Caleb Mueller aka Decomposure, a “spare time musician/art guy” from Saskatchewan, proved to me that no matter how much of an experimental noise music/art weirdo I think I am, there is always someone more out there. Literally. This guy lives in downright unhospitable territory and works as a full-time graphic artist. No shit – because Vertical Lines A, Decomposure’s latest release on Blank Squirrel Records, is housed in absolutely incredible handcrafted packaging.

Each copy of Vertical Lines A is tucked into a handmade 16-page booklet with a torn cover of painted chipboard. The guts of the book contain line drawings on translucent vellum and patterned spreads of dotted lines on newsprint.

The noises and beats in the music are gleaned from eleven hours of a solitary and typical day recorded onto cassette tapes in Mueller’s home. A bonus DVD comes equipped with the original recordings, a monstrous .pdf of Mueller’s scanned and annotated sketchbook, and a really really bizarre library of 3000 blurry photos entitled “Blurry Photos”.

Suggestion: If Decomposure is managing to ward off frostbite long enough to tie each and every one of his albums up neatly with twine, give this guy a chance.

For further review and another mp3, visit Matt at Fluxblog.

VISUAL NOTES is brought to you by Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction – a clothing company that hires innovative, contemporary artists to design exceptional and wearable pieces that combat the troubling possibility of artwork losing its presence and power in our image-saturated society.

Decomposure – Hour 1

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