The Scrape
Mouth Music
2003: Skiteesh SKITT-2003-01
Another blindsiding surprise out of the blue. This one was at Tower Records (Mercer) in Seattle on a day that had seemed to hold no promise whatsoever. I think I screamed when I saw it, but maybe that’s just how it felt inside. What really amused me right off the bat was the tattoo imagery coupled with the album’s title.
And it is a very nice album. But no matter how I spin it, I cannot escape a certain perplexion: the whole idea of “mouth music” is that it’s instrumental music produced vocally, and even though Martin’s moved beyond that general limitation, it’s bizarre to be faced with a “mouth music” album which contains no vocals whatsoever. It’s entirely instrumental. It’s good, but it’s kind of the opposite of “mouth music.”
Comments © 2005 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted, and no claim is made to the images and quoted lyrics.