Listen, I'm not going to not write about a ten-minute long free form sax/clarinet and guitar jam that gets uploaded to the MFT archive on this blog. There is truly no reality in which a post does not appear at this URL containing words written by my fingers using a computer keyboard and conveyed to you by the magical tubes of the internet. As such: I'm here, you're here, let's talk about this set from Steve Good and Bill Zink. 

Zink's guitar acts almost like a canvas. It's scribbly and diffuse, occasionally welling into fat feedback tones before continuing to drift. There's a piece of art at the IMA that it reminds me of: Gabriel Pionkowski's Untitled. Untitled is pretty simple, it's a canvas that Pionkowski took apart thread by thread. Then he went through and painted every single thread. So what I'm saying is that Zink's guitar is canvas-like I definitively am not saying that it's blank and white and a simple field on which Good lays down hot licks of fire. What I'm saying is that while it may act as ground it's diametrically opposite from neutral. It's shot-through and fragmented--tossing Good around more than giving him somewhere stable to land. 

Good then splits off like a champ. Sometimes squawking, sometimes screeching, sometimes sweetly melodizing. He lifts the high end into a cacophony that never completely unhinges. The entirety of the collaboration has an enviable push/pull, neither player fighting for space against the other, but instead expanding and contracting in tandem. 

Another reality that doesn't exist is one in which I mention Bill Zink's name and don't bring up The Belgian Waffles! (or for that matter his litany of other work, such as with Black Kaspar). The Belgian Waffles!' no wave skronk and stomp persists in being one of my absolute most treasured Indiana music discoveries and, shock, awe, I truly found them precisely because this very archive exists. Sounding at times like James Chance and the Contortions whacked even further out of line by dint of being unable to see the ocean from where they're standing, The Belgian Waffles! demand to wreak high volume violence on the air around all of our heads and I plan to let them at frequent and irregular intervals. 

They've got a deep catalog on the archive, and sure you can start anywhere, but if you're into diving straight off into the deep end of the pool, I'd suggest the unreleased 7" Sessions collection. It's sprawling and messy but propped up on a through line of a basement-sourced voice you couldn't replicate if you tried. The band themselves say that at the time they were "more interested in destroying songs instead of playing them." Right. Yes. Yes forever. Listen to that one above.