Today I’m releasing an an EP of three tunes that I recorded over the past month. It’s a thematic extension to the the one I made in 2017 just before I moved to New York called What Time Does the Shock Arrive at the Top of the Pipe? The title of that work references a bit of post-Manhattan Project nuclear and shock physics apocrypha as related by Dr. Robert Brownlee, where the content of the original song on that EP, “Melt Glass” references the combination of concrete, asphalt, metals, furniture, life-forms, and other matter that becomes fused together into a glassy state immediately after the detonation of a nuclear warhead in a populated urban area. Two cover songs were also included, composed by Self Defense Family and Lungfish, and are by and large not related to the nuclear explosion theme, however the arrival of the musical ideas that they unwound caused a chain reaction of sorts to inspire me to create, in a roundabout way. Neutrons bouncing into neurons, if you will.

Anyway, enough ancient history about punk-cascades. The key is that I have often toyed with the idea of creating more Holistic Wellness releases along this theme. This winter I had plenty of time with few distractions during the Omicron surge in New York, and recently, I decided to just go ahead and do it. The songs I chose to re-compose this time were Underground by El Guapo and Kinky Afro by Happy Mondays. And of course, I wrote an original song along the nuclear accidents/criticality events theme. This time, I think the subject matter of the title is less apocryphal; in the time since 2017, somehow the demon core became a meme and Louis Slotin’s famous “Tickling the Dragon’s Tail” experiments have been covered ad nauseum by youtubers and tiktokers. That’s actually cool. It’s a wild bit of history. There are other significant figures in the Manhattan Project and stewards of humanity who prevented major nuclear incidents that are memeable, and I draw attention to that in the track.

So it gives me great pleasure to one, announce that I have formally named this series PROMPT CRITICAL, which I will continue apace, and two, release the second collection of recordings in the series: First You’re Tickling the Dragon’s Tail, Next You’re Eating Its Ass, which you can find on bandcamp. I’m quite proud of this one.

The artwork was generated by the CLIP model.