HR090 - Cancerous Growth - Desecration & Fornication - C90 — 1988
Side A:
Desecration-Live Improv. Toys For Tots Can't Even Stand To Wear Pants |
Side B:
Fornication-Live Improv. A Sticky Situation |
REVIEW by Jerry Kranitz
Cancerous Growth was the duo of Chris Phinney and Mike Jackson, and Desecration & Fornication is a 90-minute set of improvising electronic weirdness and fun.
‘Desecration – Live Improv’ opens Side A and is one of two tracks that include guest Mike Honeycutt (misspelled Hunnicutt on the credits). It starts off with spacey synths that soar and bleep along with roaring cosmic air raid signals against frantic tribal beats. But the percussion quickly recedes, taken over by swarms of competing electronics that get wildly frenzied. It’s a fun and crazy electronics ensemble of tinkling runs, R2D2, meteor shower chaos, wild percussion and haunting tripped out effects. Nearly 24 minutes of non-stop Forbidden Planet meets extra-terrestrial heaven after a lunch stop on a windswept asteroid.
Following this runaway UFO adventure is ‘Toys For Tots’, a considerably more sedate, experimental, minimalist affair. It consists of a repetitive pattern that sounds like a duo of crickets and croaking bullfrog, with mildly audible voice samples and sporadic, lightly melodic tone-drones
‘Can’t Even Stand To Wear Pants’ features a conversation between a man and woman, OR maybe two separate samples (from radio/tv), plus a droney, rhythmically varied palpitation and bloopy echoey synth notes. The voice samples seem to take on additional layers and get more garbled and chipmunk chattery. Guitar is added and combined with the synths creating a doomy space-drone-rock vibe to the music that all eventually gels into a menacing collage infused, claustrophobic ambient excursion with a tasty smattering of effects.
‘Fornication – Live improv’ kicks off the flip side and is another track where Cancerous Growth welcome guest Mike Honeycutt. Mike was one of the Memphis Mafia of experimental musicians and friends who collaborated in multiple configurations. Mike also recorded solo as Mystery Hearsay. This track sounds like a combination of electronic chamber ensemble and lo-fi, avant-garde sci-fi movie soundtrack. It’s got some cool mood generating keys that sound like a John Carpenter flick. At 24 minutes the music explores a variety of directions, all the while doing an excellent job of creating thematic imagery. The trio strike an impressive balance of weird, pleasant, gloomy, and whimsical.
‘A Sticky Situation’ is another lengthy excursion that closes the set. It’s a deep in space, free-wheeling electronics hodgepodge, but also has a soundtrack feel, though more 50s B-flick than John Carpenter. Mind-bending pulsations, engine revving drones, burps, gurgles, bleeps, and more. At times I felt like I was in a space station engine room surrounded by kazoo jamming alien insects and birds. Excellent sound exploration.
INTERVIEW with Chris Phinney and Mike Jackson by Jerry Kranitz
Jerry Kranitz (JK): The credits say all recorded on December 27, 1988. How did Mike Honeycutt get involved? Were you guys doing your duo recordings and Mike just dropped by or you brought him in for part of the recordings the same day?
Chris Phinney (CP): Mike came out to the house to record with us. He came over and brought his digital keyboard so we’d have something different.
JK: I see that except for Mike Jackson playing guitar, you’re both credited with the exact same gear: Korg Poly 8, Rogue Moog, ARP Axxe. Were those just synths/keys you both owned? Or were you trading off?
CP: We were trading off. There was one set of each. I used Korg Poly 8 on one, and then Mike used the Axxe, and back and forth. And we used a lot of Proverb 200, Digitech Time Machine, 7.6 second Sampler, Boss 3.5 second Digital Delay Sampler, Ibanez Analog Delay, Boss Distortion, and a homemade ring modulator.
Mike Jackson (MJ): It was all Chris’ gear. I was traveling by air and didn’t pack any equipment.
JK: You guys are in full flight on ‘Desecration’. It’s spaced out, loads of effects, what sounds like an air raid, wild tribal beats, and way more. I love the way all the contrasting elements come together.
CP: We got those crazy tribal beats from that Yamaha of Honeycutt’s. He does a good job of improvising. Jackson was in town from Boston for a couple days so we were recording as much as we could.
MJ: In retrospect it’s amusing that we created a sort of fusion (a synthesis really, but puns you know) of 3 stages of synthesizer history: Alan Pearlman’s pure analog, the Korg’s hybrid technology, and the
DX-7 which Honeycutt manages to make not sound overtly digital all the time. At times it’s fairly obvious what is what, but when those contrasting elements come together it’s pretty special.
