siLLy puPPy PIKE 201 - 6 DAYS TIL HALLOWEEN: UNDERLAIR is the 100th album released by BUCKETHEAD in 2015. Yes, you read correctly, the ONE HUNDREDTH album of the year and there are still 18 more to go! Mr prolific continues his roost of avant-garde HALLOWEEN hauntings with the 26th release of the countdown. He once again performs all the sounds heard on this all instrumental album and this one clocks in at 13 seconds over the half hour mark. All 8 tracks are titled “Underlair” and like most of these weird dark ambient type freaky albums the tracks all run together to provide a health half hour spooking.

This album begins with haunted sounds that match the trippy skull on the album cover. It kinda sounds like it’s underwater in a way but also out in space. I don’t know how he does it but he manages to ratchet up the spaced out freaky sounds as these albums progress. This is another one of those random sound albums that is designed to be alienating, startling and unnerving. It is mostly ambient without any percussive elements or even strings for that matter at first and then is joined in by scant percussive elements as the ambience starts coalescing into notes. The whole thing reminds me of matter randomly scattering throughout the universe only to begin clumping together to create larger units. As this progresses it begins to take on rhythms albeit randomly and in spurts before dispersing again into nothingness.

As the album progresses it just gets weird! Imagine that :P Noises erupt from nowhere, xylophones join in randomly, things explode, things rustle in the wind etc etc etc etc etc. Too weird for words. Weirdness for weirdness’ sake. This one is just more avant-garde than spooky after all is said and done but it does provide an interesting glimpse into the musical soundtrack of the quantum world where quarks, pions, neutrinos and antiparticles dance in musical bliss. It is really that removed from human consciousness. How does someone come up with this stuff? Definitely for the freaks. You want lysergic psychedelia? This takes the cake.