Weird science and weird electronica merge in the demonic sound jungle of Q Electronics, the alter-ego of Mr. Quintron. This album is technically an infomercial demonstration disc for a curious machine called The Drum Buddy (you can see the actual infomercial at Skin Graft's site), but it also doubles as a savagely accurate parody of a classic "incredibly strange" LP (down to the deliberate typos on the kitschy cover) and a satire on infomercial culture. At the heart of this bizarre-sounding performance art is an amazing gadget, the Drum Buddy itself, a "five-oscillator, light activated, mechanically rotating drum machine." The gadget is real and it sounds appropriately deranged, like a robot noisemaker spewing grotesque sounds that can be manipulated in an extremely sophisticated way. The technology is based on the use of photoelectric cells (if you're a hard science geek, visit the Drum Buddy site and learn more about the mechanics), much like the fabled theramin, but this allows you to create theremin-styled electronic noise madness in a rhythmic context. It is possible to link up the machine's tempo to any external beat (drum machine, DJ, drummer, etc.) and create crazed spirals of rhythmic noise in time with the beat, and the actual sound itself can be tinkered with even further, making it almost limitless in its sound potential. It also features "scratch oscillators" for the electronic equivalent of scratching, making this most attractive to potential DJ geeks who just can't get the hang of actual scratching (like moi, for instance). The gadget itself is amazing, advancing modern sound electronics the same way the theremin did when it was released -- and like the original theremin, the Drum Buddy is only being produced in a limited run of one hundred units.

The album can be appreciated on several levels -- its look and sound are very much in homage to all those bizarre hi-fi demonstration LPs of yesterday that flourished during the golden age of hi-fi stereo, and while there is a certain deliberate kitsch factor at work, the demonstration itself is remarkably effective. The "theme song" (which opens and closes the record) is genuinely catchy and the demonstrations themselves vary between catchy and convoluted beats to extremely out-there patches of electronic noise. (The Drum Buddy, by the way, is an analog instrument.) While the product pitch is aimed at DJs and scratchers, I can easily imagine this in the hands of someone like Null (the concept is very much like a rhythmic Nullsonic-in-a-box, actually) or Whitehouse as a generator for heavily processed rhythmic white noise. Hell, i'd buy one myself if i happened to have a thousand bucks lying around under a mattress....

I've never heard of this fellow before, but he's apparently some kind of big deal in Newfoundland -- and rightly so, for he is a swell fingerstyle guitarist, like a less pretentious and obsessed Fahey (probably not as drug-addled, either). Most of the tunes here are traditional tunes arranged to Quinton's tastes, although he does throw in a couple of his own; all feature Quinton's lovely fingerstyle picking. (Apparently this is a bit of an anomaly -- the li'l promo thingy that came with the disc insists that he is known more for his original compositions. This disc appears to be a nostalgia move or something, paying tribute to his roots, playin' the favorites, something like that.) His original "Bound for Haystack" is one of the most dynamic things here, and really reminds me of Fahey -- i'm surprised he doesn't cover anything by the dead guy here. It certainly would be interesting to hear. Most of this is fairly mannered (if occasionally unusual) reinterpretations of older standards, and its appeal may be lost on a generation weaned on big beats and fuzzy guitars. Too bad. I like that he includes notes and observations on the individual songs in the liner notes. Of interest to Fahey devotees (just don't expect freakouts along the lines of CITY OF REFUGE or WOMBLIFE -- think more along the lines of early, early stuff, before he started diddling with tapes and jazz) and considerably better recorded than the early Fahey catalog, to be sure.