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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Summary.
The Dallas collective Vas Deferens Organization, or VDO, founded by New Orleans-natives Matt Castille and Eric Lumbleau,
highlighted the link between psychedelic culture and the century-old cultures of dadaism and futurism. They specialized in a form of narrative nonsense for electronics and percussions that relied on a vast sonic puzzle.
The three mad suites of Transcontinental Conspiracy (1996), featuring Medicine's guitarist Brad Laner, fluctuated between the most childish compositions of Frank Zappa and the most daring pieces of the classical avantgarde.
Saturation (1996) combined the Mahavishnu Orchestra's wild jazz-rock with Terry Riley's keyboards-driven minimalism, musique concrete with raga.
Abandoning the reckless frenzy of those early works, the five compositions on Zyzzybaloubah (1997) flew with more aplomb, displaying a brainy, pretentious attitude where merry pranksters used to play.
Full bio.
(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
Vas Deferens Organization (VDO), a Dallas collective led by Matt Castille and Eric Lumbleau, both originally from Louisiana, promoted a highly personal and excessively surreal vision of psychedelic music. VDO was also a studio (relocated to New Orleans in 1998) that provided the quirkiest equipment to local psychedelic bands. Castille and Lumbleau recorded about ten cassettes as a result of their experiments. Their first vinyl was Miasmata (Womb Tunes, 1996).
With Brad Laner of Medicine, V.D.O. recorded Transcontinental Conspiracy (Quaquaversal Vinyl, 1996 Niklas, 2011), featuring three long Dadaist suites. Purely instrumental, these compositions rely on electronic techniques and tape manipulation. Their only connection to rock music is practically represented by the drums.
First Plane Not To Plummet Seaward (sixteen minutes) opens with an Eastern-inspired motif, a sort of bolero with jungle-like vocalizations, which shifts into a frenzied vibraphone carillon with tribal percussion in the background. The melody fragments until it becomes a hectic drum rhythm with electronic trills (a sort of proto "drums and bass" filtered through Morton Subotniks cacophonies), a phase of brilliant sound interlocking and layering that alone justifies the existence of the record. The music grows even more dissonant, as if the tape were being warped and played at variable speeds. Then the rhythm resumes relentlessly, and the synthesizers begin to sing like out-of-tune birds in a metal jungle. Percussion takes over again with a metallurgical cadence that leads into violent distortions, dissonances, and a chaotic sampling finale.
Last Few Days In The Land Of Happy Dreams (twenty minutes), featuring only Castille, Lumbleau, and Laner, is a more challenging piece, built with sampling and tape manipulation, populated by a heterogeneous crowd of harsh and often extreme sounds. Even when the drums enter (after seven minutes), the jam continues to dispense random dissonances. Lacking melodies and conventional rhythms, the suite thrives on highly agitated collages.
T (nine minutes) evokes an orchestra tuning its instruments. Nothing happens: the instruments simply emit disjointed sounds, as if seeking each other but never meeting, over a nerve-wracking background crackle.
The record can easily stand alongside the most important works of avant-garde music.
Castille and Lumbleau composed all the music for Saturation (VDO, 1996 Aether, 1997), credited to Vas Deferens Organization, while Jim Edgerton played all guitar and sitar parts. The music is wildly improvised, sometimes with free-jazz intensity and transcendence worthy of the Mahavishnu Orchestra (On The Threshold Of Some Great Discovery, a dense swarm of noises with a sinister synthesizer backdrop, or Beacon From A Nostalgic Future Past, a frenzied guitar improvisation over minimal keyboard textures la Terry Riley) and sometimes with typical raga-psychedelic fervor (Lazy Eyed Locusts In Defocused Landscapes, blending comical electronic wails, raga bursts, and gusts of guitar distortion).
Much of the record is even bolder, even more experimental. Purple Aerosol is opened and closed by an epic guitar theme, but in between there is space for a voice horrendously warped by electronics and for dark keyboard passages. The irreverent sketch of Amon Doo & Popol Poo (nine minutes) flirts with musique concrte (toilet flushes, door creaks, African tam-tams, bird chirps, bagpipes). The surreal pastiche of Transmissions From The Pineal Bandwidth is based on noises, as is the indecipherable finale of Headlong Plunge.
Vas Deferens push far beyond psychedelic rock. This is avant-garde music, inspired by the most radical experiences of free jazz and Dadaism. The album may show occasional naivety, but the duo demonstrates impressive talent.
Matt Castille also helped out Mazinga Phaser.
Vas Deferens Organization returned with the double 45 rpm EP Zyzzybaloubah (VDO, 1997 Aether, 1997), which contains five long suites. Not only are the compositions more carefully crafted and professionally produced, but each part is played with a level of care and diligence unusual for psychedelic punks, more akin to conservatory standards. VDO allow themselves more space (time) to fully develop their ideas. The frenzied collages of the previous album transform into organic flows of sound.
The sound of the album is completely different from its predecessor, as the sitar is absent and electronic keyboards abound. Alongside Castille and Lumbleau, Doug Ferguson is also credited with all arrangements and instruments.
