The Answer Is In The Beat

Longmont Potion Castle: 17 (D.U. Records, 2020)

February 27, 2020 at 7:45 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

The newest LPC is somewhat of a back-to-basics release: only one disc, little more than an hour, and no bonus content, as far as I can tell. For the most part, it’s his typical “neighbor” scenarios, he calls random people (or not so random, there’s some reoccurring and familiar voices) and asks to borrow something or test something or deliver a package, and when they ask specifics, he dodges the subject and reiterates what he already said or adds some weird effects on his voice. There’s also a lot of patching different lines together on “Complect Calling” (no Trebek this time, though, for obvious reasons), and on this track, LPC almost seems like a conductor, commanding various orchestra members to play their parts while he stays silent. He does add a few twisted piano notes or sound effects, though. “Meat Medley” is simply a series of jump cuts from his various calls to butchers asking for bodily fluids. Probably the most gutbusting moment is when he calls somebody and adopts an exaggerated cowboy accent, calls himself Trent Tripp, and plays this utterly ridiculous “song” filled with rapidfire vocals that sound like chipmunks speaking in tongues. The runner up is “Netiquette”, a long sequence where he keeps rattling off jargon to someone at a company called System Solutions. After a while she keeps asking “are you a computer?”, and he typically keeps avoiding the question, which is just as ridiculous as anything he’s saying. He also calls someone claiming to be a massage therapist, but says that he plays saxophone during his sessions (the way he pronounces “saxophonist” is priceless), and adds some of his cheap MIDI saxophone playing in there. Not a fan of the track where he repeatedly calls a Motel 6 and asks them to patch him into this one woman’s room, though, that’s legit creepy.