I try never to judge an album by its cover. Okay, I lied. That's often all I really have to go on. If I'd found this album in the back of a crate in a basement somewhere with a release date of 1972, I would have grabbed it up in a second, portable turntable or no. The cover is so reminiscent of Giorgio Moroder's "From Here To Eternity" that I would have had to assume Moroder was paying this guy tribute. Well, if any tribute is there it's in the other direction, because this album just came out last week. It's probably coincidence, because "Skelethal Antics" is nothing like Moroder in sound or substance. The music is minimally arranged, usually just a repeating bassline and a cheap-sounding, none-too-funky drum loop with someone wailing on a wind instrument that sounds somewhere between trumpet, soprano sax and harmonica. Yet somehow it is haunting, always just this side of grooving, often just this side of sad, and not categorizable with any words more specific than "weird." The second half loses the drums but doesn't add anything else, mostly just drones and sound effects. Is it recorded on a Tascam 4-track? It almost never has more than two or three instruments playing at once. Kind of refreshing. My only wish is that the weird up-beatness returned somewhere before the end. As it is the second half starts to grate on the nerves. Still, and again, if I'd found this record in a moldy basement somewhere, released in 1972, I would have come home, put it on and been amazed at my prodigious crate-digging skills. It sounds like the kind of dark, arcane gem I'm always dreaming of digging up from yesteryear. The fact that it is brand new gives me hope. Now I have one more actually living artist to keep tabs on.
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