23 Duets

23 Duets by Phog Masheeen is your opportunity to enter a wonderland of pulsing noise. Using dry-ice, shop vacs, trumpets, electronics and a home built aerophone called 'the Duodenum' (featured on the cover of 23 Duets) Phog Masheeen drives deep into the territory that only comes to view when field recordings, groove boxes and trumpets are collaged together in a post-modern mural of sound. Utilizing the esthetic of 'distortion is the new reverb.' Phog Masheeen paints with heavy strokes on a sound-field canvas. Swirling shapes, textures and colors are bent into shape by means of the digital audio workstation. Sometimes swirling like a dust devil on a dry lake, the music is on an unpredictable course that delivers the listener to the uncharted Hi-desert of the mind. If you want one track to get a 'Flava' for the 23 Duets experience. Try track 3 'Air Lock,' it features some dynamic dry-ice playing and pillowy bending of the 'duodenum.' The 'duodenum' is an instrument synthesized from a re-purposed motorcycle exhaust that is fitted with a trumpet mouthpiece receiver. It has a tone that will starch your socks. The recording environment for this CD was all over the map. Samples were collected at a palm oasis in the mojave desert, trumpet parts recorded in a quonset hut also in the desert. There the recordings were made during the summer and the hut was just a shade cooler than a ceramics kiln running at full power. You can feel the heat in the sound and performance. Look to track 8 titled 'You Can't Stop A Weed Species' for the oasis and the K-hut. Bullet holes is based on a sample recorded by a cell phone. That recording was from the return trip to a ad hoc gun range in the desert to recover steel objects that were riddled with bullet holes. The sound of the shards of bent metal scraping against each other in the back of a jeep on a bumpy road provided the genesis for 'Bullet Holes' Track 9. The track 'Bullet Holes is an exploration of the potential of a new genre..... country noise.