Avant-garde performance company Degenerate Art Ensemble, a collective known to weave dance theatrics with punk rock and orchestral arrangements, is meant to be experienced live.
Cuckoo Crow, the outfit’s eighth studio album, lacks the costumes, dance, projections, and flight harnesses of the 2006 performance to which it is a soundtrack, but it successfully works exotic, abstract melodrama into every note and unidentifiable instrument.
The melodic, vocally driven album is a hypnotic, integrated sonic journey. It’s a heady, creative brew. The collective cites influences from musique concrète to thrash, and the band should be lauded for creating accomplished populist art out of such disparate influences.
The distorted ranting on tracks like “Checkersplitter” and the languid, gliding vocals on “Mr. Schmidt’s Levitation” are enticing bookends to the range of the Ensemble’s palette. If you’re curious as to where theatre and post-rock meet, Cuckoo Crow is a welcome sample from the frontlines.
– Lyam White
Degenerate Art Ensemble: www.degenerateartensemble.com
Tellous Records: www.tellous.net