Moth Cock perform a strain of improvised music that bridges the chasm between the free-jazz tradition and the noise underground. The duo processes live clarinet and trumpet through rudimentary effects into damaged squalls of electronic chaos set to mutated rhythms. Their unique performance tactics yield unforgettable live performances that have been documented on the grooves and spools of an increasing number of physical objects since their formation in 2009 – on labels like I Just Live Here, Human Conduct, Pizza Night, Cylindrical Habitat Modules, Tusco/Embassy, and Doug’s own Fairchild Tapes. Doug and Pat live in Kent, OH.
Quite simply, the best tape I’ve heard in a long long while. At times, I felt like I was listening to some old school Morton Subotnick shit. These jams are heads and tails above all but a very few “noise, synth or whatever” artists hitting it today. You must have this in your life. – Cassette Gods
What a tape though, folks. All buzzin’ flies and digital capillaries oozing blood-red through the prism of 1990s noise, with an extra helping of lazer. The word ‘busy’ comes to mind, and this time it might even be too much. […] There’s no sign of let-up, either. Plenty of fight in these dudes, and I salute them for it. Give me hell, purveyors of hand-crafted trips. – Tiny Mix Tapes
A fractured maze of clarinet sounds filtered through the bare pedal rig to break it into a million pieces and torment those pieces even further by continuing to break them apart. It is the sort of fucked up anti-music that you might expect from the freeform electronic units such as Supersilent or Mnemonists, although on a slightly more local scale. – Weed Temple
Rust Belt wind section Moth Cock has a penchant for creating its own language with the sole purpose of befuddlement. This often entails using clarinet and trumpet to get jazzy, like Benny Goodman jazzy. Yet, one member is a whacked out beatsmith so you can certainly bank on these guys freaking out the squares with their klezmer Black Dice schtick. – Ad Hoc FM
Moth Cock, what are you? The sound of sidewalks crumbling and skyscrapers sinking to the earth? Of an entire Bed Bath & Beyond’s worth of plates and dishes shattering? Of metallic beings from another planet stuck in a traffic jam? More logically, of moths fucking? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Moth Cock has made the only kind of Moth Cock music that Moth Cock could make, and that is Moth Cock. – Impose Magazine
[…] the cult legendary Mothcock duo – an Ohio based project that seems to transcend itself, and the boundaries of reality for that matter, every five seconds. Seriously, these guys are the epitome of enigmatic jamming and were no doubt beamed down from space (or Sheetz) for us to behold. Mothcock are a national treasure and are also the eighth and ninth Wonders of the World, non-debatable. – John Elliott (Spectrum Spools, formerly in Emeralds) for Sterile Criticism
