Andrew Klimek “AFTERBATHINGINTURPENTINE”

The title (in all caps) is on this 1979, 7-inch’s (lemon yellow, Mustard records) label, which is what will survive (nuclear annihilation, climate disaster) while the glossy, paper cover, won’t. It’s a three-song “single” (which makes more sense than the notorious 3-side “double” album—give me an afternoon, and I’ll give you something for that fourth side! And so would Andrew Klimek)! I wish I had more AK vinyl—this is it—because his (with Ugly Beauty) masterpiece “suite,” “Halfway Thru the Summer” is one of my favorite recordings, period, and I can’t even remember where it came from (I believe a CLE magazine comp)—I have it on home cassette (I hope). “Anna Told” has almost-discernable lyrics, maybe a narrative, and angular guitar, far from unpleasing, in-and-out, concise pop. “Drapery Hooks (of My Love)” starts out similarly, but then devolves into noise and backwards tracks and I-don’t-know-what. It occurs to me that it doesn’t actually say 45 RPM anywhere, so, in the spirit of experimentation, I tried playing the whole thing at 33 RPM—but that’s too sludgy, especially the vocals. Well, the second side, “Felt Hammer,” starts out sounding like Joy Division, but only until the vocals. I also tried playing “Drapery Hooks” backwards, though it’s hard to regulate the speed, so I’m not sure about this, but I’ll go out on a limb and proclaim that that song is the first in recorded history to be exactly the same whether played forward or backward!

“Felt Hammer” feels like a classic to me—maybe I’ve just heard it a lot—quite possibly on Jeff Curtis’s long running “What You Need” radio show on WRUW. Or, where else would I have heard it? Certainly not at the dentist, even my old dentist who loved the laughing gas and the Beatles. There’s a reference to the “Terminal Tower,” so you know you’re in Cleveland, and excellent, heavily tremolo’d guitar. If I really worked at it, I could get all the lyrics, but I’m tired of re-needling these little discs—so I’m going to concentrate on the mysterious and still-existing sleeve/cover. Mine says, “To Randy” and there’s a circled “AK” (in nearly worn-out permanent marker) which I’m assuming is only on my copy—I don’t know what that does to the re-sale market value. There’s a photo of (it’d-be-weird-if-it-wasn’t) Andrew Klimek playing guitar—that’s been re-photocopied so many times as to make it extremely high-contrast and almost faded away. The odd thing is, he looks more like a young William Shatner than anyone. On back there’s a small, dark, b&w reproduction of an abstract painting that almost pathologically challenges us to ponder its preferred-format splendor. Musician credits include Klimek, James Ellis, Christopher Weldon, and Michael Weldon. In small print are some extensive, uncredited, very serious, highly technical liner notes, easily several Cochranes above my head, but highly poetic all the same, and irresistible. I’ll excerpt, to my peril— “The song has an asymmetrical structure, consisting of an introduction, a strophe, an antistrophe, a second strophe, an instrumental break, a second antistrophe, and a coda.” And: “A glass harmonica is both rubbed for drone effects and its unique timbre and played percussively against the steady metrical drum figure. An electric saw run through a Mutron III envelope-follower is used as controlled noise.” —as I’ll get ads for vintage Mutron III’s every time I open anything on the internet, from now to eternity.

9.19.25