Cromagnon
Possibly THE most fucked up band ever to grace the planet, Cromagnon are the musical definition of indefinable. Before getting to the music, a bit of history is in order. Cromagnon are the duo of Austin Grasmere and Brian Elliott who, legend has it, were producers for a bunch of sugary sweet candy pop singles of the sixties. Alone, and probably on some sort of experimental disassociative drug, the two went through a Jekyll and Hyde transformation and became what is now known as Cromagnon. So in 1968, hidden away in their darkened cavern a top a large mountain in Connecticut; slouched, nervous and grunting, they came up with music from so far out of left field that it was simply too extreme for anyone at the time. And even by today's standards (which aren't exactly very sophisticated), the appropriately titled Orgasm is probably still too much for the human mind. Many have described their primitive music as some sort of precursor to Einstürzende Neubauten's early noise albums, Throbbing Gristle or most of the more extreme industrial scene and I tend to agree. Behind the mind-annihilating surface, Cromagnon's music (if you can even call it that) is one of the most demented approaches to pop music and a primitive noise record. There's no other way to describe it.
I first heard of this band when I was going trigger happy during those early days at emusic.com when there was no limit to the amount of music you could download (or so they said) from the site. I was very curious about Sun Ra at the time, busy discovering free jazz, and I had access to the whole ESP-Disk catalog which I pretty much completely downloaded. Among the artists that had wound up on my hard drive was the strangely isolated Cromagnon. I gave Caledonia a listen and once those bagpipes (!!!!!!) hit my eardrums, I was hooked. It was done, I probably listened to this track fifty times that evening. I won't speak about the whole album here as I want you all to read the review for a better understanding of what Cromagnon is all about. I've been fascinated by this album for years now, but it took a few years before I finally went ahead and ordered the damn thing (seeing as I absolutely wanted the Abraxas edition- having collected other ESP-Disk CDs from the same distributor). There were numerous times throughout the years when I was about to order it, but something else always came up, or I plain forgot to do it. After a sudden urge to listen to them again one wintry February night, I went ahead and finally did it. I am now at last able to sleep at night, knowing that this unstable little gem now has a home in my collection. Sadly, the duo have only made this one album, as if it had exhausted them drained them of all their creative energies, spent... but I love to try and imagine what a multiple Orgasm might have sounded like.
OrgasmLabel: ESP-Disk/Abraxas Records Release: 1968 Format: CD Cat. no: ESP2001 |
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