John SchullerLesser Angel of FailureReview

Schuller is one of those musical eccentrics who inhabit the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S. in substantial numbers, drawing upon the area's peculiar convergence of styles, cultures and sensibilities.

The influences on this CD (as much as they can be untangled) are noise metal, dark ambient, industrial, Asian and world music, Native American and traditional folk - with rock and jazz more or less assumed. Subtitled the History of Misery Series, Volume One, from The Library of World Misery, this is predictably not a barrel of laughs, although the dominant mood is perhaps a kind of madcap gallows humour, i.e., "you gotta laugh to keep from cryin'."

The opening track, "another hanging," is a disturbed (and disturbing) dreamscape built around a stumbling but mesmerizing piano etude (as played by a not-very-precocious child during a daily practice), with an additional languid motif on electric guitar, and squalling figures from Eyvind Kang's violin.

This gently warped lyricism is soon displaced by "electric candyland," which is filled with distorted rumbling and overdriven guitar noises ranging from howls to sci-fi lab pulses and whines. One can almost see Igor emerging from the chemical fog, ready to do his master's bidding.

Without any transition at all, the listener is transported to some sort of faux Japanese court, where an artless, on-and-off-key male falsetto voice babbles inscrutable syllables over a repetitive organ riff. Then it's back to electronic static (with some crazed laughter) in "vanilla sufi," which evolves into another insistent, hypnotic pattern from Schuller's strummed zither, along with Bill Horist's rhythm guitar and some deep, thumping ritual percussion.And so it goes, for the entire ten selections on the CD, with one improbable musical scenario mutating into another. And another...

On one level, it would be easy to dismiss Lesser Angel of Failure as artless and crude. Indeed, the entire CD contains precious little evidence of any instrumental (or vocal) expertise. But that criticism would miss the point; the extraordinary impact of this music comes from the unlikely juxtapositions and configurations which force the mind (and ear) onto rutted, weed-infested roads leading to strange, unimaginable destinations.

Some tracks have a vaguely programmatic quality, e.g., "another hanging" sounds sad, disconnected and quietly unsettling, while "civil war bukakke" (a ragged march) has qualities of mindless, even obscene futility. Other pieces, though, such as "camel dragged to death" and "bulimian rhapsody," provide no obvious literal associations between titles and music, which is probably a very good thing (!).

Clearly, Schuller's work contains an element of parody, but most of his work is far too convincing, intense and unsettling to be dismissed (or appreciated) as some sort of ironic, po-mo diversion. You may hate this CD, or you may love it. It may just leave you scratching your head and muttering to yourself. But in a world of cookie-cutter, rubber stamp music, it surely stands out.