William Davison and his five sous-chefs have been cooking up—yes, this disc is thoroughly cooked—their signature stews for over a decade now. This vinyl release documents their improvisatory web-toed amblings through the mutant sonic kitchen: each member chopping and dicing various ingredients—both delicious and repugnant—while Davison hovers over the frothing pot, deciding the exact proportions. Boiled samples bob about in the bubbling broth next to charred balloon-farts, the remnants of a discarded-pizza-box frottage, and the muffled death-bleats of an inbred toy keyboard. In other words, Davison mixes and manipulates various source sounds spontaneously furnished by five other musicians who perform on an obscene array of strange junk, toys, homebuilt contraptions, audio hardware, and bona fide musical instruments.
While thick, soupy, and full of flavours both fragrant and odious, as well as textures flaccid, mealy, and rubbery, the result is a treat. Davison and some of his cronies—notably Sherri Higgins and Toronto stalwart James Bailey—have been active in various fields of experimental music for quite sometime. This band lies between the outer reaches of collective electronic free-improv (AMM et. al), the surrealist crypto-concrète of Davison and Higgins’ chums Nurse With Wound. Over the course of two sidelong pieces, cockeyed loops swirl and clank about drunkenly amidst various disembodied debris and ghostly yawns.
