Josh Millrod / Shingles – Mugen: Volume 4

HAUSMO 10:  Josh Millrod / Shingles – Mugen: Volume 4

SOLD OUT! Across dozens of releases as drone/noise duo Grasshopper, with Hex Breaker Quartet, and solo, Josh Millrod and Jesse DeRosa have honed their improv intuitions, gear wisdom, and classically-trained chops to red-eyed perfection. Volume 4 of the Mugen series splits the hive mind down the middle into two incarnations of the dark magus and sends each out into a solo session with a brain, two hands, and something resembling a trumpet between them.

Shingles (Jesse DeRosa — founder of Baked Tapes) recorded his two sessions straight to tape as the bookends of a bender marking Harold Camping’s first projected date of the End Time. “Sunken City” sets off in the early morning with swells from Jesse’s electric trumpet overlapping in swathes of synthetic low-end. As he ornaments his master loop with more phrases and textures, the session blossoms into a droned-out not-quite-New-Age hymn majestic enough to herald the Apocalypse. But lo! The world survived to see another final jam. “Chromium,” recorded as the night’s victory celebration, shifts into the upper register, knitting e-trumpet melodies into a diamond sea that glistens and overflows and carries the mix off into the last fade.

On the mammoth “We Sorcerize,” Josh Millrod’s looping capabilities and effects manipulation transform his live trumpet output into a torrent of overwhelming “classical” “noise” that threatens to consume your stereo and your consciousness. Josh leads the session through dynamic passages of clean-tone harmonizing leads, damaged bass rumbles, squalls of free-jazz, and cascading fanfares. As these elements recur and compete for territory, you picture the coronation ceremony of the strongest and most beautiful Demon Lord ever to preside over the Nether Realms unfolding in your mind. You get to the part where Fire Rains Down From Above and right then Josh washes out everything in favor of a crushing low-end drone distorted enough to wake you from your reverie in time for the onslaught of the coda.

Released 7/22/2013.
SOLD OUT on cassette!
Stream or download this release (pay what you want) on Bandcamp.

Design by: Max
Pixel art by: Dannielle Del Rosario (figures) & Brian Griffith (front panel backgrounds)