Craig Clouse, aka Shit & Shine, has been hanging out with his new Italian buddies at ArteTetra. Know how I know? He’s incorporated Italo disco into his repertoire like he was dropping solid gold trax at DFA. Maybe that’s not a surprise — there are more cowbells in Clouse’s native Texas than firearms, after all (wait, that can’t be true…).
And cowbells hang around the necks of cows, and ta-daa! — a “Cow” is born, a 24-minute head-bobbing bovineasaurus rex, side A of Musica Lavapiatti, which is literally “dishwasher music” for some reason (though the link for me between cows and dishwashers is tenuous — I’m surely missing a key point). But instead of staring into a terribly arranged appliance and slowly growing enraged at the amount of unmaximized space, I’m staring instead into the living soul of a funkified cattle drive incarnate, bovine butts wiggling across neon prairies as I fire twin six-shooters at the sky in celebration. I’m all hopped up on adrenaline and Lone Star freedom, watching the livestock shimmy in rhythmic unison while the smiling sun beats down upon my denim attire and ten-gallon hat, and the spaghetti western connection is not lost on me one bit.
Craig Clouse, aka Shit & Shine, has been hanging out with his Butthole Surfers records. Know how I know? He’s been dropping beats like fellow Texan Gibby Haynes drops big ol’ handfuls of blotter acid. Flip the tape over to side B to find out what I’m talking about. But first, this: did you know that hummingbirds are insanely territorial?
“Hummingbird” is 20 minutes of territoriality in sound form, flitting from feeder to feeder, ramming would-be sucker hummingbirds into submission before sipping the sweet, sweet nectar, then flitting around some more and ramming some more hummingbirds at top speed. You could say that hummingbirds are the assholes of the bird world. Maybe “Hummingbird” is the asshole of the crisply arranged house record world, slipping and skimming across frictionless space with highly concentrated movements, barely wavering in path and pattern like a krautrock Trochilidae inclined to whirr you into a stupor… and then eat all your nectar and probably ram you!
No, all of this is probably wrong in some deeply fundamental way.
Cop a tape from ArteTetra, ’cause you get nuthin’ digital ’cept these Soundcloud snippets!
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