Robert Devereux is a Pittsburgh musician who's leery of being pigeonholed (not that it would be easy to do in the first place); Jeff VanderMeer is a dark fantasy writer and winner of the World Fantasy Award. This cd is an interesting collaboration between the two -- unusual, often mysterious music to accompany VanderMeer's book CITY OF SAINTS AND MADMEN. The cd comes in a beautiful digipak with extensive notes and writing bound into the package, all of it exceptionally well-designed. I like that the notes include specifics about the songs themselves, elaborating on their relevance to the stories they accompany and how they were created. (I'm particularly intrigued by the story of the Moroccan record from 1954 where he found the first "Festival of the Squid," which he subsequently reworked for this album's song of the same name.)
The music is exotic-sounding, partly because of a heavy Middle Eastern sound prevalent throughout, but also because of its gestation methods. The music was written to accompany various selections from VanderMeer's book (an excerpt of his writing is included in the liner notes), and Devereux wanted an electronic sound without using electronics -- so he took the acoustic sounds of acoustic guitar, drums, piano, and Tuvan throat singing, then processed them. The result is an often-hypnotic, melodic, and tonally rich collection of soundscapes that do indeed simulate electronica while retaining the lovely sound of acoustic instruments. Helpful reference points would be Neurosis, Q. R. Ghazala, Tribe of Neurot (especially the collaboration with Walking Timebombs), Maeror Tri (even when the guitars aren't present or particularly upfront, there's a heavy experimental drone vibe floating through most of the album), techno, and Middle Eastern melodies, but Devereux's sonic palette is really too wide and vast to be confined to a handful of catchy motifs. Interesting and highly listenable sonic action. If you're hep to VanderMeer's thang, you should definitely try to lay your hands on this and let it spank your ears. Even if you care not one wee figgy-fig for the V-man, fear not -- the material stands up easily on its own, and it's well worth hearing. The Devil Kitty likes it; who are you to defy him?
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