Bromp Treb

Most dance music cuts up time like a log saw bearing down on a tied up lady. It’s dramatic and everything, sure. But you can always tell what’s going to happen way ahead of time. What if, instead, you threw all those beats and tempos at the ceiling and then just let the pieces fall wherever? Neil Young Cloaca makes whimsical, jiggling electronics that go from dry to juicy to unintelligible and morph again & again before you even figure them out. He has a pile of mysterious black boxes that wiggle on a table, and if you see him live, you also get a mysterious man with a big rib cage and a homemade haircut that wiggles himself jubilantly alongside the boxes. He pulls faces, leaves the stage, turns the lights on & off, freezes in awkward poses, and usually has more fun than you’re supposed to playing music, dance-type or otherwise. Neil has been slinging tapes since 1991, but dove deeper into his beats and noises with the first self-produced Bromp Treb release in 2002. He’s best known to out-of-towners as the drummer from Fat Worm of Error, but all along he’s been quietly running Yeay! Plastics and pinching out modest releases when moved. This Cloaca has no relation to the Canadian Neil Young by the way, and thank christ because this one is way cooler. Fat Worm has been on hiatus recently, as a couple of members have moved to the other end of the country. So there’s been room for more of Neil by himself. And his sound is getting even weirder because of it. Here, finally, is a fat slab of vinyl, his first long-player. You can now dance along to Neil in your house without anyone wondering whether you’re epileptic. Careful though, because you’re gonna break some of the shit in your room. (Angela Sawyer, 2016)