The Answer Is In The Beat

Longmont Potion Castle: 18 (D.U. Records, 2021)

May 1, 2021 at 6:30 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

After the unexpectedly normal-length 17, LPC returns to all-out bonus track galore hogwildness with the 20-track, 2-hour-plus 18. This one seems kind of like the last will and testament of Alex Trebek, because he’s on here a lot, and he sounds absolutely haggard and it’s more sobering than anything else. Add to that, it was clearly recorded during the height of COVID-19 lockdown, so restaurant workers aren’t too happy with his shenanigans. Honestly, I might be getting too old for this shit, but the tracks that end up with people screaming “STOP CALLING ME!!!!!” just aren’t doing it for me these days. They felt like an interesting character study sometimes before, but too often it just sounds like harassment now, and that’s not funny. That said, I will never get tired of the tracks where he just rambles off a bunch of jargon and confounds whoever he’s talking to, even those who purport to be the experts in their field (see “Shoot Smart”). And it’s always a fun time whenever the people on the other line actually realize how ridiculous he is, and either play along or recognize that it’s LPC, so they get it, and they’re super amused. The dude in “Commodore Babbit” seems pretty eager to talk about boats, until Alex unexpectedly pops up (and calls LPC a “son of a bitch”). The Game Stop call is nuts because of how he asks legitimate questions (even asking for early games like Pong and Asteroids) but then he keeps smearing his voice with all sorts of waves of echo, then ends up turning it into a sort of musical jam with a cool synth bassline, while he’s still having a conversation asking about products. “LPC 18 Theme” is a fun, crunchy guitar rock instrumental loaded with samples rapidly whizzing by. “Card Collector” is fun because of how he does the trippy delay vocal thing and then leads into him being a slick salesman type. Alex appears for a brief blip, and then LPC returns and brushes it off, like “sorry we got cut off there”. “Gentleman’s Quarters” is a sort of psychedelic pirate story, with bubbling water, fluctuating voices, “pond ramen”, and a hell of a lot of giggling from the other end. Totally fun and silly and the only appropriate reaction is to just lose your shit. And then “Wolverine” is an 11-minute train of people from bookstores talking to each other saying that someone was asking for books about subjects that happen to rhyme. Someone actually finds a book about wolverines, but then it turns out that the other person was actually asking about dopamine. And the thrash tracks are fun to just flop around to at 90 miles an hour and feel like your insides are about to burst out of your body. So yeah, he’s still got it, but it seems like the closing of a long chapter in the LPC saga, ushering in a Trebek-less future. SUBTERRANEAN TURNIPS!