The Impossible Humane

There’s no other word for it – The Impossible Humane, the only album by Richard Rupenus of New Blockaders’ side project Mixed Band Philanthropist, is unrelenting. It’s a hectic, overwhelming swirl of contributed material, from a long list of names key to the ‘80s underground, assembled into a thick morass of sound by Rupenus. As musique concrete, it’s ungainly in a welcome way, with blankets of scratchy noise descending into détourned chunks of Janet Jackson and Tom Jones; as collage, it feels like an ultimate response to surrealism’s making-strange of the everyday, its desire to direct delirium. A phenomenally alien listen.