XOXO

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Well, it's January 5th and I can't see any record being released in 2000 that'll be weirder - or creepier - than this one. Extended Organ hail from the West Coast of the USA - specifically LA. Does creepy and weird music hail from those climes? Well, yes, actually. No further proof was needed than the hideously overlooked release a couple of years back of a 10 CD box set entitled The Lowest Form of Music - a collection of the wilder moments in the history of the undersung Los Angeles Free Music Society, a sound world where doo-wop rubs shoulders with gothic horror soundtracks and free improv with death metal. Extended Organ, appropriately enough, have their roots in the LAFMS, the foursome having performed over many years in many different combinations, but never in this incarnation. Who are they all then? Well, there's artist Paul McCarthy, whose FXed vocals give Mike Patton (in Fantômas mode) a run for his money in the scary, splatter movie stakes; and Fredrik Nilsen, an LAFMS founder, specialist in prepared guitar and dildo, apparently. Then there's Joe Potts, inventor of the chopped optigan, instruments cannibalised from 70s optical samplers. And last but not least, another LAFMS founder, and Nilsen's compadre in the Doo-Dooettes, Tom Recchion. Recchion was most recently heard as one of the contributors to David Toop's spoken word collection Hot Pants Idol (his was the best piece on the album, imho), and previously on the extraordinary Chaotica (also on Birdman) , an album of exotica cut-ups whose end results way outstrip its methodology. So there's about a century's worth of radical music history between these guys, and, boy, does it show. XOXO's press release describes it as three years in the making, and at once it sounds like that and an afternoon's work. For this is radically Free music, which has its roots in improv but eschews any music-making dogma. EO will grab a cornball pop riff as soon as they'll turn in a psych-organ solo. Or scream a lot. Or drone eerily for an hour or so (subjective time). Actually, this music genuinely comes closer than any I've heard to the sounds of my recurring infant nightmare (it involved swimming pools and hands, I seem to recall, but let's not go there... ), but don't let that put you off. This is masterful stuff, a sound world rendered as physical as any can be. Great start to the year, I reckon.