I've been listening to this for a couple of months without being quite sure what to make of it, possibly because it's a beautifully produced vinyl album rather than the customary CD, and I generally listen to each under different conditions. Previous releases having been on compact disc, +DOG+ has been something I tend to experience on headphones while I'm out and on the move with a CD Discman. Listening at home through speakers, as I'm now doing, is a surprisingly different affair, emphasising qualities I usually miss - unless this is a significant departure from previous releases.
Most obvious is that The Miracle Ending is Laughter seems an almost ambient work and far less in your face, despite retaining the familiar sound of broken electrics, mains hum, and acoustic interference. Whether illusory or not, this shift in focus facilitates greater appreciation of the sonic textures involved, here abstracted from the customary assault; and Time is a Funny Thing, which additionally makes use of a drum kit borders on free jazz in terms of mood. Distortion aside, +DOG+ seem to make use of a great many sounds and effects which might ordinarily have fallen through the net as everyone else races to embrace the loudest, most piercing feedback and noise ever to burst an ear drum - electronic hum, the interference of an old condenser mic held too close to a television screen, the static pop and click of a failing transistor; although before we completely turn into Pierre Schaeffer, A Lost Season comes as a reminder of what it's like to be run over by agricultural machinery. The Miracle Ending is Laughter may superficially sound like a number of other things inhabiting the noisesphere, but even with these bare recordings rendered plein air sans echo, reverb or what have you, there's a cumulative effect, something at least as hypnotic as picking at a bandage when ill, and which is almost psychedelic or folksy by some sense - which is probably why their artwork often reminds me of bands such as Pink Floyd, an impression underscored here with the lavishly rustic gatefold cover.
One day I'll make sense of all this, but in the mean time The Miracle Ending is Laughter is beautifully confusing.
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