Harry Pussy — Let’s Build A Pussy

Editions Mego returns this ultra-rare 1998 double-LP to the land of the over-eager noise consumer. It’s a “stop me if you’ve heard this one before” sort of release—Harry Pussy guitarist Bill Orcutt (listed in the credits as playing “mouse”) samples fellow HP member Adris Hoyos (on “mouth”) and lets a computer program time-stretch one second into over an hour of sliding pitches, digital chatter, and whatever else the computer imagined fit between one micro-moment and the next.

There’s a good chance you’ve heard something like this before. So here’s the kicker—it’s still a lot of fun to hear. Give it enough attention, and you can have a full-blown experience working through all four sides. Tones pop in and out, standing waves coalesce and beat in your ears, and if you’re listening with speakers, any movements result in shimmers and ringing sounds reminding us of sound’s physicality.

There’s a surprising amount of detail to help an attentive listener stay focused, even while keeping the neighbors at bay. I find it’s easy to be a noise version of Van Leeuwenhoek here, making intimate study of a single drop of Hoyos’ hollering—you do hear the chosen bark at the opening of the album—to find a startling and hidden world populated with diverse aural fauna.