Panicsville’s Andy Ortmann has been doing his thing for quite some time now, and he doesn’t care if you like it or not. No matter whether “noise” gets heralded in some dumb mainstream magazine by some clueless chump, no matter whether Panicsville gets a mention or a photo, I take solace in the fact that Ortmann will do what he wants regardless of what others think.
And the cool thing is it’s not easy to know what to think about Perverse, with its varied electronics and other instrumentation, water and cash register sounds, and sinister drones. I’d seen Panicsville a bunch of times when I lived in Chicago, in different incarnations, and the only real constant thread through all of the performances (other than them usually consisting of Ortmann and one or more co-conspirators) is that there’s no constant thread, no easy way to categorize what’s going on. This recording is similar, we’ve got a range of styles (though all sort of classifiable as challenging, in a sense), and a bunch of ways to interpret what we’re hearing. A cast of notables such as Kevin Drumm, MV Carbon (Metalux), Thymme Jones (Cheer-Accident), Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers) and others add to the bewildering texture of sounds, but it’s clearly Ortmann who runs the show. And that’s fine with me.
The Other Side of Life 