Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0072 (February 28, 2025)

If you’re buying nothing today, that’s cool and necessary, but these artists still need your support. Maybe tomorrow?

Doug Mosurock, PO Box 25717, Chicago IL 60625 USA

[email protected]

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HALI PALOMBO Kuddelmuddel CD (Chocolate Monk)

Strong works in sound sorcel from a Chicagoland artist who was manipulating wax cylinder recordings into harsh drone last time I had a chance to check in. The tracks of Kuddelmuddel add to that medium with field recordings of the hurdy-gurdy being played at area freak magnet  Bristol Renaissance Fair over the border in Wisconsin (seriously, this is the year I’m going), along with shortwave radio crackle and spasms, library sound effects and other by-products of automated life. Palombo still favors an all-keys-held-down deathdrone, but CD length gives a bit more of a canvas than tapes often afford, so we get consideration for the quieter aspects of human experience, stepping and tapping and finding rhythms in the disorder of life, from printer jams to crowd noise concerns. There’s a ton of dark heavy drone in here too, sometimes at tones and intensity that might find its way into more organized music, which is a great hook to employ (“Transientlantic” is the heights for this approach). At the point where you’re busy at work and becoming too aware of the functions you’re performing, repetitively – like listening to yourself type overcoming the output of this action – Kuddelmuddel will blur the line even further, and you won’t be alone thinking about these necessary, outmoded absurdities. Soon they may not be around to look back on.

More below the drop…