Mount Moriah Tocsin
(Alien Passengers) Cassette $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
“ ‘Diamond Ring’, is a relatively songlike blob with a tin-can drum box tapping away and loops so raw they sound like they were recorded onto masking tape. Jesse Dewlow’s vocals are delivered in a mush-mouthed monotone from beneath a crushing fog of room tone rumble and negative-fidelity hiss. Behind the obtuse nods toward song, form is a stream of errant chatter from an unrelated conversation. A shuffle of mundane extraneous incidental motion persists throughout the album, acting as a sort of anchor as the seasick loops degrade and warp… I hear ocean waves (on ‘Harboring Criminals’, which opens side two), the wind blowing on a microphone, the clicks of someone shifting in their chair. The atmosphere is one of a private performance that the listener is surreptitiously eavesdropping on. And then the album ends with a major catharsis: a full-sounding church organ and chanting punctuated by synth crackle.” c47