GARBAGE BOY / QWIZZZZ
"Split Series Vol. III” (Orange Milk)




I’m not sure you can get a better description than the story of this release, which you can find on its Bandcamp page. I’m not going to go into too much detail here, but suffice it to say that there’s a dying blob and an alien rave – literally, I’m not making that up – and Garbage Boy and Qwizzzz do nothing with sound that doesn’t point directly to this narrative. The heaving, moaning blob in all the dramatic glory of its final heaves, the alien arrival and celebration in all its off-kilter majesty (including a “song from [the] leader” – really!) is perfectly encapsulated by the artists, captured in their primitive microphones for future generations to play back for when the aliens return for our blobby corpses. If that’s what they’re going to come back for. (And they are.)

I’ve been to this Split Series rodeo before, and while we’re waiting on blobs and aliens by staring at the decidedly crotch-y and ass-y cover art (by Garbage Boy himself!), I’ll regale you with tales of “where I end and you begin” … no I won’t. Garbage Boy’s side is distinctly Garbage Boy’s side, and likeqwize [sic] for Qwizzzz, so much so that it’s like a battle of who’s gonna turn out the weirdest jam. GB’s “Tenshun” (Japanese for “the middle,” or maybe it’s a fun spelling of “tension”?) gets points for dense electronic miasma and literal throes, and the comedy of a dying entity so different from us that it seems like slapstick is too rich to ignore. (Watch it die, it’s funny!) (I feel so gross for typing that.) Meanwhile, “suuuun Four” on the flip is almost twice as long, allowing extra craziness to creep in beyond the initial seasick electro-pulse dance party. Oh, that proto-grunge bass/vocals passage is so out of nowhere! I love it. Makes me think we packed some Sabbath on those Voyager Golden Records, which were subsequently discovered by a certain dead-blob-loving alien race. Circle of life.

As usual, Orange Milk comes blazing out with another batch of the most forward-thinking tunage imaginable, and Split Series Vol. III is simply the tip of the iceberg. Ho hum. How boring, constantly being barraged by game-changing sonics. It gets so old after a while.

Orange Milk

--Ryan Masteller