I’m not going to pretend I understand the music of Christopher Willits and Zach Hill’s post-laptop free-jazz collective (Willits has a master’s degree and I’m halfway to a bachelor’s), but I can appreciate it. There is a certain bent genius that arises through all the digital distortion and drum abuse, if given enough patience and tolerance. With the likes of Kid606, Matmos, Safety Scissors, and members of The Advantage occasionally stopping by to jam with the Flössin crew, genius is expected. Yet, I find myself struggling to recognize it through all the seemingly random and certainly piercing noise.
Much of the time, the improvisation sounds independent rather than intuitive. “Plant Speaking” is easily one of the project’s most coherent numbers to date, with nipple tweaked percussion, diced guitar, and peaks through the cloud of distortion. It is easily my favorite track. All of the remixes of the title track take it somewhere fresh and different, but not out of character. Fans of the Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid records would prolly dig it, though.