The Drift: the best in weird and experimental music
Cal Cashin rounds up the month's best avant-garde music, from Belgian drone metal, through digital slowcore, to Plunderphonic folk
It’s a very strange time to be alive, isn’t it?
A lot has happened on Planet Earth this month, but, perhaps obviously to those who regularly read my writing, the thing that has stayed with me is the recent passing of David Thomas, the American post-punk iconoclast. For me, Thomas’ work, both with Pere Ubu and his other solo ventures, has always been a sense of divine inspiration, and it’s probably not an exaggeration to say that without his art I might not have the adventurous thirst for weird, outsider music that underpins this whole column.
Pere Ubu’s two 1977 masterpieces, The Modern Dance and Dub Housing, stand immemorial as true classic albums, but the way in which Thomas continued to embraced his own weirdness in the latter half of his career is what puts him on my own post-punk Mount Rushmore. On albums like 2001’s twisted Americana fugue Surf’s Up (with his band The Two Pale Boys), and 2009’s mutant Alfred Jarry radio play Bring Me The Head of Ubu Roi, he remained a singular weirdo, an inspiration and a wildfire.
So for that reason, this month’s column is dedicated to the almighty David Thomas, and here are the best weird, experimental and autre releases of the last month.
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