Earlier this year I was scrolling through Reddit, as one does, when I ran across a post from a redditor named kingosleemer in the r/experimentalmusic subreddit where they announced “I’m producing and releasing 87 experimental albums this year.” The post explained the plan, including some humorous commentary and an overview of the Experimental Grandfather Paradox.
TL;DR: I’m hooked. This is a very interesting project with lots of intriguing music. The description on their Bandcamp page says, “i am the mackerel is a loosely affiliated cult consisting of members of Halaka, Allele Cog Experiment, EGAC, Dead Children’s Brigade, HOZ, The Orchestra of the Blow of the Hand, and others.” Is this different groups, different people, one person, or just made-up names? Doesn’t matter. In the words of Maria Bamford: “Sure I’ll join your cult!”
Let’s talk about the first four albums in the series, just to give you an idea what’s in store.
The first release in the series is entitled “0.01136363636363636363636363636363.” It’s a good example of the variety of music being published for this project. It starts out with “dilution / dilation” featuring gentle electronic keyboard mixed with a somewhat glitchy rhythm. Later you’ll hear “Cartridges,” which starts with slightly foreboding synth, and then evolves into several overlapping threads of singing, electronics and guitar. ”When it Snows” has pretty, sustained notes with occasional voices that sound like snippets of intercepted phone conversations; it’s spacey and ethereal. Closing track “L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Corpse” is the longest piece here at 15 minutes. It begins with a pulsing alien rhythm and adds somewhat lowkey spoken word, occasionally interrupted by odd interjections. By the end, it’s acapella singing. Overall, an engaging and enigmatic presentation.
And, by the way, that album title? That is the conversion factor if you want to translate feet per minute to miles per hour. File that away for later interpretation of this project, or just to impress your friends.
The second album “Hoaxes” features mostly digital music. Sometimes it sounds like deconstructed early Devo (especially opener “1978 Basement Stairs”). At other times it is fairly sparse, like someone is figuring out what noises their new synth can make. Meanwhile, a couple other tracks (“Oven Crash” and “The Slotch Vinyl Release, 2004”) have the feel of Cagean sound collages.
“Another Brack in the Will” has 26 “Hotel Hideaways” parts that are very short (mostly under a minute) that sound like field recordings at a hotel mixed with musical elements. These tracks are bookended by the two-part “25 Dollar 1960s Melodier Guitar Laying Against Amp.” It is the sound you’ll hear as well as an example of truth in song naming.
The fourth release, “Nonexistent Objects,” is self-described as “a single piece of atmospheric drone progressive ambient music.” It’s not really relaxing ambient background music; there’s too much stimulating (and sometimes abrasive) stuff going on here (including some vocals). And while it does play like a single long piece, it’s broken into five Movements.
There’s a good explanation of the “Bonus Material” included on the page for “Nonexistent Objects.” On the downside, the bonus material doesn’t seem to exist, although I’ve read the description three times and I’m still not sure. And what do we make of the bunny, present on the album cover, in the song titles, and in the lyrics? I’m afraid I have more questions than answers for this album.
One other feature of all the albums are the accompanying narratives. They are sometimes descriptive with all true (*ahem*) album backgrounds, some read like short stories, and some are more “Lynchian.” I can definitively say they are all an entertaining read. Will all the music and writing come together at the end of this project to provide some sort of unified theory of this art? Personally, I wouldn’t hold my breath, but stay tuned.
What I can say for sure is that I am cheering on this weirdo project from my remote outpost. As I write this, it appears IATM is roughly on schedule to meet their random(?) goal by the end of the year, although I’m not 110% sure about that because I didn’t go to their page to do math. But, by God, they’re trying. In any case, this is the one Project 2025 I can get behind.