A Closer Listen
Kuddelmuddel is a great word, because its meaning can be gleaned from its sound: hodgepodge, jumble, confusion. The title suits the album perfectly, as Hali Palombo has arranged a cornucopia of sounds; the artist includes “Hurdy-Gurdy recordings taken at the Bristol Renaissance Festival in Wisconsin, bagpipes, shortwave radio recordings, wax cylinder recordings of Native American chants, field recordings taken in a chocolate factory in Oakland in 2018, and BBC sound-library sourced recordings of Morse code transmitters and office buildings.” We’re especially pleased about the chocolate factory recordings, because the album is released on Chocolate Monk Records, and because we love chocolate even more than monks.
The fun of Kuddelmuddel is to try to hear the signal through the noise. In a way, the album acts as a metaphor for the current aural condition. We are engulfed in a symphony of sound, much of it dissonant: from politicians and advertisements to the sounds of industry and communication, even the noises in our own heads. Much of it is, in fact, a kuddelmuddel. We can become overwhelmed, or attempt to zero in on the important sounds, the messages from our loved ones, from those in need, from the planet itself. This may be too much to impose on the album, an accidental pareidolia, but lends the set additional weight. Certain titles: “Bronze Bull,” which refers to an Ancient Greek torture device as well as the financial market; “Death March,” for obvious reasons; and “Datura,” a poisonous plant also known as the devil’s trumpets and mad apple, seem to support this theory.
It all starts with “Apostraphitus,” or apostrophe, or love for the apostrophe, which places the track in a very narrow band of punctuation songs next to Vampire Weekend’s “Oxford Comma.” We doubt we’ll ever hear both on the same mixtape. The track begins with a gentle gong, extended into a drone, punctuated by lasers and chimes. Soon, a huge crash, clomping like horses’ feet, an unanswered phone, then another, business machines, typewriters and their subsequent dings, an office nightmare. The sound subsides to reveal a turn signal, then what may be the internal workings of a Xerox machine. Oh for the humble apostrophe, rather than this apostralypse.
The cavalry arrives in trumpet fanfare at the beginning of “Bronze Bull,” but looped intonations imply that the cavalry has ridden right by, missing the war completely. What must we be saved from, and who will be there to save us? “Datura” begins with conversation and cutlery, the title suggesting gossip, eventually joined by organ tones, which would normally be a counterbalance thanks to its religious undertones, were not religion also the source of so much strife. In “Death Chant,” what seems like a call to worship is swallowed again by the whole, including the retro frustration of dial-up and a concluding Max Headroom effect. The title track contains the most startling juxtaposition: what seems to be a calliope, playing its siren sound through the fog.
The conflict continues throughout the album: drone v. sample, signal v. noise. One must focus intently in order to concentrate on the voice in the cloud, the message in the maelstrom. Is it all “sound and fury, signifying nothing,” the nihilistic noise of humanity? Or might one still rescue caring, commitment and cause? Palombo only suggests, never reveals. For now, the world is a kuddelmuddel, a knot grown knottier, resistant even to Alexander’s sword. (Richard Allen)
Thu Feb 27 00:01:40 GMT 2025