FOSSILS “Dug” (Middle James Co.)

More murky malarkey from these OCD Ontario ontologists. “Dug” captures five summer live sets, two recorded in Michigan and three in Canada. Live, Fossils exhume a dryer corpse…there’s more air, open drift zones, brittle amp crackling, even some recognizable horns float up outta the noise-crawl quicksand. For some reason the proceedings sound less stoned/disorienting than their home-tracked stuff, which is either good or bad, depending on what kinda freak you are. I dig “Dug” though. Especially when the MC goes “And now, please give a warm rock action welcome to…..FOSSILS!!!” and like four mellow friends clap their hands. A solid C60/documentary of ancient junk mud oozing on microphones.

FOSSILS “Zombie Mystic” (Middle James Co.)

Brain-feeding mania from this tirelessly prolific Canuck weirdo duo/trio. Not even the most delusionally obsessive fan could map/fathom every permutation in the Fossils discography, there’s just way too much there. So, that said, don’t know where in the trajectory “Zombie Mystic” is situated, but it seems fairly representative of their overall no-mind, gonzo-fi, mixer-breathing marathon special FX generation. Nearly everything sounds pitch-shifted and tape-speed-manipulated, so essentially nothing’s identifiable as a human-world “instrument” as such, but that’s basically the point. Farting metal, resonant echoes, stretch-marked hallucinations…the Hamilton, Ontario retreat from reality continues, unabated, over the endless 90 minutes of this drool-quest. With trash art in a plastic bag.