Sublime eclectic mayhem. That’s been my playlist project and musical life, one that begins with The Muppet Movie soundtrack and later involves performing hymns, death metal, surf, and bluegrass. I’ve played in theaters, tents, and basements, for multi-stage festivals and squirrel rodeos. I’ve written and recorded music for The Drunken Odyssey. Sublime eclectic mayhem. A warning and a welcome for joyous noise, for those navigating what Beckett called “this bitch of an earth.”

(From a series of cut-ups using a page from each of the following: Soulbane Strategem: Diabolical Subterfuge That Threatens to Destroy Us by Norman Jermundsen and Gas City by Loren Estleman.)

I. A Window in the Rear

Wait, he second seconded a gaze at the terrestrial reaper work. Its lens up, waiting, stands time, up spitting open to time, to telescope. He stares at her woman. She’s sitting in her garden party. He looks inside the lens, looks at her woman-in-waiting. It was all too easy for there’s a million women’s backs. Images, stirring silently. He was familiar with the geometry, heads, and months. Stupid orbits. I had watched on its pedestal opposite the black circuits pour from the head of his telescope, reaper the woman’s gaze south. When I looked back, it was worse. The curtains drawn over the one to name more time.

Be here. 

That fat moon is you.

Stupid Orbits

Listen on Tidal. Listen on Spotify.

1. “Entry III” – Simon Waskow
2. “Astrophillia” – Shane Embury
3. “Sleeping” – Foxwarren, Andy Shauf, Darryl Kissick
4. “How to Rent a Room” – Silver Jews
5. “(Roda de) Samba Maje (feat. Amor Pela Roda)” – Banda Maje
6. “L’Orfeo, SV 318: Act III: Ei dorme, e la mia cetra (Orfeo)” – Kobie van Rensburg
7. “Mark of the Devil” – Broadcast
8. “Shake Your Blood” – Probot, Lemmy Kilmister
9. “Nobody Can Know” – Bene Gesserit, Alain Neffe
10. “I Enjoyed the Band” – Something Weird
11. “Is It On, Is It Off?” – Bit ‘A Sweet
12. “Work” – Tony Tixier, Joe Martin, Jongkuk Kim
13. “Flat Pink Octagon” – Gore Tech
14. “Water Connects Us” – Lenxi
15. “Abstraction Is Deliverance” – James Brandon Lewis Quartet
16. “Come Maddalena” – Ennio Morricone
17. “Red Yellow” – Swans
18. “Harmless” – Inner Nature

Stephen McClurg (Episode 473 & 666) composes and improvises in Serenity Dagger, The Abdomen, and other projects. Along with session work for mid-Alabama singer/songwriters, he frequently collaborates with musicians across the state adding bass, guitar, and synths to friends’ recordings. He currently writes reviews for Horror DNA and is the substitute low end wrangler for Mobile-based punk rock band Future Hate. You can find out more about his work here.