emotional vocals and noisy sounds.
==> 6. Begins very quietly, then guitar comes in. Female singer/songwriter snipped up. A cool, subtle tension piece.
7. Starts abruptly. Collage of commercial messages and brief musical samples. Vertigo-inducing. Ends abruptly. Under a minute long.
8. Smoky saxophones and demented male vocalizations. Then backwards vocals and bizarre sound effects. Then more commercial messages. At 3 minutes gains a dance beat. Fades.
9. More vocal mash-up than music to start. A few mentions of satan. A feel of scanning the radio dial, or perhaps a monkey playing with a radio dial. Becomes more regular & musical about 2 minutes in. End is dreamlike.
10. Begins with repeating, sung, cut-up male vocal. Quickly gets into collage madness. In one section, oddly processed vox sound like brain-dead zombies on a talk show. Ends with fading piano figure. DAT Politics have used a similar effect recently.
11. Begins with droney, spooky fx, then a mention of satan, then sped-up male vocals. Then more vocal collage and droney fx. Gets a bit apocalyptic.
==> 12. Begins with mention of a dinosaur, then GW Bush samples amid other bizarre vocal collage.
13. Repetitive vocal collage, not much music. Dog barking. Woman saying “you have great technique.” Man saying “block the histamines.” Nice accelerated, layered vocals.
14. Begins with a splash of noise and solo piano amid fx. Multilayered male & female vocals. Dreamy. Sex vocalizations (short of FCC violation, I think). Less than one minute long.

Disc Two “White”
==> (15) 1. Pretty & disconcerting. Snipped up keyboards, guitar, and female vocals. Nice false ending after 3 minutes.
(16) 2. Soft piano, flute, and fx. Gentle and yet very strange.
(17) 3. Repetitive piano arpeggio plus classical guitar. Lovely sleepytime music. Long, slow fade with just guitar.
==> (18) 4. Female gasps and male sniffs over repetitive fairy music. Ends with non-sequitur fx.
(19) 5. Sci-fi electronics a bit reminiscent of the quieter moments of Heldon... but super off-kilter. Gets louder and more confusing at 3 mins in. Wraps up and ends neatly.
==> (20) 6. Europop vocal loop plus backwards & foreign-language female vocal samples. Layering gets thicker & thinner. Nice tradeoff between saxophone and Europop loop. Fades.
(21) 7. Tracks 7 through 9 seem to form an extended piece, although they go to silence between tracks. Impressionistic strings plus musical snip-snip. Lots of tasty tape noise. No vocals. Sleepytime music. Under 2 mins. long.
(22) 8. More impressionistic strings plus animal sounds this time. Just over a minute long. Fades quickly.
(23) 9. Impressionistic but psychedelic with backwards stuff and stereo ping-ponging. Acoustic guitar based. Dog barks and fake bird sounds. Becomes insistent and a bit dizzying toward end. Slow fade.
==> (24) 10. Tracks 10 through 16 are a ballet piece than can be played continuously. Orchestral, impressionistic. Male vocal samples used instrumentally. Lovely and strange.
(25) 11. Orchestral with whispered German male vocals.
(26) 12. Sci-fi electronics plus orchestral and choral.
(27) 13. Allegro. And weird.
(28) 14. Dark, powerful. And weird. Includes processed male vox in German, I think.
(29) 15. Quiet, ominous. And weird. Forced, processed vocals, in German, I think.
(30) 16. Noir, retro -- bells and vinyl noise and vibes and flutes and choir. Short.