Khodumodumo’s “Trapped in Deluded and Helpless Loops” is an Unsettling Yet Quirky Trip on a Musical Rube Goldberg-esque Nightmare Machine

“Trapped in Deluded and Helpless Loops” by South African experimental music project Khodumodumo is like an audio horror short film. In the beginning urgent, noisy sound and the sound of breathing and the sound of some object hitting another can be heard like what you would expect in a scene before the opening credits. But then that noisy sound hovers in and out in the background at varying distances in the background. We hear knocking, the scream of a small creature, more labored breathing, an out of tune stringed instrument being struck, spooky, old synths in a gleaming sound like the audio equivalent of a flickering chandelier in an ancient house. And in the end a sound like the buzzing white noise of an amp connected to a cable that has been disconnected from a guitar. The latter suggesting all we’ve heard has been part of a monstrous single instrument, a musical Rube Goldberg-esque nightmare machine. And that’s the sort of unique listening experience, all conceived with differing sound palettes, textures and emotional resonances, to be had on the Khodumodumo album What The Fuck Are You Doing This Side? which released on December 8, 2023. Listen to “Trapped in Deluded and Helpless Loops” below and give a listen to the rest of the album on Bandcamp also linked below.

Duchamp-Killer Created a Self-Decomposing Sonic Collage Automaton for “Live in the sounds”

Duchamp-Killer’s new single “Life in the sounds” is a bit like taking a journey through the composer’s usual Rube Goldberg-esque soundscape: looped, introspective guitar, sampled bubbles, various percussive sounds, rain stick, processed bird sounds echoing. All with a sense of motion and at one point the whole thing sounds like it’s being played in reverse order with some signal processing indicating the same. Like an ever evolving collage of sounds suggesting a tropical setting at twilight. It is as mysterious as it is playful, as simple as its aggregate of sounds reveals an expressive complexity that never seems overwhelming. And then toward the end this song that seems to be its own sonic ecosystem starts to unravel in organic fashion and dissolve into its component parts. Listen to “Life in the sounds” on Soundcloud and connect with Duchamp-Killer at the links below.

Duchamp-Killer Website

Duchamp-Killer on YouTube