Brood X Dreams of a Pool Party

from Tymbal, a compilation album by Fuzzy Panda Recording Company

About Tymbal

In this compilation, musicians were given a sample palette with which to make their own original recording. For TYMBAL, this consisted of four hours of Brood X field recordings by Noel Mueller in Baltimore and Beau Finley in Washington, DC. In keeping with past Fuzzy Panda compilations, artists were limited to only the source samples without additional instrumentation. Yes, even the techno track only uses the allowed cicada sample sources. The results span the soft, forested hills of ambient drone to the skittering abstractions of modern computer music to noise in its varied harshness.

The cicadas don’t do the artists any favors. They are unrelentingly, almost uniformly, loud. They do not make melodies or rhythm, only pink noise. Because of this, each track represents a unique distillation of the cicadas’ sex screams.

Of his contribution, Chester Hawkins writes “[t]he breeding cycle of Brood X is famous for its overwhelming wall of static, so it was an irresistible challenge to find and exploit the sonic details: the crevices, wrinkles, folds, and brittle gaps in the screaming madness, and sculpt a new narrative using only those sounds.”

Reviews

“Compelling” – Avant Music News

“Warped beyond recognition” – Disposable Underground

“Adam Vidiksis turns sex into musical notes” – A Closer Listen

Details

Released September 28, 2021

Further reading on cicadas:
www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-woman-who-solved-a-cicada-mystery-but-got-no-recognition/
www.scientificamerican.com/article/galileo-and-the-pope-who-loved-cicadas/

Credits

All artists used only field recordings of Brood X cicadas in the making of their tracks. Field recordings were made by Noel Mueller in Towson, Maryland and Beau Finley in Washington, D.C., and southern Montgomery County, Maryland.

Tracks 1, 2, 4, 5, 7-11, 13-20 mastered by Beau Finley at the B-Lab in Washington, D.C.

Fuzzy Panda Recording Company is grateful for the artists who took on this slightly ridiculous challenge and created a wonderful compilation to celebrate the 2021 edition of Brood X. May we all meet the children of 2021 Brood X in 2038.

License

all rights reserved