JK: So you’ve got that lengthy wild track. But then it all dials way down on ‘Toys For Tots’, which is very minimal.
CP: Oh yeah. It was all toys! (laughs). It was all toys with effects.
JK: What kind of toys?
CP: Toy instruments, toy trucks, toy whatever the hell we had.
JK: Is that what all the cricket and bullfrog sounds were?
CP: I had a bullfrog clicker. And I had a wolf whistle clicker. You click them and they would make those sounds. And I had some Star Trek stuff too.
JK: What’s the joke behind the ‘Can’t Even Stand To Wear Pants’ title?
MJ: The only joke is that the “wear pants” sample sounds like Honeycutt!
CP: You can hear them saying they can’t even stand to wear pants. The samples. It was a doctor talking to a patient. We recorded a bunch of samples from doctor TV shows.
JK: Oh, ok. Because my next question was going to be where the voice samples were from? I couldn’t tell if the conversation was from a single source or separate. Because as the track progresses it sounds like more layers of voices seem to be added.
CP: It is. They’re all layered together. They’re just more and more samples from that same doctor show. He couldn’t wear pants because something was irritating the shit out of him and we just thought that was funny as hell.
MJ: I love how difficult it is to determine the nature of the consultation. Is the guy incompetent or a deviant? This is the magic of the 7.6 Time Machine in a multitrack setting...and Chris’ phenomenal synth work!
JK: That’s the one track I can clearly hear guitar on. Were there other tracks with guitar but maybe it’s efx’d and I don’t identify it?
CP: No, it was just that one track.
JK: I like the doomy space-drone-rock vibe on that track.
CP: The drone that’s behind everything… (laughs)… it’s a jumbled up effect. The words fly at you. In different directions.
JK: You had all the effects, voices, guitar, and at the end of the review I said how it all eventually gels into a menacing collage infused, claustrophobic ambient excursion. You guys developed it really nicely.
CP: We worked on that piece pretty hard.
MJ: It’s like we managed to marry NEGATIVLAND & THE LEGENDARY PINK DOTS sharing a joint!
I think Chris would agree that neither of us thought in those terms, but hindsight and all that sub-conscious hoodoo reveals hidden truths later in life. Nah, seriously this is my favorite CG track ever.
It was a true composition that, as Chris said, required work.
JK: ‘Fornication’ is one of my favorite tracks of the set. You guys did a great job of giving it a soundtrack feel.
CP: That’s what we were kind of shooting for. A sound sculpture kind of thing. I do sound sculptures today but they’re a little more high-pitched and droney than what we used to do back then.
JK: So even though it’s an improv are you guys having any advance discussion about where you’re going?
CP: No. You hear when somebody changes so you just know when to change. When you’ve jammed with somebody that long me and Jackson knew when to change and Honeycutt would follow suit.
MJ: I agree that by this point the trio had become much more disciplined as improvisers. We may have had pre-determined synth patches but no need for any direction beyond that. The soundtrack feel that you get is just the result of dedicated listening and responding in a responsible way. Improvisation is like architecture in that you don’t want to set up something that will collapse.
JK: Does the mixing change it much?
CP: Not really. The levels were pretty level. I think Honeycutt was a little bit too high. I had to pull him down some.
JK: I finished my review of ‘Fornication’ by commenting on the balance of weird, pleasant, gloomy, and whimsical. Again, all these different moods that come together really nicely.
MJ: Yes, we all inhaled our fair share of THE RESIDENTS as well!
CP: I’m glad you like that tape. It’s one of my favorite Cancerous Growth tapes.
JK: You guys recorded a lot of Cancerous Growth tapes so that’s high praise for a particular one.
CP: We did a lot for others labels too, but that’s my favorite on Harsh Reality itself.
JK: ‘A Sticky Situation’ is another one with a soundtrack feel, though very different from ‘Fornication’.
CP: There were tons of effects on that. 26 minutes worth of tones and burps. That was all basically ARP Axxe and Mogue Rogue.
JK: I described part of it in the review as kazoo jamming alien insects and birds. Was that just electronic effects producing those sounds?
CP: All electronic effects. No tapes.
MJ: Chris is being modest here. We knew our way around these synthesizers at this point. It was my first trip back to Memphis in a year and we were in top form! We had done a mail collaboration and Chris had come up to Boston by this time, but this session was the absolute motherfuckingshit!
Back at Harsh Reality...the cradle right? CG into the goddamn sunset! Over the Mississip! Accept no substitute!
JK: The cover art looks like something from an old EC horror comic or something like that.
