Tom Liner Note Transla Carter Lunar Eclipse CD

Tom Carter is basically a guitarist and Robert Horton is -- well, something else. This is the list of "instruments" Horton is credited with playing on this album: boot, bowed boot (an important distinction), computer, vibrator, electric toothbrush, slinky, electric barometer, voice, snare drum, percussion, Casio MT-68, computer, field recordings, noise-cancelling headphone-microphones, harmonica, and, er, "sex machine." Whether all of this information leads you to approach the album with glee or deep foreboding will say a lot about your musical personality. Connoisseurs of noise who approach it with cautious interest will be well rewarded. Carter and Horton favor dark, complex, and carefully constructed drones over hellacious racket, and though the sounds get downright creepy from time to time, they are never less than fascinating. The title track is perhaps the darkest and creepiest, with a clangorous guitar right in the center of its swirling vortex; "Hunter's Moon" starts out sounding like a street fight between Einstürzende Neubauten and the crew of the Starship Enterprise -- pots and pans versus phaser guns. But then things suddenly quiet down and the dominant sound is a surprisingly elegant E-Bowed guitar. The quiet but tense, almost fearful "Equinoxium" gives way to the equally quiet but more cheery "Through Earth's Shadow," and both "During Totality" and "Set the Clocks Back" feature the kinds of guitar sounds that you might get if you locked Robert Fripp in the cellar and fed him only potato chips for a week. (That's a compliment.) If you must have melody and rhythm, then this disc is not for you. But for those with patient and adventurous ears, this album is well worth seeking out. ~ Rick Anderson

Recording information: 2004.

Personnel: Tom Carter (electric guitar, lap steel guitar, E-bow); Tom Carter (guitar); Robert Horton (vocals, harmonica, snare drum, percussion, computer); Robert Horton (vocals, keyboards, drums).

Audio Mixer: Robert Horton.

The Wire (p.57) - "It is hard not to hear the music of the spheres and the subtle energies of the alignments of the planets in these performances. The otherworldly sounds are provided by Horton's homemade instruments..."
CMJ (p.5) - "[They] create gorgeous music from ugly sounds. The out-rock vets play intense doom-drone with somber free-skronking..."