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Zeek Sheck "Joinus"
RSPT045 12" LP $29.99

Music to make the body feel wild.

A saga that began four albums and five comic books ago with a fat stub of flesh burrowing beneath the grass to uncover hex givers, beepers, and severed sisters’ heads, draws to its epic finale deep within The Maze: Once a war sanctuary, then a home, now a biomechanized sarcophagus, and the only way out is up.

“The machine stirred, searching for a response. Chairs, table, out of proportion swollen in the dark. The ceiling pressing down. A discontinuous lump of flesh asks, “Who Are You!?”

“Nothing. Complete nothings. An empty space surrounded by an empty space.” He was coming closer to the truth. “That’s right!”

Though this story is crushing, the resulting shards dance, creak and spill into a psychic underground vast enough for cymbal, cello, tuba, storms, timpani, piano, guitar, foghorn, harmonica, double reeds, trumpet, Sylvester Stallone vocals, and synth that makes Pink Floyd blush. Audiophiles will test their high end gear with this album; laughing teenagers will crank it, flying top speed to the ocean.

Zeek Sheck’s sound is singular, unmistakable: sleep talking, skidding drums, 64th note woodwinds at full tilt, cult chorales, resplendent horns, and escape-velocity dance anthems. For such odd music to achieve a maturity is both rare and gorgeous; "Joinus" is spare yet lustrous, by turns mysterious and dangerously riotous. Listeners will scramble to hear the early records all over again.

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