Eric Lappe also known as Goemon047 on the Internet, is a comedian, musician, journalist and videographer. Once on a drunken night I decided to send him a random friend request on Skype, and he accepted, which was beyond me, but he did. Random friend requests are rarely accepted, because there's so many wackos out there. But that's the kind of guy Eric is. He doesn't assume you're insane right away. Since then I had many conversations online with him about electronic and experimental music, video games, Japanese art and language, Basically all kinds of things. I discovered his music through his YouTube channel, and really liked his sound, even if he disclaimed in the video description that he didn't like it himself that much, considering he got better at it since.

Eric's ”Band” is called De-structure and it started out really lo-fi, but it had a nice percussive and somehow asian feel to it (?) not sure what that even means, but he has a lot of good tunes. He sent me a CD of his album alt-esc-world in the mail which has been on heavy rotation in Chateau de Stilletid ever since.

Eric and I exchanged a few letters over the years, and most recently I got him into the music of Bacon Grease (Andrea Knight) and sent him the Stilletid split tape, but we sent each other NES games before, like that time I sent him the Europe and Japan exclusive game Road Fighter.

Eric is a funny guy, and I encouraged him to make straight up comedy videos before, which were not rooted in video gaming or music, and hopefully someday he will make a comedy classic to rival the Marx Brothers! I am sure he will, but his ”Audience” is very video game-centered. I will share the classic ”What the fuck is clam juice!?” with you thought to show you his raw talent!

All in all Eric is a great guy. He's always looking to enjoy new sides to life, which I admire him hugely for. He doesn't seem to ever sit still, unless he is playing a video game or making music on his laptop. Then he doesn't seem to sit very still at those times either.

Viva La Let's get!

Neal Retke submitted a few albums to me for review, and I chose this one.

The opening tracks, "Signed, Epstein's Mother Part 1 and 2" are somehow percussive without the use of actual percussion or any drumming. There are no electronic drums either, as far as I can tell, but it has a percussive quality to it. Like when playing an electronic piano percussively. There is more than one instrument on this but they all work as a percussive electric piano in my ears. Quite an interesting feel to these two tracks. Even the vocals have a drum-like quality to them without becoming rap-vocals, which often happens in this scenario.

These are followed "Alas! The Great Horned Owl Shirked And Doddering Under Ripening Clouds", a spoken word track, which reminds me of something from Walls of Genius tapes of the 80's but in a way, not at all. A modernized version of these yelling-pieces by WOG perhaps? I don't know how else to describe it. I love it though!
"Big Black Goddamn Car" has samples of what sounds like monkeys accompanied by bass guitar arpeggios with a short delay-type effect on them. Then what sounds like vinyl record noise is introduced to give it an analog feel, and short synthesized keystrokes build up into...silence! The track is over, go home please!

"Mother Of Drugs I: The Hissing": the hissing has a lot of ambient pad synths and drums and strings coming in once in a while and cutting out again seemingly at random, but sometimes it sounds like they're played backwards for just a split second before re-introducing the pad synth. 
Then "Mother Of Drugs II: The Line" starts with reading of a poem that could have been created with Burroughs' famous cutup technique. A single low key on an upright piano (either MIDI or actual) repeats through the song in the background while sounds are being played backwards in the periphery of the soundscape, until it eventually builds up into the repeating vocal mantra ”The Line” being spoken in a loop fading into...

"Mother Of Drugs III: The Doom Prophet What Is Known As Skippy"
This sounds almost like Gregorian chants and backwards turntable scratches with echoes on them delaying for a while, then a muted guitar through a delay pedal being plucked without any chords being played.

"Hallway Of Glass" starts out with breathing sounds that has been tuned to a keyboard through a sampler (at least that is what it sounds like to my ears). After a few seconds heavily reverberated reversed sounds enter to make a swirling effect almost like an old-fashioned Leslie for an organ. The breathing sounds are percussive in the same way that I heard on the first two tracks of this album. Not worrying as much about the tonality but more the percussiveness of it. I could zone out on this for hours, but unfortunately this track is only 8 minutes and 20 seconds long.

The title track starts out with scrambled voice samples ending in what sounds like "What's up?", then a low almost growling voice accompanies some high pitched notes singing lyrics, which I can't make out but they sound divine. Then the high pitched voice starts emulating a muted trumpet and saying "yes" once in a while, and then the whole symphony of voices (probably the voice of the same person) goes on to a grand finale in the next approximately 8 minutes to invoke all the spirits of the dead in the room and make sure you have nightmares for weeks. The reverberated echoes make this even more potent. I wouldn't recommend listening to this one if you're in a psychotic state; it might convince you to kill the hippy king.

The final track "Bigger Blacker Goddamnerer Car" has a lot of panning going on. It has a woman's voice saying "Big Black Goddamn Car" in different earphones; then a man's voice enters in the middle repeating these words out of sync with her creating what sounds like she is doing the delay effect. A guitar is to be heard in the distance but only a snippet of it , and it sounds like it is pitched onto a keyboard. All in all this sounds like something I'd love to do a cassette release of on Stilletid. I noticed it is 45 minutes long so I sense a split cassette is in order! Neal! Get back to me on that.

4 and a half stars out of 4 and a half stars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In his post from January 22nd Ditlev requested that Ec participants send items for review.