CP: I don’t know where I got that from. I stole it from some comic. Tales of Terror, Tales From The Crypt, something like that.
JK: Your covers are always fun so I always have to ask about them.
Cancerous Growth was the duo of Chris Phinney and Mike Jackson, and Desecration & Fornication is a 90-minute set of improvising electronic weirdness and fun.
‘Desecration – Live Improv’ opens Side A and is one of two tracks that include guest Mike Honeycutt (misspelled Hunnicutt on the credits). It starts off with spacey synths that soar and bleep along with roaring cosmic air raid signals against frantic tribal beats. But the percussion quickly recedes, taken over by swarms of competing electronics that get wildly frenzied. It’s a fun and crazy electronics ensemble of tinkling runs, R2D2, meteor shower chaos, wild percussion and haunting tripped out effects. Nearly 24 minutes of non-stop Forbidden Planet meets extra-terrestrial heaven after a lunch stop on a windswept asteroid.
Following this runaway UFO adventure is ‘Toys For Tots’, a considerably more sedate, experimental, minimalist affair. It consists of a repetitive pattern that sounds like a duo of crickets and croaking bullfrog, with mildly audible voice samples and sporadic, lightly melodic tone-drones
‘Can’t Even Stand To Wear Pants’ features a conversation between a man and woman, OR maybe two separate samples (from radio/tv), plus a droney, rhythmically varied palpitation and bloopy echoey synth notes. The voice samples seem to take on additional layers and get more garbled and chipmunk chattery. Guitar is added and combined with the synths creating a doomy space-drone-rock vibe to the music that all eventually gels into a menacing collage infused, claustrophobic ambient excursion with a tasty smattering of effects.
‘Fornication – Live improv’ kicks off the flip side and is another track where Cancerous Growth welcome guest Mike Honeycutt. Mike was one of the Memphis Mafia of experimental musicians and friends who collaborated in multiple configurations. Mike also recorded solo as Mystery Hearsay. This track sounds like a combination of electronic chamber ensemble and lo-fi, avant-garde sci-fi movie soundtrack. It’s got some cool mood generating keys that sound like a John Carpenter flick. At 24 minutes the music explores a variety of directions, all the while doing an excellent job of creating thematic imagery. The trio strike an impressive balance of weird, pleasant, gloomy, and whimsical.
‘A Sticky Situation’ is another lengthy excursion that closes the set. It’s a deep in space, free-wheeling electronics hodgepodge, but also has a soundtrack feel, though more 50s B-flick than John Carpenter. Mind-bending pulsations, engine revving drones, burps, gurgles, bleeps, and more. At times I felt like I was in a space station engine room surrounded by kazoo jamming alien insects and birds. Excellent sound exploration.
INTERVIEW with Chris Phinney and Mike Jackson by Jerry Kranitz
Jerry Kranitz (JK): The credits say all recorded on December 27, 1988. How did Mike Honeycutt get involved? Were you guys doing your duo recordings and Mike just dropped by or you brought him in for part of the recordings the same day?
Chris Phinney (CP): Mike came out to the house to record with us. He came over and brought his digital keyboard so we’d have something different.
JK: I see that except for Mike Jackson playing guitar, you’re both credited with the exact same gear: Korg Poly 8, Rogue Moog, ARP Axxe. Were those just synths/keys you both owned? Or were you trading off?
CP: We were trading off. There was one set of each. I used Korg Poly 8 on one, and then Mike used the Axxe, and back and forth. And we used a lot of Proverb 200, Digitech Time Machine, 7.6 second Sampler, Boss 3.5 second Digital Delay Sampler, Ibanez Analog Delay, Boss Distortion, and a homemade ring modulator.
Mike Jackson (MJ): It was all Chris’ gear. I was traveling by air and didn’t pack any equipment.
JK: You guys are in full flight on ‘Desecration’. It’s spaced out, loads of effects, what sounds like an air raid, wild tribal beats, and way more. I love the way all the contrasting elements come together.
CP: We got those crazy tribal beats from that Yamaha of Honeycutt’s. He does a good job of improvising. Jackson was in town from Boston for a couple days so we were recording as much as we could.
MJ: In retrospect it’s amusing that we created a sort of fusion (a synthesis really, but puns you know) of 3 stages of synthesizer history: Alan Pearlman’s pure analog, the Korg’s hybrid technology, and the
DX-7 which Honeycutt manages to make not sound overtly digital all the time. At times it’s fairly obvious what is what, but when those contrasting elements come together it’s pretty special.
JK: So you’ve got that lengthy wild track. But then it all dials way down on ‘Toys For Tots’, which is very minimal.
