Always like to receive news from the Bay Area which to me seems to be swarming with wild-eyed creators, polymaths, and genius types attempting things which sit well outside of established musical boundaries. One such is Pet The Tiger, a unit set up by David Samas which may have already been running for years, is described as “improvised acoustic collective for invented instruments” and includes a number of impressive names – Bryan Day, Cheryl E. Leonard, Gino Robair, Phillip Greenlief, Stephen Parris, Suki O’Kane, Tom Djll, and Tom Nunn.
Hail the Traveler (PUBLIC EYESORE PE158) has been released on Bryan Day’s label, and as you ought to know he’s no stranger to embracing “invented instruments”, a term which can probably include almost any household object or re-wired electrical device, running all the way up to hand-carved beauties and junkyard salvages to make the eyes of Harry Partch water in appreciation. This particular album also connects to the butoh dance work of Christina Braun, we’re told that all the tunes are “museum commissions” (did the California Academy of Sciences phone them up one day?), and that the music “explores the mythology of death”. Boy, there sure is a lot of that going around lately, what with Kim Myhr and Kitchen Orchestra playing Hereafter and Sonologyst with his Ancient Death Cults and Beliefs album.
Well, there’s also “intoning voices” on today’s record, moments of which do indeed evoke Delusion of the Fury, and we also glimpse into an alternative universe where Partch got elected US President on tracks like ‘Garden of the Gods’. I like the overall “art music” vibe of Hail the Traveler which (in my mind) is something I could very easily align with Art Bears, Lars Pedersen (When), C.W. Vrtacek and other 1980s gemuloids, but I also keep wishing they’d go further down the pathways marked “unexplored monsters live here”; for all the promise of their invented instruments, the record still sounds rather flat, and Pet The Tiger aren’t really seizing the moment to get truly adventurous. We last heard them in 2020 on Gaze Emanations; Jennifer praised the detail of the imaginary worlds they created. For more of Tom Nunn, see Music For Hard Times (e.g. the jolly City of Cardboard item). (15/07/2024)