There’s a band – they’re probably huge by now, their record’s out on
Jade Tree – called Dogs on Acid, and they’re from Philly and they play, like,
punky emo pop or something. It’s not my bag. The question, though, is what do
Dogs on Acid (or dogs on acid, in general) experience
while on said acid. I’m here to tell you, definitively, that they experience Dog Hallucination – not dog
hallucination, in general – but specifically, unquestionably, Dog
Hallucination. And probably Mitzi,
most likely.
The two dudes in DH, D. Petri and “Doggy P. Lips” (who always somehow
appears in quotes, as if he is in some way embarrassed by the fact that his
parents named him Doggy P. Lips and the quotation marks serve to throw the questioning
listener off the trail of what’s real and what’s not, sort of like this
parenthetical) have been plugging away at their masterwork since 2004, when
they began recording. They pressed stop in 2007. They pressed record again a
couple times between 2007 and 2011. They pressed stop again. Then they edited
this stuff together. It’s 2015 now, and this tape is out in a limited edition
of 25, and it comes in a modified DVD case with a cool booklet featuring all
kinds of crazy art. It looks really important.
Mitzi, presumably named after
the dog that graces the front cover, is a study in bedroom psychedelic
minimalism. Both members are multi-instrumentalists, and the tone is all over
the place, sometimes veering into instrumental Brian Jonestown Massacre jam
territory (“Parallel to Sunrise”) to noise experiments (“Mome Throes”) to raga
passages (“Synch”) to euphoric ambient (“Oddview Porcelain Evap”). Mostly it
just trips me out, man. In a good way. Leading me down passages of unparalleled
fantasy, and eschewing caution like it was never there to begin with. I’m
probably going to float away if I don’t put some rocks in my pockets.
These artists, this statement – I
don’t know why Dog Hallucination is what it is, and I don’t know why Mitzi is its crowning achievement,
taking eleven years to complete. It’s clearly a loving document to something by these guys, and it’s worth
paying attention to. It certainly feels like
something that could be conjured up during the enlightened hours of a wild trip
(maybe that’s what Dogs on Acid really needs, a bit of soul searching down a
different path). Maybe it’s still missing its ultimate piece, a feature film,
after the creation of which Dog Hallucination will “culma-terminate.” Or just maybe
the pup on the cover, pupils dilated and head cocked in curious metaphysical
stasis, is a spirit animal, and it made this music with its mind, and we’re all
figments of its consciousness, and within that stare we can be unimagined or
exalted at its whim. Who am I to say that this isn’t how it all really is?
--Ryan Masteller
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