Toronto’s Six Heads collective – here using the moniker The Clicking Mandibles Band – is dedicated to what they call “audio surrealism via improvisation.” As has been my experience with classic works of Surrealism, what sets this apart from other sidelong-improv LPs is a puckish sense of fun. There’s something unmistakably funny, even linguistically, about Dali’s Christ face inside the tear of a rhinoceros or Buñuel’s dragging a piano with a pair of dead donkeys on it. The same goes here to some degree, although it’s subtler. Vocal samples are run backward repeatedly on side A; sounds are made from electronics, and occasionally, an array of found objects; scuttling drones come and go. Dynamics rise and fall. The B-side is intriguingly minimal with keyboard wobbling and object play, but descriptions don’t tell the whole story. As with Wintage’s stylish two-color silkscreened jackets made from “recycled dollar-store record covers” (mine is the back cover from The Best of the Animals), it’s all about the process.
