The Bollard Bulletin: January 6, 2025
Local Music Monday: Big Blood's post-apocalyptic "Electric Voyeur"
LOCAL MUSIC MONDAY
Ten years after the Christian-Fascist AI Apocalypse, we heard strange sounds wafting across Portland Harbor from the direction of the giant empty oil tanks. President Vance’s goons had long since smashed every instrument they could find in their crusade to eradicate the sin of secular music. Hollow and concave objects could still be drummed upon, metal cans of dry beans shaken like maracas, and outlaw folkies made crude attempts to string cigar-box guitars with sinew, but Neil Young was wrong: Rock and roll had died.
With both bridges still crumbled and uncrossable, the repetitive beeps and boops drew the peninsula’s last bedraggled hipsters across the foul Fore River on rickety skiffs, and as they approached South Portland’s shore they realized the notes were forming weird mutant melodies. They heard rhythmic clattering and the high, dulcet tone of an angelic female voice, singing: “Gettin’ caught up / Gettin’ caught up in a party / Dancin’…”
It was coming from one of the hulking rusted tanks, within which the Portlanders could see human figures dreamily swaying by flickering candlelight. Spray-painted next to the entrance, the words read: “Tonight: Dontrustheruin Records Presents Big Blood. No cover.”
And it was true. The tank’s huge circular roof had collapsed during the mega-Nor’easters, yet Big Blood, who lived nearby, was still alive. Colleen Kinsella and Caleb Mulkerin had made some of Maine’s most intriguing and exciting experimental music in the decades before The Reboot — both as Big Blood and as members of Cerberus Shoal — but they hadn’t done much acoustic stuff since the days of Fire on Fire. Incredibly, the couple managed to make their own electronic instruments from scrap metal and spare parts, relying mostly on guidance gleaned in person from electrical engineers or read in dusty manuals, the now completely sexless and surveilled Internet being a last resort. It had taken them about 10 years.
Electric Voyeur is the soundtrack of the post-apocalyptic fantasy described above, and one of the most remarkable records you’ll ever hear. Released in late December along with an instrumental version of the same, it was, in fact, made using homemade electronic instruments built with minimal use of online reference materials. Caleb and Colleen then had to learn how to play and record these devices they’d made, and to do so in keeping with their high artistic standards. That’s always been the big secret of Big Blood — no matter how crazy or random or cacophonous their songs may sound, there’s always an ingenious method to the madness, as well as deep emotion.
The 16 tracks here lead listeners on a fantastical trip through an art-damaged world of new sonic possibilities, starting with the title cut, a more-than-vaguely Middle Eastern melody, slightly glitchy, upon which Colleen layers ghostly aaah-ooohs. Then we’re in the “Middle of a Party,” experiencing an after-hours club from the bottom of a K hole. There’s danger in the dark woods, strongly implied on tracks like “Night Walk” and “Floating from Xanthi II (giant fir),” but also some fun, as on “For Real,” which includes Chris Livengood on synth (the sole appearance of a pre-made instrument or guest artist).
The surreal dub of tracks like “Came to Life” and “Joe’s Head” is downright hypnotic, and on the beautiful closer, “Color of The Moment,” Big Blood creates something most normies would recognize as a song. Otherwise, these compositions follow their own bizarre inner logic, the impressionistic lyrics sometimes sung, sometimes whispered, sometimes sensible, sometimes not. The instrumental version allows heads to just sit back and appreciate the ethereal psychedelic sounds created with these contraptions, and oddly, sans vocals, Electric Voyeur is even stranger.
See ya on the other side of civilization… (Don’t forget to stock up on snacks.)
p.s.: The only live music or arts event I could find to list on this now notoriously dark political day (“J6”) is Justin Carver playing for tips at Three Dollar Deweys at 6 p.m. So perhaps The Reboot is already underway…