Smegma

If any experimental group deserves more accolades than they’ve received over the course of their career, it’s Smegma. A folk-noise-collage troupe who’ve been active since 1973, Smegma were synonymous in founding the LAFMS (Los Angeles Free Music Society), they have collaborated with Merzbow, Robert Pollard, Wildman Fisher and Wolf Eyes (whose key member Aaron Dilloway runs Hanson Records, the label that released this album). By all rights, Smegma deserve a place alongside Canada’s own the Nihilist Spasm Group and CCMC as being avant-garde noise originators. With Rumblings, the troupe’s first non-collaborative album of new material in nearly ten years (though it follows hot on the heels of their stellar Wolf Eyes collaboration, The Beast, on De Stijl), Smegma prove they’re still on top of their respective game and that their sound hasn’t aged one bit. The album runs the gamut of Smegma’s various styles, from their mysteriously filmic trains of musical thought ("In an Ornamental Garden,” "Rails (Uncoupled)”) to their familiar beat-poetry-infused noise collages ("Bunstuffer”) and anti-rock jamming ("Worms,” "Smoke”), Rumblings portrays Smegma’s discursive smattering of individualistic vision in a spacious light where life and art are indissolubly united.