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Curmudgeon’s debut gig last February proved to be a real eye-opener for the local experimental act. “It was an awful show,” Timothy Garrett – the young lad behind the one-man act – openly admitted in a post on his Tumblr page.

“I did, however, receive some interesting suggestions from the audience after that night.”

One of them was that he needed someone or something to accompany his music, which is largely, if not entirely, based around the bass guitar. “I did get stuck in a rut after that show, so I started to question which direction I wanted this project to go.”

The answer to his question came, in some form or other, through listening to a lot of stoner bands. “Apart from stoner music I also discovered Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and Om, whose music I felt sent me into some weird trance.”

Feeling inspired, he decided to try and write something that could have a similar effect on the listener.

“I wrote a number of songs, later placing them in an order that would bring out different movements. I wanted the person to feel as if, for instance, they are travelling underwater, or just strolling on the moon when they are listening to this music.”

The result is a brand new EP called Δ. (Delta Dot), which Garrett concedes was more of an experiment than anything else, although the response to the new music has been rather positive.

“After assessing the feedback, I decided that this post-rock inspired sound was the direction Curmudgeon should take.” Still essentially a bass guitar-dominated sound, Curmudgeon’s latest offering – two tracks clocking in at around 17 minutes – involves only a light smidgen of simple effects.

“I opted for this approach because I felt the sounds on Δ. do have a transcendental effect on the listener. And also, this music doesn’t require any additional musicians to perform live.”

So what’s behind EP’s cryptic name Δ.? “I’ve always liked weird-looking symbols, more so given I’m a physics and maths student,” he admits.

And that is connected to Δ. because?

“It was nothing life-changing really. I just figured the symbol would look cool on a digital music player display,” he laughs. “The album title translates as Delta.Dot and it’s really just the two song titles put together.”

Also rather curious is the use of sound clips linking the different movements of the music. “They’re clips of German film director Werner Herzog from the Burden of Dreams documentary, which is about the making of Fitzcarraldo, one of my favourite Herzog productions,” Garrett explains.

“In this particular clip, Herzog speaks on the obscenity of the jungle. I found his way with words to be particularly striking and altogether along the same lines of the mood that Δ. put me in.”

Rather than altering the sound clips, Garrett says he opted to include the original sample “because I wanted the listener to absorb Herzog’s own words, in which I find the same kind of beauty as I do in the lyrics of Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo. To me, they are both stellar poets.”

Cross-fading the clips into the music this way enhances the music’s abstract quality to the point that one could easily listen to these two tracks on a loop without realising where one piece ends and the other begins. Garrett says there is even more to it.

“I feel it represents that trance feeling I get whenever I practise my songs. There are no different songs when I’m in that place.”

Meanwhile, Curmudgeon’s earlier offerings have, for the time being, been put on hold. “I intend to use songs like Daniel Johnston and Girl for a later, separate project, possibly a split release of some sort. Just because I changed direction doesn’t mean that those songs need to be discarded; they are good songs in their own right.”

Δ. is available as a free download from Curmudgeon’s Bandcamp page. Alternatively, a collectable physical two-track CD version is available. It comes in a home-made double-sleeve pack with more curious stuff inside that flies in the face of the digital age and its effect, for better or worse, on the value of authentic music that challenges the norm.

http://curmudgeon1.bandcamp.com