Shaggs

This rawly recorded studio album features twelve tracks of musical destruction. HENRY KAISER is at his most extreme here, deploying bizarre electronic effects to conjure alien landscapes. CHARLES K. NOYES’ drumming is staggeringly arrhythmic, displaying Japanese Noh and Korean percussion influences, as well as conjuring bad dreams of The Shaggs. WEASEL WALTER ties the whole thing together with his penchant for extremity, wielding the bass guitar with an air of spastic fury. Plunderphonics expert JOHN OSWALD and Toy Killer MARK E. MILLER both make surprise appearances on alto saxophone and drums.

Susan Orlean's collection of profiles ranges from the well-known (Marky Mark) to the unknown (Colin Duffy, a typical American man, aged ten) to the formerly known (the cult sixties girl group the Shaggs). Orlean meets with Cristina Sanchez, Spain's first fully-qualified female matador, Silly Billy, New York's most successful children's clown, an African king who is a New York taxi-driver, and a champion show dog called Biff, who from a certain angle looks like President Clinton. As in her remarkable bestseller The Orchid Thief, soon to be the basis of Spike Being John Malkovich Jonze's new film, starring Meryl Streep and Nicholas Cage, Orlean's eye for the fascinatingly bizarre and her wonderfully witty way with language make her take on the world utterly original and unique.