Instagon - Scary City (Love Earth Music)

To Lob‘s credit, he has consistently kept Instagon fresh and unpredictable, each album, each performance an entirely new entity to be released into the ether. With this combination book/CD, Instagon delivers a self-described “noise opera” about the seedy dark underbelly of urbanity.

The three title tracks, amended as “Sunrise,” “Afternoon” and “Nightfall,” set the timeline for this mythical city as harsh noise recordings encapsulating specific times of day. At just over 23 minutes, “Aboard thee Early Train to Unknown Loacations” (sic) weaves a dark, dank tapestry of filthy subway tiles, crowded platforms and bustling trains, an eerie backdrop to the mundane process of getting to work. “We Own This Corner,” “Under the Blue Lamp” and “Rum and Coke” are live musical improvisations with Frippian guitar lines circling around either a dub-ish rhythm section or just ethereal sounds. The ten minutes of “Spilled Beer and Superstition” are sparse, fractured and harsh elements that rise and fall spontaneously, a blender full of marbles.

The chapbook, Scary City, contains Lob’s poetry, verses to accompany each track on the CD. I’m not into poetry so I can’t comment on the relative merit of what’s written but, all in all, it’s an impressive package that recalls the heyday of noise releases where the packaging was almost as much fun as the recording itself.

It’s nice to hear experimental recording artists like Lob and his Instagon collective, who aren’t limited to only noise or only improvised jams, but bring the two together to create a unified, focused concept rather than mindless static assaults or directionless free-form improvisations. A unique approach and a clear vision make Instagon one of the best experimental acts alive today.