The 2kDozen 500: #222 - Eardrum, "Last Light"

This came out in 1999 and it was in Peelie's record collection. It's a set of murky instrumentals (so far) driven by percussion and not so much else. Shapes looming around in the dark, leaving a fleeting idea of their menacing outline by low register sonar. My opinion of music seems to heighten around the turns of decades (with the possible exception of 2009/10, which was less distinct). As the Nineties faltered before the shiny monolith of Y2K, there was some good stuff about. Perhaps things just get a bit swampy.

"Lizard" is suitably alien. "Roach" gives things a Armageddon-ish feel. Drums like knives in a factory and shadowy bass noises. Cicada/Transformer noises open "Swamp Doctor", which becomes a brew of shuffling percussion, noises bumping around underwater and discomfort. "City Collision" has thumb pianos and dainty finger drums before getting pulled out and distended into something more spacious yet still threatening. Are drums just intrinsically threatening?

"Nightblind" is a bit more sultry, flute business kissing the air. "Plummet" starts with a raspy blast from a rusty trumpet before big drums make their presence felt and it goes a bit Pete Gong. An aerial assault from the Tibetan Yogic Flying Squad with flugelhorns flailing. There isn't much wormy about "Nightcrawler" - unless the worms wore body armour made of especially noisy metals and tumbled down the stairs. Phrenesis: I expect I might be making that word up. "From the Nucleus" sounds as though it comes from the unimaginably small spaces that exist between the science bits inside molecules that I just imagined. Noises suspended in holes.

"Low Order" skulks around in the gutter at the most downbeat, Salvia-sabotaged urban festival possible, jugglers juggling human waste and face painters daubing kids with turds while the rain watches and laughs and the dreams running down their faces and congealing in the drains. Something like that.

Rating: Percussion out of Threatening Thumps