TASM Lab
Thing and Nothing
by Clarendon Lavorich
Out of nowhere, with no expectation or forewarning, an act of creation, devastating in its scope and blasphemous in its innovation, passed through our office. About time, too. The Till Action Science Media Laboratory (TASM Lab), which consists almost entirely of Jeff Till, has conceived Thing and Nothing, “An Insanity Play in Four Parts and A Prologue,” in the traditions of Zappa (musically) and William Gibson (conceptually).
Composed entirely on a computer (with the addition of human voices), it is about the isolating effects of technology on the human soul, and how that isolation is manipulated and twisted into a form of entertainment. It uses schizophrenic orchestration and a libretto that is fractured in detail but coherent in global scope, and full of confusing but beautiful words. “Songer, has the whistle of birds riddled grace, the rhythm of waves wove ensem in your filmy brain? The laxen way of your opiate gate has given you wrist to worship the genie.”
Amidst all this lovely frivolousness, TASM Lab gives us the story of a game between Mashpee Mungquack, proprietor of Cum Pooter, the ultimate dream machine, and Capt. John Barneveld, would-be adventurer in his own mind. To quote from the libretto, the game is meant to quash: “an evil in this land that’s making stupid people out of stupid Americans. They lay all day and play these games and never stray from the worlds they make. They buy it from a machine… This machine isolates them and then another person they will never meet… Love? Fuck that shit! We have Cum Pooter! See what I mean, Jellybean? It sucks the life that we need.” “Excuse me if I’m mistaken, but isn’t this the machine that we partake in?” “Of course it is… Don’t listen to what I say. It’s all bullshit anyway… Destroy the machine.”
In the process of this imaginary game in an imaginary land, they lure an innocent, Simon Still, a man just trying to find true love, into playing on Capt. John’s side, without the knowledge that everything’s a game. Simon meets (and rents from Mungquack) Christmas in Cum Pooter Land, an imaginary girl and the essence of Simon’s dream woman. Not knowing that she’s just a product of Cum Pooter, Simon falls in love with Christmas, and rents her nightly from Mashpee. Capt. John convinces Simon that he can liberate Christmas by destroying Mungquack, and uses him to fight an imaginary battle with Mashpee. In the climactic scene of imaginary creation (“I make a hairy scary dog with metal teeth…” “I kill it with a plane… and make a battleship!”), Simon apparently wins, but finds that it was only a game after all, and that Christmas is not real, and finally, that Mashpee exists, but is “made of money and fools like you’s dreams.” Simon is left a crushed man, losing the one thing that ever made him happy, Christmas (who was only a program created out of light and electricity).
The irony of this tragedy is that this album was conceived and produced (except for the vocals) entirely on computer (or Cum Pooter) by Till, and I’m writing this on Cum Pooter, and we’ll be publishing this almost entirely by Cum Pooter. The isolation he warns us of shares the same source as his creation. Cum Pooter is invading all of our lives. We are all potential Simons, ready to fall victim to a game which does not exist, just as we are all potential Capt. Johns, ready to jump in and manipulate others for the completion of imaginary goals. The circular logic and self-reflecting story line in Thing and Nothing, like a mirror stretching into infinity, creates a reality that is not real, but contains more truth in its fragmented plot than any modern morality play. This is all underscored and emphasized by the music, an orchestral creation worthy of Ives or (as above) Zappa. Caffeine jittered piano and string runs struggle with pondering horns and liquid bass, strict percussion fusing with loose melodies, and the harsh rasp of voices arguing and fighting and being confused reigns over all. Bursts of sound become motifs, identifying characters and locations. Melodies that at first seem to have no purpose suddenly come to magical fruition when juxtaposed with the orchestration, indicating mood and adding to character development. The shifting tempos, meters, and tonalities of the music establish the landscape of Cum Pooter Land, the fields and fjörds, the mountains and molehills that set the scene for this nightmare drama. With no money but his own, and no studio support whatsoever, TASM Lab has sculpted a concept album that actually makes one sit down and think.
