A strange beauty

From the other end of the electronic spectrum when the classics were being butchered by sonic innovations like the moog, Ruth White was delving into a far stranger pot of electronic alchemy. On Flowers of Evil, the poems of Charles Baudelaire fall from her mouth like over-ripe fruit riddled with maggots, a delayed echoing soup that intoxicates the listener in a sense that there’s a third party being conjured up. The Cat is a fine example of what I’m talking about, a real nugget of dark matter that quivers in the ear. Recently plucked from obscurity by Creel Pone and available from Volcanic Tongue, this is an extraordinary recording of unsettling beauty like a ancient wax cylinder recording that was walled up for safety’s sake.