id m theft able
Well I Fell in Love With the Eye at the Bottom of the Well
Mangdisc
“The seed of the idea for this project came from a playful attempt to write a sort of Doo-wop song with this same title ten years ago,” explained Skot Spear, who performs his avant-garde compositions and improvisations as id m theft able. “It was meant to be about loving people/things/places/notions that cannot or will not love you back, and/or are clearly bad for you, yet you persist. It was basically going to be one long, absurd, sad list of such things.
“Like so many seeds of ideas,” he continued, “it grew and expanded from a playful sketch of a song (more of a chant, really) into a massive suite that bore little resemblance to the original idea. Only the faintest trace of the original melody remains on one track [“The Bottom of the Well”], but the spirit of that notion pervades throughout.”
Indeed, I’ve long appreciated Mr. able’s work for its uncanny resemblance to the cacophony and absurdity of modern life in the U.S. of A. — its unmitigated industrial ugliness and spasmodic cultural attention span; its addiction to garbage, musical and otherwise. My favorite “style” of the various sonic methods one encounters on an id m theft able recording is that employed on the opening track, “Shun, Unshun and Shun,” in which Spear seems to be cutting two records of random audio clips on two turntables, remixing reality in a most un-danceable, yet surprisingly delightful, fashion.
“The Curve of the Earth,” a shorter, a cappella work that pairs Spear’s voice with that of guest Ella Cool J, is remarkable for the way it creates “music” using only a set of monosyllabic words (mouth, hum, line, wet, more) repeated in different combinations, the tone of each word’s syllable acting as a note.
It’s fun stuff. Not exactly the jam you want to pump out of the car speakers this summer, though if you’re in the mood to seriously freak out your neighbor…
