Both the music and the band that makes it are esoteric, but the mysterious nature of Crazy Doberman’s music is at the heart of its appeal. Illusory Expansion is their first one for the audacious, Austin-based label Astral Spirits, and what is certain is that the artist and label are a great match.
Less certain is the makeup of the band. We know they’re out of Indiana, serving as an outlet for the wilder, experimental side for musicians that they don’t get to exploit as much in their regular bands. Tim Gick mixed this record, John Dawson engineered it; Gick and Drew Davis are credited as the primary linchpins behind the band, but there’s a revolving core supplemented by more than a dozen satellite players.
The music might be harder still to explain, but the Exploding Star Orchestra could be the closest comparison. There’s that same echoing production that just blurs most of the instruments together, with individuals rising from the haze only to recede again. It’s not orchestral music but it’s rendered as if it came from an orchestra.
“Born Under an Evil Star” has shards of jazz from a trumpet and a billowing electric piano mixing with unsettled drums and analog synths; an enticing conglomeration of psychedelia, Love Supreme-era Coltrane and Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi. Uneasy bass clarinets pervade on “518 Wagons for California” and one of them sounds downright wounded during “Relentless Hunger” amid a spacey backdrop.
A muffled sax joined by another one and a trumpet over falling-down-the-stairs drums constitute the gathering energy of free jazz on “Human Tracks!” With a fingerpicked acoustic guitar, “Nothing But Tents” is free-form music from a folk music perspective, with a touch of Hinduism tossed in.
Shorter forms like “The Mutilated Forms,” “Verdict of Banishment” and “A Vision of Angels” are interesting fragments on their own.
“Effect of the Gold Fever” is a dizzying array of sci-fi sonorities, slowing down for the industrial-ambient vibe of “The Sight of Earth.”
The wicked brews that Crazy Doberman concocts are crazy good; a collective that’s hard to define but very easy to like. Illusory Expansion is now out there for the taking. Go grab a copy from Bandcamp.
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