Curtis Godino

Edition of 300. For his fourth Feeding Tube release, Curtis Godino (now a resident of the greater Nashville area) has created a soundtrack album for a destroyed film that exists only in his mind. Playing with a raft of fine musicians, unencumbered by having to match his music up with an actual extant images, Curtis has created a suite of tunes that are stylistically connected to his earlier works, yet expand themselves into hitherto unexplored realms. A well-regarded maestro of the organ and Mellotron, Curtis’s music has long reminded certain listeners of Frank Zappa’s best mid ’60s instrumental work — music tied to the friendlier edge of 20th Century avant garde traditions, infused with a sort of rockist approach. And this is still true on Discorporation (a term perhaps most famously used on the Mothers’ Absolutely Free LP), although the music here also references Ennio Morricone, Wendy Carlos and even Angelo Baldalamenti, with results that are as cinematic as all get out.

There are ten players besides Curtis on Discorporation, and the only ones whose names I recognize are the D’Addaroio brothers from the Lemon Twigs. But they all sound great. Huge reeking waves of sound spill out of the speakers just about begging you to close your eyes, rub them hard and start creating a personal movie inside your skull. Something with a huge Technicolor expanse filled with rubbery little cactus plants and guys who walk their horses into phone booths and then disappear.The imaginational possibilities suggested by Godino’s fat orchestral sound can haul your brain in almost any direction you’re capable of visualizing. And frankly, it transports me back to my first immersive experiences with music, sprawled on the carpet of my parents’ living room, listening to the Frank Chackfield Orchestra’s recording of Ernest Gold’s theme for Stanley Kramer’s 1959 movie, On the Beach, on their Motorola console stereo. Never having seen the film, I was freed to imagine its story unfolding in any way I wanted, and doing just that was one of a my favorite ways to spend a rainy afternoon in 1960.

Sixty four years later, Godino is offering us all the same chance once again. And anyone who doesn’t take him up on the offer is a goddamn duffer. Brilliant stuff, man. – Byron Coley, 2024