The Charles Rice Goff III Audio-Visual Experience Part II – Modern Times

Welcome to Part II of the Charles Rice Goff III Audio-Visual Experience. Part I is an essential prerequisite, so if you’ve not read it yet, please start HERE. As I explained in Part I, the decision to write about Charles’ audio-visual work began with a question about a 1991 performance by his band Herd of the Ether Space. After detailed conversations with Charles and hours of deep diving into his videos, I was inspired to write this 3-part series.
 
Part I included background information after which I explored four of Charles’ early videos. With that under readers’ belts, I’ll now survey four of Charles’ more recent videos. And - full disclosure - my intent is to lure, inspire, provoke readers into exploring Charles’ work for themselves and, if enlightenment sets in, the massive 40+ year Goff/Taped Rugs audio and audio-visual catalogue. Lovers of all things creatively cool and strange will be rewarded.
 
Lacquered Intonations (2016)

Lacquered Intonations consists of eight videos Charles produced between 2013-2016 and released on DVDR in 2016. The videos are presented on the internet as eight separate ‘tracks’.
 
For ‘Liquid Assets’, Charles took original video and photos shot around Kansas City and manipulated them into a visual art collage. Assorted waterways and unidentifiable scenery are augmented and overlayed with swirly objects, cascading light, and variously imposed, inserted and melted into shapes.
 
‘Fingering Canned Krab’ is an amusingly psychedelic food show demonstration with Salvador Dalí creating crabmeat concoctions.
 
‘Chains Batons Pipes And Hammers’ takes more Kansas City footage and photos as illustrative of a recording by the Goff/Killr ‘Mark’ Kaswan band Disism. Highways and cityscapes are flashing lights dream machined, textured objects flicker, a tripped out staircase is ascended, a ferris wheel is psychedelically swirled and more. One of my favorites of the set.
 
‘Fun To Be Thirsty’ is another humorous one, adding a Goff composed vocal jingle to an old soft drink commercial.
 
‘The Machine Economy’ takes still more Kansas City video and photos, but in this instance arranges and blends them into a disorienting psychedelic art collage.
 
‘The Goff Family Circus’ is a cute, fun and trippy tribute to Charles’ two cats.
 
‘Fear For $20.15’ is a fast-paced collage of Halloween themes. The imagery is arranged such that we see flashes of ‘normal’ Halloween store video but mostly flashing, floating, distorted imagery. Super freaky and another of my favorites.
 
Finally, ‘Views From The Outside’ is a succession of out and indoor Kansas City scenes that are colorfully and geometrically disfigure choreographed and accompanied by playfully jingly music.
 
The variety across these eight videos makes Lacquered Intonations a good introduction to Charles’ work for those who have yet to take the plunge.
 
Sideshow Distraction (2020)

Sideshow Distraction is a 9-minute video of Goff animated images combined with a collage of Herd of the Ether Space music. It’s a flowing and melting slideshow of Dada meets Terry Gilliam imagery reacting to political dysfunction and COVID death and disruption. The visuals are all black & white and the sensation is like a psycho-Dadaist documentary. The music gets freakily intense and is tightly integrated with the visuals, making this one of my favorites of Charles’ art + music experiences.
 
Sequence Of Non Sequitur (2023)

Sequence Of Non Sequitur is a nearly 7-minute video featuring Charles’ original art and animations. The drawings have a sparse swirly lined look and feel. The animations at times come across like a psychedelic children’s cartoon and at others like an art gallery slideshow collage. And, once again, we’ve got a solid marriage of music and visuals, with Charles’ audio veering from playful to noisy to carnival orchestra.

Discothequeno (2024)

Discothequeno is a collection of four videos that were the DVD accompaniment to a 7” vinyl EP released on Justin Jackley’s Herby Records label. (Justin previously released Charles’ Heartbreaking Randomness LP and a 7" single by Disism.)
 
‘Discothequeno’ is a symmetrically distorted and shaped blend of scenery and art images. The way the shapes keep flowing in various directions, along with the intense sci-fi industrial-orchestral music is a wee bit vertigo inducing.
 
‘Baby Break My Circuit’ consists of dancing Dada shapes, photos, colored psychedelicized video and collaged ads.
 
‘Rockin’ The Hey Wagon’ is a rotating collage of various political, broadcast and other ‘personalities’.
 
And ‘Hip Lip Rip’ is a kaleidoscope of imagery and strobed, lasered, watercolor art.
 
I hope the two parts of this tour have inspired interest in Charles’ work. He has meticulously documented his history, with nearly all audio and video releases going back decades available at archive.org.
 
The magic portal to Goff/Taped Rugs Wonderland is HERE
 
A comprehensive list of Goff audio-visual works can be found HERE

All of Charles' previously published articles at Electronic Cottage can be found HERE
 
Part III will be different, wrapping things up by zeroing in on the performance/cassette album/video that inspired this series. Stay tuned…