Audio By Carbonatix
Wit doesn’t turn up that often in classical or experimental music, perhaps because composers fear (often with good reason) that the presence of humor will cause observers to take the music less than seriously. But Cloidt, a composer and engineer based in Oakland, California, doesn’t suffer from that particular brand of timidity. As evidenced by this CD (released by Starkland, a Boulder label with a wonderful feel for sonic idiosyncrasy), he understands that absurdity, if used judiciously, can be absolutely sublime.
Take “Karoshi,” a Cloidt effort performed by Basso Bongo, a duo comprising electronic experts Amy Knoles and Robert Black. Some of its elements (squealing tires, odd squawks and howls, the sound of objects falling from great heights) seem straight out of a Roadrunner cartoon — yet their interaction with a nimble bass line, skittering percussion and a pace that keeps goosing the listener at regular intervals results in a ditty that tickles the brain like a cranial probe with a feather attached. Just as intriguing is “Jimi’s Fridge,” a collection of rising, feedback-like swells that Cloidt constructed from a sample of the whirring motor in his refrigerator, and three excerpts from “Exploded View,” a 1992 effort that wrings winning aural effects from strangled meows (“Cats”), offhand gurgles (“Baby Talk”) and a recalcitrant engine (“Auto/Motive”).
Such descriptions make Cloidt’s work seem merely daffy rather than transcendently so. But the title track, heard in two versions (the first by the Kronos Quartet, the second courtesy of the Paul Dresher Ensemble) that bookend the proceedings, puts his talents in perspective. Although it stops and starts, slows and speeds, yips and yaps, this jazzy number somehow maintains a sense of structural integrity. It’s not just a random collection of musicianly hijinks, but an honest-to-goodness song that happens to not regard fun as a sin on par with masturbating in a confessional booth.
By the standards of the genre, Kole Kat Krush is extremely accessible, but that doesn’t mean it’s simplistic. Listen long enough and you’ll discover just how smart a loony tune can be.
