A Muffled Snore
Friendly Rich; David Sait; {An} EeL
Independent (friendlyrich.bandcamp.com/album/a-muffled-snore)
Three Ontario artists collaborate in this exciting COVID isolation-time project of 12 attention-grabbing, twisted, out of this world contemporary tracks.
This is strange, dreamy, dramatic and intriguing music. Friendly Rich speaks and sings ten tracks composed by musician David Sait to dadaist lyrics/texts by {An} EeL. Creepy opening track, The Dainty Dandies, features Rich’s resonant spoken text, Sait’s 12-string guzheng and closing sound effects, opening the sonic door to the subsequent tracks which also include piano, guitar and percussion. Grumpy vocals and tempo-setting, single-tone strings drive Dig. Eerie Higgily Piggily Rig answers my question of what COVID-19 sounds like with low-pitched words, taps and echo effects. Loud, disturbing Lick Your Eyeballs has such angry spoken words as “I wanna taste the dirt” reinforced by Sait’s held sonic sounds and effects. Dramatic closing track Take Time reinforces the previous tracks’ sounds with more clear spoken words, string vibrations, electronic sounds and tonal touches until the so memorable closing line “Will always love you.”
{An} EeL performs lyrics by Friendly Rich, set to music by Friendly Rich and Cheldon Paterson, on two tracks. Love the extremely avantgarde You Smelt It, We Dealt It with its delicious crunchy potato-chips-munching sound effects, low vocals and string twangs, heavy metal touches and short “flavourful” sung melodies.
As Sait wrote: “We all recorded alone in separate locations and corresponded online.” Their combined creative musical, performance and technological expertise make this a unique must listen!
