Viovox

Bob Harsh

Harsh- vocals, cello, violin, samples, loops

Bob Harsh does some righteously weird things here. He sets up swirling electrical fields of noise and on top of this overlays tapes of chopped-up, mystery-induced voices. On occasion he seems to make fun of these voices of the dead as on, well, “Bring Out the Dead” wherein he intones the very words the deceased (or at least the disembodied) speak. At other times Harsh sounds like a sidewalk crazy, as on “Rich Rule”; there’s very little parody here. During most of the record you can’t tell what Harsh is saying or singing or chanting. Syllables are lopped off, whole phrases are distorted. All of this creates radically new music, which is what you want, as they say. I’ve never heard C. Raudive’s tapes of alleged dead people but I don’t see how they could be stranger or more unsettling than this. Not for listeners who are transitioning out of institutions.

Public Eyesore  109

www.publiceyesore.com

Richard Grooms