Headboggle — Self Titled

Your ears will need a moment to settle as they are treated to the many dizzying blasts of brain-scrambling instrumentation and florid compositional precision that buzz throughout the fifteen elegant vignettes that comprise Head Boggle's aptly self-titled first full length vinyl. Presented by Spectrum Spools, a great Cleveland, Ohio based label that also supports Hive Mind, Driphouse, No UFO's, and Bee Mask among many others, the album is a self-described hodgepodge of moogs, harmonica, banjo, harpsichord, irish Harp, EMS synthi, violin, drums, clavichord, serge modular, field recordings, and de-tuned piano, among other samples of unknown origin. 



Beginning with a driving pulse of panning and bellowing oscillation that burrows its way into some stripped down piano, Headboggle welcomes you into uncharted alien landscapes with alternating bass, heavy, low end crystalline beats, barely there passages of fragile beauty, near-hallucinatory atmospheres of sonic collage, and exotic chopped up rhythms of electro-acoustic abstraction. 



Several dance-tinged tracks continue the tradition of the High NRG movement of the 70's and 80's¯which first emerged with Patrick Crowley and the electronic music composition scene at San Francisco's City College¯where Head Boggle crafted many of the synth, serge modular, harpsichord, and clavichord samples that are interspersed throughout the album. The overall feeling is of floating, zooming, whirring, pulsing, snoring, clapping, and dreaming your way through verdant landscapes.  Annihilating sounds punch holes into one another, while cosmic spurts of  horizon-consciousness and softly curved modular arcs flutter and dim like gas flames.

Some amazing and tripped out pieces of music. Highly recommended!