Ginger Leigh & the Hallucinations

by Ginger Leigh
Masuno, Artesia CA, 2007
CD, Masuno #20070811; $9.00 US ($13 foreign orders)
Distributor’s website: http://www.gingerleigh.com.

Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher
Saginaw Valley State University, Michigan

mosher@svsu.edu



This is a CD shrouded in mystery. Among the CDs tracks, "al-Ironman" begins with the repeated opening guitar slide and beat from Black Sabbath's "Iron Man," its repetition emphasizing its industrial quality, augmented by a sound like a flock of squawking birds, circling and hunting for a chord. Yet the next track "heaven's eye" proves more peaceful, an everyday calliope surrounded by a subsuming drone, a jangle like call to prayer, and a visionary violin. We hear the calliope again in "the cripple and the mime," merrily fighting industrial buzz, the noise of waiting. Like something in a feverish basement club in the1960s, "get it right!" builds upon a rhythm and blues loop, severe sewer organ with bubbles of odd echo-chamber vocal muttering.

The repeated riff in "I'd rather want to see" uses sitar and tabla, whoops or noise, and the banjo riff in "bright lights" stirs up a buzzing sitar then recedes into a single stale tone. We're surprised when "the fisherman's hook" offers a little vibrapone riff with exotica monkey calls, and "the day the birds stopped singing" brings even more Martin Denny tiki-bar cocktails, perhaps as might be performed by the German band Can if they dressed up in grass skirts and ragged straw hats. The tenth cut, "UXBEK77" is about distractions, little cabin riffs, irritation and subsequently "more voices in my head".

Hungry for more information on Ginger Leigh and these odd audio hallucinations, the seeker soon observes a web site blessed with a flying typewriter, tiny animations of static, VU meters careening into the red. Is Ginger the bearded gent in the aviator sunglasses, offering downloads? The mask that's captioned "This is Ginger Leigh"?

He or she appears to be based in Artesia, California (which sounds blessed with cooling springs), and has an upcoming CD called Merchant of Death Previous CDs, now unavailable, are praised. Several reviewers in UK and Russia cited their "middle eastern wailing", and a reviewer in Wiltshire, England calls it all "monster music". A 1999 article in Russian on thirty years of Throbbing Gristle (whose final concert this reviewer saw at Kezar Stadium; did Ginger?) is there because it cites Leigh's "Sparrow Wings" CD. And free downloads are offered on Leigh's website, for the curious, interested, tentative or timid.