Tuesday, January 3, 2023

Lost in a funhouse with Gary Noland’s latest CD


Gary Noland’s latest CD, “Quotidian Diversions from the Moment of Reckoning,” offers an unrelenting array of impish, experimental, random-like sounds  as if lost in a funhouse. Over the 70-minute span of this recording, you’ll hear an occasional sprinkling of piano or organ-synthesizer and a lot of unusual percussive instruments that are usually considered a novelty, like the flexatone and sirens, to create springing, whirling, popping, slamming, crunching, whistling, and a myriad of other sounds, including the gasp of human voices here and there.

Noland and his five anagrammatic alter egos (e.g., Darnold Olly Yang, DollyGray Landon, and Orland Doy Glandly) command a dizzy platter of humorously named instruments, such as the pandahormonium, the double-crossilators, underarmonica, stench horn, smackbutt, nose fiddle, and killjoy buzzer. The titles of each piece are also witty, oddball, concoctions, such as Turpentine Marzipan, Aristobombastic Little Beasties Watchdogging Their Stanky, Piffulous Little Fiefdoms, and Distemperaneous Genericana.

So, if you are looking for an album of disconcertingly relaxing sounds “Quotidian Diversions from the Moment of Reckoning” might be what you are looking for. Then again, it might not.

It is available on soundcloud.com and will soon be on bandcamp.com.

No comments: