Scott Morrow is ALARM’s music editor. Patrick Hajduch is a very important lawyer. Each week they debate the merits of a different album.
Foetus: Hide (Ectopic Ents, 10/1/10)
Morrow: Foetus is the best-known moniker of eclectic composer JG Thirlwell, whose multifarious recordings stretch across art rock, no wave, electronica, exotica, chamber music, big-band jazz, classical orchestrations, and much more. He has fought the classification as being a forebear of industrial music, particularly for his early material, and his later projects — Steroid Maximus, Manorexia, and the material for The Venture Bros. TV show — have expanded his exotic instrumentals.
Underneath it all, his material as Foetus has tied the aesthetics together, with eccentric and melodramatic vocals helping to create his “poppiest” songs. Hide is his first studio album as Foetus since 2005.