Pongcraft is effectively a long guitar and electronics improvisation, a cerebral journey through the labyrinths of the psyche reminiscent of the boldest fugues of Helios Creed and Jimi Hendrix. Effortless Pilgrimage immerses itself in Eastern spirituality, with that sustained drone typical of mantras and quick strumming borrowed from raga. Futura Perspective is simultaneously two things: the first part crowns the progression toward increasingly artificial sounds with a sort of cross between Edgar Varses electronic poem and the industrial music of Throbbing Gristle, while the second part recovers rhythm (a driving drum beat). Only the finale of Zyzzybaloubah indulges in the customary cosmic-psychedelic abysses.
Sweat Your Cheeses (Charnel, 1997) is VDOs first CD (excluding reissues), following on from locally distributed cassettes and records.
Once again, their instrumental pieces draw on the most cacophonous and provocative experiments in avant-garde music. Their technological approach is that of Marinetti. Their humor is that of Dada. Grand synth and percussion bacchanals like Reverie evoke a clownish version of Crash Worship. Paradoxical nonsense, tinged with extreme infantilism, as in Whirling Dervish and Tao City Hovercraft, recall the pastiches of Were Only In It For The Money (Frank Zappa). Equal parts Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Henry, and This Heat mingle in the concrete music and industrial rhythms of The Matmos and Cyclone. The rhythm suddenly takes shape with Modular Squad, and one really feels like witnessing one of Crash Worships apocalyptic shows.
Everything feels amateurish and comical enough to classify the project within rock rather than classical music. The only disappointment is that the group sacrificed the legendary marathon improvisations in favor of a tighter, more polished format.
J. Bone Cro (aka J. Scott Sutton, guitar, accordion, saxophone, and flute) entered the VDO orbit with Music That Aliens Left Behind (Womb Tunes, 1995), followed by For Crying Out Loud (Womb Tunes/Rockadelic, 1996) and especially Late Nite Songs (Womb Tunes, 1996), which carries the ghost of Jimi Hendrix (Sonny's Blues System, Fell In Love With The Pain). Sutton later changed his name to Jaloppy and released Jaloppy / Vas Deferens Organization (Womb Tunes, 1996) and especially Owners Manual (Womb Tunes, 1997). The collection of distorted ballads Walking Off Naked (Womb Tunes, 1999) is, however, a minor disappointment.
As My Mind Drifts Off (Womb Tunes, 1995), credited to Dragline, is a collaboration between J. Bone Cro and Castille.
Tone Float was a Texas supergroup that included Matt Castille, Ohms Doug Ferguson, and Mazinga Phasers Wanz Dover. Musik Von Tone Float (Timothy's Brain, 1997) is something of a tribute to 1970s German rock (Tone Float being the title of Kraftwerks proto-album before they renamed themselves Kraftwerk) and ranges from Tangerine Dream-style cosmic symphonies (Shangri-La Mirage) to Guru Guru-like extravaganzas (Tonight We Sleep With The Eggroll King).
In The Summer Of The Mushroom Honey (Aether, 1998) is the product of an underground supergroup formed by members of four Midwest bands. In total, about ten musicians rotate through the album, mostly guitarists and percussionists (though no one plays on all five tracks). One of them, Stan Denski, also produced the record. Almost all are present on I Am Aware Of My Heart, which displays the most complex groove, an intricate tangle of percussion and side sounds, while Richelle Toombs (of Tombstone Valentine) delivers her possessed, Patti Smithlike sermon and guitarist Daniel Noland accompanies her with a repeating, Indian-flavored melody.
Deep Beneath The Water (Toombs plus five-sixths of Faraday Cage) veers toward psychedelic folk-rock in the vein of Its A Beautiful Day and Jefferson Starship, with Toombs cast as an even darker Grace Slick. Thank You Mr Bishop is an improvised jam of electric guitars, overflowing with feedback and glissandi. The album is certainly naive and scattered, but the concept harks back to the legendary days of acid rocknot only in sound but in spirit.
Queas And Art (Eerie Materials, 1998) collects material recorded by VDO on cassette between 1992 and 1995.
Muz is the pseudonym under which Matt Castille records a long suite of psychedelic excesses with the help of David Fargason, starting with Muz (Skill Crane Kollektiv, 1998) and Featuring Frankie Teadrop (Tekito, 1999).
David Fargason is the third member of VDO on Idiot Parade (Eerie Materials, 1999). The album presents them in a more serious but no less crazy guise, in the tradition of iconoclastic composers like Frank Zappa, Edgar Varese, and Sun Ra. The suites are driven by increasingly daring layers and cycles, reveling in ever more whimsical electronic timbres (theremin, Moog, samples).
(Original English text by Piero Scaruffi)
In 1999 the Vas Deferens Organization returned with two mini-albums.
Drug Bubbles (Tekito, 1999), composed and played by Castille, Lumbleau,
Ferguson and Jim Edgerton, features a total of 20 tracks divided into three
parts of an ideal food menu. Each of the three suites is a collage of
micro avantgarde concerts. Hors D'Oeuvres and Entrees
are chaotic and noisy to the extreme and have little in common with
common sense popular music.
