Chicanery: a Mystery

For some reason, and I have no idea what that reason is, it took me a while to track down the eponymous release by Chicanery. I think it's well worth tracking down, but I'm not going to be able to tell you how to do it.

I will tell you that there's a video (right now, anyway) for one of the tracks here:

Cut me From the Mirror

That song is one of the more accessible tracks on the album, released, I think, in 2011, and apparently quickly removed from circulation. Why? I have no idea. It might have something to do with the strange lights in the sky.

They are obscure enough that I feel fine posting about them here. They are strange and wonderful enough that I would feel remiss if I didn't. What I can't for the life of me figure out is HOW this is obscure. Or maybe it's not as obscure as I think. Having a pedigree like this though -- Warren Cuccurullo (late of Frank Zappa, Missing Persons, Duran Duran) on guitars and tapes and loops and all that kind of good stuff I like to talk about over here, Terry Bozio (also played with Zappa,) Simone Sello, Joe Travers, and Ustad Sultan Khan -- I am not surprised at the quality.

Of course I can't overlook their brilliant and bizarre vocalist/lyricist/multi-instrumentalist Neil Carlill, who, it seems, is also more than happy to communicate with lunatics who contact him out of the blue. Until now I've never listened to anything (that I know of) from him, but that is going to be changing immediately. He's got so much texture in his delivery, his lyrics drip all over the crooked parts of my brain, and he still manages to provide melodic hooks throughout the material. There's some Peter Murphy in these vocals, maybe some David Bowie, and then a big dose of stuff the likes of which I've never really heard before.

The production is awesome. Put some headphones on. Listen for the thing that sounds like a circuit bent speak-n-spell in the song in the video. Brilliant.

In lieu of linking you to the Chicanery album (I encourage you to track it down, though,) here's a link to a bandcamp page with some other stuff by Neil: Three on a Match