CP: Oh yeah. It was all toys! (laughs). It was all toys with effects.
JK: What kind of toys?
CP: Toy instruments, toy trucks, toy whatever the hell we had.
JK: Is that what all the cricket and bullfrog sounds were?
CP: I had a bullfrog clicker. And I had a wolf whistle clicker. You click them and they would make those sounds. And I had some Star Trek stuff too.
JK: What’s the joke behind the ‘Can’t Even Stand To Wear Pants’ title?
MJ: The only joke is that the “wear pants” sample sounds like Honeycutt!
CP: You can hear them saying they can’t even stand to wear pants. The samples. It was a doctor talking to a patient. We recorded a bunch of samples from doctor TV shows.
JK: Oh, ok. Because my next question was going to be where the voice samples were from? I couldn’t tell if the conversation was from a single source or separate. Because as the track progresses it sounds like more layers of voices seem to be added.
CP: It is. They’re all layered together. They’re just more and more samples from that same doctor show. He couldn’t wear pants because something was irritating the shit out of him and we just thought that was funny as hell.
MJ: I love how difficult it is to determine the nature of the consultation. Is the guy incompetent or a deviant? This is the magic of the 7.6 Time Machine in a multitrack setting...and Chris’ phenomenal synth work!
JK: That’s the one track I can clearly hear guitar on. Were there other tracks with guitar but maybe it’s efx’d and I don’t identify it?
CP: No, it was just that one track.
JK: I like the doomy space-drone-rock vibe on that track.
CP: The drone that’s behind everything… (laughs)… it’s a jumbled up effect. The words fly at you. In different directions.
JK: You had all the effects, voices, guitar, and at the end of the review I said how it all eventually gels into a menacing collage infused, claustrophobic ambient excursion. You guys developed it really nicely.
CP: We worked on that piece pretty hard.
MJ: It’s like we managed to marry NEGATIVLAND & THE LEGENDARY PINK DOTS sharing a joint!
I think Chris would agree that neither of us thought in those terms, but hindsight and all that sub-conscious hoodoo reveals hidden truths later in life. Nah, seriously this is my favorite CG track ever.
It was a true composition that, as Chris said, required work.
JK: ‘Fornication’ is one of my favorite tracks of the set. You guys did a great job of giving it a soundtrack feel.
CP: That’s what we were kind of shooting for. A sound sculpture kind of thing. I do sound sculptures today but they’re a little more high-pitched and droney than what we used to do back then.
JK: So even though it’s an improv are you guys having any advance discussion about where you’re going?
CP: No. You hear when somebody changes so you just know when to change. When you’ve jammed with somebody that long me and Jackson knew when to change and Honeycutt would follow suit.
MJ: I agree that by this point the trio had become much more disciplined as improvisers. We may have had pre-determined synth patches but no need for any direction beyond that. The soundtrack feel that you get is just the result of dedicated listening and responding in a responsible way. Improvisation is like architecture in that you don’t want to set up something that will collapse.
JK: Does the mixing change it much?
CP: Not really. The levels were pretty level. I think Honeycutt was a little bit too high. I had to pull him down some.
JK: I finished my review of ‘Fornication’ by commenting on the balance of weird, pleasant, gloomy, and whimsical. Again, all these different moods that come together really nicely.
MJ: Yes, we all inhaled our fair share of THE RESIDENTS as well!
CP: I’m glad you like that tape. It’s one of my favorite Cancerous Growth tapes.
JK: You guys recorded a lot of Cancerous Growth tapes so that’s high praise for a particular one.
CP: We did a lot for others labels too, but that’s my favorite on Harsh Reality itself.
JK: ‘A Sticky Situation’ is another one with a soundtrack feel, though very different from ‘Fornication’.
CP: There were tons of effects on that. 26 minutes worth of tones and burps. That was all basically ARP Axxe and Mogue Rogue.
JK: I described part of it in the review as kazoo jamming alien insects and birds. Was that just electronic effects producing those sounds?
CP: All electronic effects. No tapes.
MJ: Chris is being modest here. We knew our way around these synthesizers at this point. It was my first trip back to Memphis in a year and we were in top form! We had done a mail collaboration and Chris had come up to Boston by this time, but this session was the absolute motherfuckingshit!
Back at Harsh Reality...the cradle right? CG into the goddamn sunset! Over the Mississip! Accept no substitute!
JK: The cover art looks like something from an old EC horror comic or something like that.
CP: I don’t know where I got that from. I stole it from some comic. Tales of Terror, Tales From The Crypt, something like that.
JK: Your covers are always fun so I always have to ask about them.