There’s nothing mundane about the approach of Alex Moskos, aka Drainolith, a pillar of the Montreal alt-alt-indie scene for over 25 years. Guitarist for AIDS Wolf, he’s had his hands in noise, but here he plunges in about everything else that can be described as DIY “no holds barred” music. Jazz, electro, lo-fi garage, spoken word, avant-folk and experimental music of all kinds copulate shamelessly, to the delight of our music-loving voyeurism.
These eclectic zappa-isms and other successful expressions of a certain aesthetic trashiness combine in a hallucinatory journey bathed in psychedelia, but without losing the sense of beat or groove. And that’s where Drainolith stands out: the experimentation doesn’t sound like so many other cerebral isms. It’s a trip through the looking glass, yes, but into a parallel world where the very essence of fun hasn’t been jettisoned.
I call it joyful avant-garde. The kind of thing that PanM360 is all about.
