Be that charge

Nurse With Wound collaborator peat Bog mines the cosmic debris of the asteroid belt on Be That Charge, a three-disc set of junglistic rhythms and chill room atmospheres chained to the drive of atom-powered guitars. Wildly schizophrenic, the songs on Be That Charge document the virtue of hearing music as a continuum where the term "genre" has little or no meaning. With an arsenal of beats, grooves and twisted samples, vocals that define the term "demented," and a fuzz-wah guitar attack that recalls the glory days of Chrome, Bog at the very least has guaranteed Earthmonkey's nomination for strangest album of the year. And why not, since Earthmonkey's closest pop-culture ancestor would seem to be avant-Kraut deconstructors Faust, with perhaps a mutated DNA strand or two from those zany rock pranksters The Residents. The fiery title track, which opens the first disc, is a middle-eastern meltdown, pure and simple—a whirling dervish of breakneck percussion and guitar that reminds one of what the Legendary Pink Dots might've sounded like had Talvin Singh manned the drum kit. "Echo Base" and "Scaccia Pensieri" clearly demonstrate Bog's debt to kraut rock. The former bubbles with the quirky charm of Cluster, its disembodied female vocals serving as counterpoint to Bog's artful techno-clatter. Futuristic funk for the far-flung generation. "Scaccia Pensieri" features a hypnotic rhythm section behind which an impressionistic backdrop suggest the spirit of Future Days-era Can, though ...