Cyberchump + Janzyk: "Feedback from the Orbulon"

Wind & Wire once described Cyberchump as “one of the most intriguing, unpredictable, and enjoyable recording acts in ambient music,” and that’s even been the case since their breakout days when the band still insisted on being called cyberCHUMP. Mark G.E. and Jim Skeel were a rarity—one of the few duos whose software-versus-guitar backgrounds genuinely interlaced—and their penchant for carefully edited jams fathered seven albums in under eight years. Eat that, Charlie Chaplain. Like all good formulas, though, they craved spice, and last year struck it when it suddenly dawned on them what they needed to help pump their songwriting: a robot. That is, a software patch so sentient it could convert all their old tapes into binary, twisting the infamous Cyberchump jams into something even chunkier and seed-strewn.

Unfortunately no such software existed, but one when of the ‘chumps met Janzyk at a house party, they knew that Project Robot could go on hold. A man with an apparent sixth sense when it came to carving up master tapes, Janzyk agreed to take two Cyberchump albums and mod them till they’d changed beyond forensics. The only problem was, that was in 2005. Five years later Janzyk had vanished, leaving only a faint whiff of Michelangelo and the building blocks of Regrooved behind: his reboot of the Cyberchump saga. And as you may be able to glean from this particular cut, it’s every bit as batshit as originally intended. “Feedback from the Orbulon” sees the duo + sidekick serving up a sleazy Terminator shakedown, a ghost-dub bass line undulating somewhere in the corner of your eye. That leaves plenty of room for the farting walkie-talkies to get it on with a Teach Yourself French tape, the union of which is kept from going postal by careful application of actual drums. Choirs, seashells, doorbells and cymbals also get their share of the limelight, and as Mark G.E. whips some powerhouse rock chords, only the stony could fail to fall for all of “Orbulon”‘s freaky slaps. “You fool! You’ve ruined everything!” screams the b-movie sample, confirming Cyberchump as almost possibly the best use of the word “chump” forever. Here’s looking forward to 2015 when Regrooved gets reworked and Cyberchump jig their capitals again so the emphasis now highlights “hump.”