Review: The Wig by Andrew Fogarty/ David Lacey
'The Wig' is a labyrinthine concept piece exploring the concept "le perruque" - doing one's work on company time. Described as a "collage of workplace field recordings," it is a strange concept album and modern pastiche to gothic noise. Each track expands into what is essentially a caffeinated department meeting with the voices on mute.
Irish experimentalists David Lacey [Rainfear, Irish
improve scene] and Andrew Fogarty [Toymonger, Boys of Summer] here seem to
organize the often monotonous and disheveled shuffling of daily office routine
into clicking plastic landscapes littered with creaky doors and a mild cough.
‘The Wig’ is a scarce blending of human ambience and found sound set in drab grey spaces most musicians are keen on escaping. What Fogarty and Lacey do is embrace the limited instrumentation and often-abysmal acoustics of office spaces and turn it into a functional composition. Each track builds and ebbs with complexity and even melodic dynamics; almost unexpected using such instrumentation.
‘Concise’ was not a concept thrown around for this release,
with the shortest of three tracks being ten
minutes long. Effectively barren and yet still heavy with life, each click of
the pen or whirl of a copier add new layers to each track. “And Did Those Feet”
arguably being the most dynamic, with some added reverb, could be the backing
effects of a Lovecraft movie.
Much more than an
ASMR piece or simple ambience, ‘The Wig’ takes moments that are seemingly
defiant of anything artistic and turns it into a diorama of life.
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