Gary Lloyd Noland - CONSTELLATION OF NERVOUS SPASMS
Gary Lloyd Noland is an American composer who was born in Seattle in 1957. Living for a time in Germany, with stops in the home towns of both Mozart and Richard Strauss, Noland absorbed a great deal of music influence, enhanced further by his musical studies at UC Berkeley where he earned his Bachelor’s degree and Harvard where he earned a Masters and PhD in Music Composition. Today we are excited to share our thoughts on Gary Lloyd Noland’s new CD-album, CONSTELLATION OF NERVOUS SPASMS, performed by The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble!
CONSTELLATION OF NERVOUS SPASMS begins with the bizarre “CRYBABY CRUSHERS” which seems to draw inspiration from the concept of radio/television shifters with its multiple spliced-in vocal performances and broken piano as a lead. I admire the spasmatic nature of this piece - it is quite perfect for an album with a title like this. “BYGONE FANCIES (for piano)” follows and true to its name, it is a nostalgic piece that plays like a pleasant stroll down memory lane. As one of the more “normal” sounding pieces on the album, though, the more I listen to it, the more I feel like it is hiding something within its normalcy. “STURM UND DRANGULAR POINTS OF DISSENT” returns to the more bizarre, landing with an out of this world kind of soundscape, in a Twilight Zone kind of sense, to the point where I would not have been surprised to hear Rod Serling’s voice sampled here.
“THE DEBONERIZATION OF AMERICA” is the fourth track from CONSTELLATION OF NERVOUS SPASMS and I found the song to be jazzy in its bizarreness. In addition to some jazz overtones, some synths come into play - along with some very well-chosen sound effects, including a loud splash toward the end of the piece. “VARIATION ON AN INVISIBLE THEME for piano, No. 1” is next and it returns to a more normal sound once again, though I found this well-crafted song to feel a bit unsettling overall. Its piano-driven complexities are definitely worth a spin both as a part of the album and by itself. “COCKROACH CORONATION SLOG” follows and it sounds like a mockery, or parody of the kind of fanfare around a ruler’s coronation. I found it easy to catch on to the farcical nature of this piece and I think this piece provides some excellent contemporary commentary.
The title track, “CONSTELLATION OF NERVOUS SPASMS” is the seventh song from the album and it stands as a well-woven tapestry of strangeness that encompasses some of the overall sounds we have heard so far; again, there are some jazz motifs baked in, as well as some more samples that sounded space-themed to me, making it quite fun. “VARIATION ON AN INVISIBLE THEME for piano, No. 2” is eighth and it is another take on the theme from earlier, though this variation sounds more calculated and introspective than the first one as it feels like it builds on its predecessor. “THE GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE VORTEX TERRESTRIAL ANTHEM” is up next and I absolutely love the way that Noland uses the percussion in this song as an agent of chaos. I found myself imagining all of the sound samples included in this one to encompass the titular Great Pacific Garbage patch and that I, as the listener, am gradually taking all of these sounds all in while I sit on that island of junk.
“VARIATION ON AN INVISIBLE THEME for piano, No. 3” is the tenth song from the album and, to me, it has the most tragic feel of the three variations on the Invisible Theme. I gathered feelings of loss and confusion among its frantic overall feeling and I thoroughly enjoy how much emotion is shared within. By far the longest track at sixteen minutes and thirty-three seconds is “DIE FLEDERMAUS PSYCHO FLIP”. The absolutely frantic and spasming piano in this song and the inter-spliced carnival sounds make it sound like someone really at the end of their rope, entering psychosis of sorts and I found the song to be deeply intriguing within its madness. The penultimate track from the album is “ANGELIC EFFLUVIATIONS” and, for me, it felt like the kind of experience that happens at the end of your life; the piano track has that kind of foreboding feel to it while the samples have a darkness that matches that kind of feeling. Perhaps the intent here is that the titular angels have arrived to escort you to the next life. As a small bonus, closing out the album is Noland’s 1994 performance of “THE BROOM BRIGADE for piano, Op. 25”, a short but peppy way to end out a fascinating album.
CONSTELLATION OF NERVOUS SPASMS is the most bizarre album I have heard in a long time - and I mean that in the best way possible. Gary Lloyd Noland presents an engaging but challenging body of work that I respect immensely and that I feel like I got a lot out of. I will admit, I am not sure I always understood the artist’s overall vision for portions of this album but, even at the points I found to be a bit confusing, I still found it fascinating to sit back and admire the one of a kind show I was listening to. I acknowledge this work will not speak to everyone but I still think that everyone should at least give it a chance because there is a lot to find within the quite literal nervous spasms featured within this album.
One big takeaway from this album is that I want to hear more from Gary Lloyd Noland; is his work all this bizarre? Does it go deeper than this? Additionally, I will admit, I have withheld a little information about The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble throughout this article: it is actually Gary Lloyd Noland’s one-man band where he performs under five anagrammatic names! You can learn more about Gary Lloyd Noland through his website and find more of his music through SoundCloud and YouTube. Noland is also an accomplished author and you can find links to his books beneath the player for CONSTELLATION OF NERVOUS SPASMS embedded below!
