#Smegma #avant-garde #noise #experimental #electronic #sound collage #tape music #free improvisation #noisecore #musique concrete #sound art #Los Angeles Free Music Society
Another one out of the archives for a band whose name sounds like something from a Harold & Kumar movie and whose album titles and covers are clearly aimed more at shock value than any kind of artistic statement. I wonder how many disappointed punk fans back in the early eighties picked this up expecting anti-social shrieking, two-chord guitar feedback and audio stage-diving? Had to be a few at least. This was the group’s second studio effort I believe, coming nearly ten years after they formed in Los Angles and somewhere around the time they relocated to Portland, Oregon. The ‘songs’ here - using the term loosely since this stuff is noise experimentation so the concept of a song is a subjective matter of opinion - are somewhat more structured than the band’s third record ‘Smell the Remains’. For the most part each track is centered on some sort of repetitive, mostly musical structure usually coming either from guitar or from some sort of DJ’d taped-sound sequence. Around this the many contributors (17 people listed in the credits) lay down various embellishments using both traditional instruments (guitar, bass, drums, violin, flute) and some slightly less-conventional ones (electric mandolin, toy piano, kazoo). There are few vocals, and those that emerge are either from recorded sounds woven into the arrangements, or are brief, punk-inspired rantings mostly delivered from guitarist Harry Cess Poole (hmmm, wonder what that guy’s day job was). There’s even a sort of a tribute to “Several Species of Small Furry Animals” but in this case featuring cows (“Dying Cows with Putrid Not Praiseworthy Predation”).
I’m describing the music in rather sterile terms mostly because I’m not sure how else to write about it. This record came out in 1982, trailing the punk era and predating post-rock though well inside a brief window of experimental music that included folks like Laurie Anderson, early Art of Noise, and a couple of weird records from Robert Fripp and Andy Summers. But in the case of Smegma there’s a distinct level of experimentation with even the musical structures themselves, and clearly a lot of improvisation around a simple theme with few (if any) rules involved. In that respect I’d place this record a bit closer to folks like Set Fire to Flames, a bunch of classical and rock musicians who locked themselves in an old farmhouse and embarked on several days of sleep-deprived debauchery just to see what sort of music would come out of that experience. From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yeT_mPkFgA&list=PL-FqCeKWusJl7J17-McZXPvQhDtmRs5o4&index=25
Smegma is a long-running, influential Dadaist experimental noise collective. Noise fans might recognize Smegma from a collaborative album with Wolf Eyes called Beast. But if Smegma can be considered part of that scene, it's only by default: they've been making their psychedelic free-jazz noise for more than 25 years. They began by helping to found the Los Angeles Free Music Society, and have collaborated with everyone from Wild Man Fischer to Merzbow to the infamous rock critic Richard Meltzer along the way. The noise scene has grown unto them while they've kept a low profile and persistently crafted their avant-garde improvisations under the radar, firmly outside of the mainstream due to their confrontational sonics and formless compositions. (And, just maybe, the fact they named their band after uncircumcised dick leak). From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/7813-rumblings/
