DOC WÖR MIRRAN

The tenth accredited release for DWM, CRuD, is a short, mini-album. Clocking only a couple minutes' shy of 30, and I can't say I wish it were longer. The album name is in reference to Mr. Raimond's place of work at the time, CRD, and as depicted in the artwork, the main CRD offices were formerly a prison. There's also an abstract, engorged penis, something not unusual for DWM cover art. Some fast and crude googling doesn't reveal what CRD was or is an abbreviation of, I'm guessing Joseph wasn't fond of his workplace though. Unfortunately, the asshole in me thinks the name could be in reference to the music contained on this cassette. This release sees DWM in a bit of a No- Wave, Punk, Noise Rock, Synth Pop mode; with some poetry and free improvisation to round things off.

We start this cassette with aforementioned poetry, a condemnation of Christian hypocrisy and maybe a bit of urban/suburbia malaise towards the end. A snippet "I run screaming down the aisles of church while the true innocents are slaughtered in the wringing (? hard to make the words out at times) of their virgin hands / Preached double standards emphasize lusty glares (? Idk if that's correct again) / Bending words to explain their perversion / Minorities disagree and loud-mouths are placed in asylums". Wait this was written back in the 80s and not recently? No Survival For Research is the first song proper, an incredibly forgettable mid paced little jaunt with annoying clack-y, electronically treated drums, annoying rubbery strummed guitar, and annoying noisy/static-y guitar. Bass is okay. It's like a half formed attempt at a Shoegaze song. Breasts And Ass Blood continues with the same awful aesthete, only a bit longer, maybe a bit doomier. Noisy, drunkenly swerving guitar riffing and soloing carries this song to the drunk tank finish line. Is that what bro is on about on the cover actually? OD From Industry (yeah I think Mr. Raimond is not fond of the nine to five grind) is a change of scenery from everything before, a tad more interesting. Shrill and sharp synth lines are layered and layered, morphing into a white hot sheet of screeching tinnitus, odd treated and robotic vocal snippets peak through, all the while an incredibly nervous bass line constantly thumps in the background. Random tinklings of piano like a drunk person uncontrollably relieving themselves all over. Castalian Remix (DWM have a song on Transistors & Chips / E-Lok 1111 various artist compilation called Castalia, I'm guessing this is a remix of) is more my style, despite having many of the hallmarks of previous songs. We've moved a bit into Industrial/Synth Pop/EBM territory, those cheap, klanky drums sped up and even more distorted, reverbed vocals mashed and thrown around, blaring, droning and moaning synths, and that noisy, screeching and soloing guitar. Really this is a beautiful mess of hideous sounds.

B side starts with the longest song on the album, Little Girls With Leprosy, a total jump into the morass of free improvisation. Someone atonally smashing away at a piano, while some taut wires or some such are scrapped and plucked, and an onslaught of chiming bells. Things take a turn into more interesting territory once the piano subsides, as we enter into some tape manipulation and looping experiments, full on Musique Concrète. All manner of clicks, whirs and who knows what are processed while the bells eventually calm down. This turns into a distorted cacophony of various whistling sounds, a demented symphony of songbirds, slowly progressing and processed into a rough noisy oblivion of whirring static. This all comes full circle with the scrapped/plucked strings, bells, and someone attacking the piano again. We end with a short, noisy, reverbed, and blown out psychedelic exercise of lazy, floating guitar and sequenced synth, not allowed to stretch its legs enough before unceremoniously getting cut off. A little blip in this bands huge discography, and mostly stuff that can be found done more interesting elsewhere IMO.

Doc Wör Mirran is an extremely prolific experimental Psych/Electronic/Krautrock group conceptually formed in 1982 by Joseph Raimond and Bernard Worrick. DWM was formed with the idea of including various other arts under its name including painting, graphic design, poetry (some of which can be found on this album), etc, and coming along with this catch-all philosophy is a revolving door policy of members, the only constant having been Joseph Raimond.

Much of DWM's art is stylized in a seemingly amateurish or crude way, or maybe one could say naïve or childish. Perfect in other words. This first release from DWM is pretty amateurish and crude, but not perfect, unfortunately. Mostly culled from recordings made at the San Francisco State University electronic music class in 1984, and a handful from a few years earlier in 1982. One foot is in the prior decade's electronic musings and one foot in the then burgeoning cassette underground.

We kick the A side off with Life Of The Beached Whale, one guess as to what this sounds like. Slippery and wet gurgling synths give a slight illusion of being in the depths of the ocean, while higher pitched synths squeak and EEEEEEE away, beck and calling. 59 I Pool is a track being played in reverse; with swooping synth sounds, various tribal sounding drums, coming and ebbing in waves. Meeting Extravegance is the longest offering on the A side, a heady stew of metallic droning, burbling synths, electronic insectile chirping, and what sounds like a kettle boiling; all fading and increasing at random throughout the track. Self Automated Patch #1 is exactly as the name suggests, a synth gleefully burbling and whirring and scratching away of its own volition, a bit musique concrete feeling. Avacado Marketing Techniques #1 is the first of the two songs recorded in 1982, and also the first to sound almost musical at times, but also one of the weaker songs here. Lo-fi guitar samples attempt to mesh with droning synths and some looped vocal samples. There's a bed of quiet electronic thumping and droning tones allowed to the forefront for a while, as everything else subsides. The guitar and vocal samples return, joined by non-sampled bass guitar soloing, and we cycle between these two modes for the rest of the song. Help, We Need A Melody is 20 seconds of a harsh, insufferable, screeching tone to end side A.

Side B has the second and last 1982 recorded track, Avacado Marketing Techniques #2, and IMO much better track than the first. Drifting, sublime, etheric bass wanders through oceans and waves of analog fuzzing and hissing. Sounds like a post rock song drowning in a sea of black and white TV static. Pure atmospheric bliss, and very unlike anything else on this cassette. Self Automated Patch #2 is a return to Buchla synth self-playing, not much to say. When A Girl Lives Alone features groaning and moaning treated vocal samples slowly being layered upon one another, creating an undulating water bed for Rich Ferguson to recite some poetry, presumably of the same name, over. Sounds very much like a poem written by some guys in college. Tribute To The Music Of Raisin Bran Trust is a return to longer form experimental electronic stews; synths doing various impressions of whirring fans, various dial and fax tones, watery and laser like burbling, babbling, chirping, and hissing. Somehow this track sounds quite spacious and void like at times, as if all the sounds are being captured out of space. Patchwork Park Insanity returns to samples being played in reverse, though with a bit more diversity than 59 I Pool. Abstract humming tones, melancholic guitars, odd vocal snippets, and what sounds like amplified tin foil being rubbed and scraped. We end this journey on a sour note, with yet a third offering of random nondescript Buchla babbling.

An interesting journey's start for a group with a lot of fingers in a lot of different pies.