DOUBLE VINYL LP

"What in the holy high Heaven is going ON???? I'm lost without a paddle in the sea of this bizarre, tinny, ghostly, ghastly double-album of breathing in-and-out crunchy noises, drawn-out mind-squeezing sea blurples and at-no-times-decipherable vocals. Almost no drums are to be found (hell, almost no MELODIES are to be found!), I can't tell whether that fuzzy, slightly melodic noise is an organ or an accordion, I can't tell which songs are which -- For frying pan's sake, I count 14 individual songs and supposedly it only has THIRTEEN! This is by far the most 1800s-sounding album in the Caroliner catalog; you might call it *THE* quintessential Caroliner release (though it's definitely not the easiest to listen to!). These harrowing, confusing, oft-disappearing-into-silence, hovering, wavering snippets of near-nostalgic half-songs and shrieked nightmarish racket are the Epitome of turn-of-the-century horror movie dry earth insanity and homicidal despair. Is it art? Crappity-doo-dah yes! But is it music? That's for you to know and me to go get the laundry, one sec.

Here's the reason for the season: Rings On The Awkward Shadow was recorded onto eight-track like a normal album you might hear about someplace, but then the entire thing was dumped onto wire spool recorder! And I don't mean one of those fancy 10,000-track wire spool recording studios like the kind ** record in - this recorder was sort of an early antique dictaphone that LITERALLY records onto a piece of WIRE. So the recording went from normal stereo sound to a mono recording intended solely for speech, with NO frequency response for anything outside the range of ordinary human speech. It's basically equivalent to recording on tinfoil. As such, most of the actual "music" was completely obliterated, leaving behind a steadily fading in-and-out collection of strange brapfs, nearly unlistenable organ- or violin-sounding expressions of chord change and screamed vocals so trebly you're lucky your dick doesn't fall off from hearing it.
A few other "Fun Facts" about this record:

- That's what I wish I could provide. Unfortunately I can't, so I'll just share with you some notes I wrote down, for a better gist of what horrors await you in store:
- violins, repetitive blooping electronic noises, then a horn, a helicopter noise, organ. or is it a trumpet?
- xylophone? Or beating on glasses? Something that sounds like a bee. Interesting, but is there even a SONG in there?
- Foghorn blowing, rumbling noise, everything distorted to hell! Weird transmissions like a motorboat or lawn mower. Industrial, I guess? Into very catchy xylophone! Slide exotica guitar?
- Female vox over cow "moo" noises.
- Horse clomping noises.
- The sound of someone dropping a phone receiver? Neat tooting thing near the end.
- Bouncy piano rag! Electric tones. Rag gets stuck and different piano notes (lower ones) come on top, along with more noise. Then rag speeds up, slows down, gets messy. Then tugboat whistles (ocarina?). Adorable!
- A Recordio Disc!- Crispity crunchity, then blank air. Odd noises. More space. Splishy water noise. Static death. Lone organ/accordion every once in a while, then some incredibly loud racket. What the hell is all this hissy noise?

That's it, my friends! The most ???? release yet by the world's most ???? band."

-Mark Prindle