Candies And Confections boasts a more musical approach
and a fluid disposition of the (seven) fragments.
While this half-baked affair cannot compare with VDO's more ambitious works
of the past, it shows an increasing familiarity with the studio techniques
and a genuine aspiration for wasting everything that sounds intriguing.
Also inferior is the other VDO album, a short collaboration with long-time
friend Brad Laner of Medicine,
this time disguised under the nome de guerre Electric Company.
More Pelvis Wick For The Baloney Boners (Tekito, 1999) has little to
commend itself, other then Tinsel Termites
(a blend of hypnotic tribal percussions and guitar-driven space-rock).
The disconnected collage A Hep Cat's Electric Hair Ball Apparatus
is avantgarde music at its most indulgent. The other tracks are worth only
as satires of fashionable genres (eg, Hushed Plateau's take on
ambient music).
In the meantime, the hyperactive Matt Castille releases the second Mux album
and collaborates to
Electric Voodoo, a New Orleans project run by Tom Tom Piquant (percussions),
Vavv Varr (guitar), Franchisca Mena (flute) and Michelle Tillemand (vocals).
Electric Voodoo's brief Stayin Powers (Tekito, 1999)
sounds like ritual music vaguely inspired by
New Orleans' marching bands, save the horns.
The avantgarde sketches of Calls Ov Powers and Cimetiere Hounsi
are mere appetizers for the main dishes.
Tillers Azaka is the real thing:
tribal caribeean music, propulsive reggae-samba beat, and, every now and then,
cerimonial chanting.
The abysmal mess is decorated with surreal electronic noises,
courtesy of Castille's keyboards.
The demonic pow-wow of Houngan Dancer is subjected to demented
tape manipulation (and acceleration).
Humide's Aromas weds the avantgarde and the ritual aspects of their music
in a suite which is part industrial music and part tribal rhythms, the ones
complementing the other.
Not for the sane of mind.
Muz's Banana In Portuguese (Tekito, 1999) is de facto a free-form
suite. The term "self-indugence" doesn't even come close to describe the way
Castille, Doug Ferguson and six more cohorts deal with music.
The multitude and variety of sonic events rarely coalesces in structured
songs (with one notable exception, the menacing, cartoonish theme of
Dysfunctional Boxspring Blues).
More often the inspiration wanders at random around the recording studio,
with occasional displays of sheer genius, from
the trumpet solo (on a background of witch chanting and stand-up bass)
of Hiram Takes A Beatin'
to the alien panzer noises of Spit Valve.
A penchant for absurd dance ditties is responsible for the abominable
Happy Rasputin's Chef Salad Dance and
Milosevic Party Machine.
As for the meaning of life, the glorious apocalyptic mayhem
of Please Get Your Speakers Out Of The Water has the answer.
Eric Lumbleau and Joel Zoch are Sound, a dadaistic project
of audio collage/montage.
Drunk On Confusion (Tekito, 1999) celebrates the machine age
with a plethora of mostly keyboard-based snippets glued together in
inorganic mud of sound. More train of thoughts than layered atmosphere,
Sound's sound resembles Negativland without the satire.
With their wild pastiches
(Dream In Purple Perspex, a blend of
deep mantra humming, chaotic drumming, a minimalistic piano figure,
a trumpet wail and a maelstrom of noises)
and often silly caricatures
(notably the superbly demented carillon of It Only Hurts When I Laugh)
Lumbleau and Zoch nonetheless aim for serious music
in the tradition of Edgar Varese and Frank Zappa.
They succeed at least with the four-part suite Phantasmagoricon,
whose rapid-fire sequences include a
propulsive techno locomotive, a distorted guitar riff, tribal percussions,
a pathetic synth-and-guitar melody over martial beats, and, finally, a frenzied
tabla pace that leads to a supersonic raga.
By the same token, The Fizzy Lifting Gas Time Machine
(a cello plucking a romantic aria and a soprano voice floating
over a syncopated dance beat) is chamber music.
Unable to shake his past away, Lumbleau indulges in one more
psychedelic jam, Diaphonous Trails Of Narcotic Vapour..., a solemn
raga for guitar, sitar and chanting.
Sound's psychoanalitic deconstruction of music is a metaphor for mind as a
beautifully pointless nightmare.
Wherever he may be, Zappa is listening to this album.
VDO's Suspension (Beta, 2001)
is a collaboration with Chris Moock.
Eric Lumbleau's Sound returned with Screaming Zenith (2002).
Shits And Giggles, a collaboration between
Ariel Pink and the Vas Deferens Organization, debuted with
Trick Or Treat (Free Dope And Fucking In The Streets, 2009).
The trio of Matt Castille, Eric Lumbleau and Christopher Moock resurrected
Vas Deferens Organization and released:
Ninth Ward Fourth World (2010);
The Science Of The Impossible (2011), a collaboration with
duo Perihelion (i.e. keyboardists David Price and Tim Boone);
Eye Peels & Brain Picks (2011);
Quicksand (2012),
containing Quicksand (13:13) and Diskorg (15:23).
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