Form A Log / Moth Cock split LP

moth _ log FRONT
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To be released on 3/10/2016! 150g LP with insert. Mastered by Patrick Klem. Artwork by Sam Nigrosh (Grasshopper, Oozing Wound)

Hausu Mountain is delighted to present the long-fated union of two freak flagships on one slab of vinyl: the Form A Log / Moth Cock split LP. A network of scenes in the US noise underground consider these men and their projects to be champions of uninhibited experimentation, high watermarks of weirdness, and genuinely dedicated human beings. In their performances as Form A Log, Ren Schofield (Container), Noah Anthony (Profligate), and Rick Weaver (formerly Dinner Music) construct maniacal live collages from the playback of cassette tapes. As Moth Cock, Pat Modugno (Khaki Blazer) and Doug Gent (Steel Dangerous) fuse disfigured sampling and electronic processing with live clarinet and trumpet into sessions with few precedents in this sector of the galaxy. When each of these musicians plays solo, we witness a mind spread out its inventory before us, splattering chunks of sampled debris and corrupted rhythm on basement walls from Ohio to Rhode Island to Tennessee to Pennsylvania to Texas to wherever else the guys wake up. When they get together in their respective bands, their individual chaotic compulsions compound into a dynamic somewhere between ecstatic noise and surrealistic comedy. Both Form A Log and Moth Cock cherry pick performance strategies and sound sources from disparate traditions – electro-acoustic improv, hip-hop, techno, plunderphonics, free jazz, rock – and mash them into chimeric compositions that abandon all logic, opting to communicate in some looney primordial dialect beyond our understanding (and maybe even their own).

Form A Log and Moth Cock share a mastery of maxing out and otherwise exploiting systems of musical equipment that could seem obsolete in the face of advancing technologies. Form A Log performs with only a tape deck or two per person, as each member dials in his own fragments of prerecorded material at various degrees of synchronicity with the others. This process manages to cohere an improbable array of vocal hysterics, carnival-core synthesis, and loping beats into discrete “songs” that squirm over the semblances of rhythmic grids. The trio channels the bizarre textures and juxtapositions of collage practice into live sketches charged with the energy and random chance of improvisation, merging along the way into a composite personality with barely discernible components.

From a tiny rig of battered guitar pedals, a clarinet, and a trumpet, Moth Cock conjures a glorious mess of free music animated by stumbling grooves of sampled percussion and mutated melodic lead lines. The impossible disconnect between the humble physical reality of their duo configuration and the otherworldly depths to which their jams descend continues to baffle and astound humankind with each passing set. The tumbling scales of Gent’s clarinet morph through effects into the layered chatter of an electronic demon, while snippets of some forgotten soul track or Youtube detritus burst through Modugno’s loop pedal into a intensifying spread of cartoon interjections. Like Form A Log, Moth Cock ask listeners not to try and decipher their sessions, but to accept the twisted fruits of their collaboration for what they are: friends having fun together, losing themselves for a while, pushing their limits, zones.

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FORM A LOG PICS

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MOTH COCK PICS

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