The Pax Recordings roster is obsessed with slurred detachment. The relative light of post-rock doesn't even reach the deep space niche of types like Matt Davignon, Ernesto Diaz-Infante, and Muck; it chokes and dies in the hovering junk cloud of a million unspooled reel to reels. Muck's Roc, in particular, barely registers as avant-garde, since the readout for its whispering and tape experimentalism is so muted. "Albert T. Carmichal, aka Ability to Communicate" (the proper nouns attached to this recording are too rich to be real) delivers lyrics like "Angels wild with the wind each night/Play their flutes on window ledges" in a barely audible monotone; the lyrics are like the half-speak of a zombie daydreamer, only truly discerned with the aid of liner notes. The "instrumentation," as it were, is as it won't. Muck lists everything from "4-track manipulations" and "60hz" to mic stands, pitchpipes, electronic percussions, and turntables as instruments on Roc, but good luck trying to hear any of that distinctly. "The New Ritual" and "Marcello's Angels" are backed by muddled, exceedingly slow series of sounds that never spike enough to count as noise, let alone music. And yet, Roc possesses a viscous gravity that's hard to outrun. At first, the air vent rumble of "In This Hour of Only Illusion" is punctuated with a few clanks and piano key stabs. But your mind soon starts to qualify the dull burble as a needle butting up against a rotating turntable spindle. Again, the lyrics are the loosest of frameworks. "Instrumental" and the lengthy "Sad Song" might offer the most definition here. Both set the levels to fluttering with what passes for a consistent beat; the latter even builds its rhythm from slowed and/or backward looping, à la IDM convention. Muck is a barely tastable acquired taste. It's essential for fans of antimusic stuff, particularly that on the far side of the Skam label.
© Johnny Loftus /TiVo