feedbacula will destroy each phantom that has rule o’er man.
feedbacula will destroy the dominion of one over many, of the dead o’er the living, of matter over spirit.
feedbacula will break the power of the mighty, of law, of property, of Jesse Thomas (La Cosa) and Anna Gregoline (All Extinct Animals).
I don’t know much about feedbacula beyond their above mini-manifesto, other than that they are a married couple from the Chicago area. I came across their 2014 album Now the way I do so many unusual and interesting records – in the New Arrivals bin at a record shop, in this case Seattle’s Georgetown Records. And how did this avantgarde gem, of which only 100 copies were pressed, end up in Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood? I’ll never know. But I’m glad it did.
Sonically Now is a collection of sounds. The opening track “First Name Carlos” is a juxtaposition of metallic percussion, electronics, samples, and some kind of horn. It has an improvisational quality, one that is not totally random by any stretch, but a performance wherein given parts find their ways to the front at different times and in different ways before fading back or disappearing with the suddenness of a switch being flipped. That’s followed by “Brain Dead Devil” and we’ve taken a hard left turn, dark electronic sine waves undulating like a dangerous body of water and injected with tape manipulation and snippets of vocalizations, dragging you into an aural k-hole as you’re pulled under. Each track on Now has a different character. While the music might appear to lack a coherent approach, there are enough consistent elements threading throughout to keep the listener on the path. Shorter tracks like “Passion/Void” (1:57) and “Shorten The Prolonging” (1:20) are startling in their abruptness while longer pieces provide more opportunity for in-depth exploration, with “Brain Dead Devil” (6:30) and “I Think I’m Melting” (8:15) achieving full realization as stand-alone statements, sci-fi and psychological horror disassociating you from your present reality and transporting you somewhere… different, where the normal rules don’t apply and your normal fears and anxieties seem almost mundane by comparison.
Vinyl copies of Now are still available on the feedbacula Bandcamp page HERE, so go give it a listen and pick one up if you like it.