Insect

Combining elements of horror-film soundtracks, psychedelic doom, and atmospheric noise, Insect Ark is comprised of Dana Schechter (bass, lap steel guitar, synthesizers) and Ashley Spungin (drums, synthesizers). Insect Ark’s intensely visual music weaves interludes of fragile beauty with crushing passages of swirling doom, spinning like a backwards fever dream. “Marrow Hymns” is a wordless song, a hypnotic voice that screams and whispers from a place deep in the furrows, from the bones, from the blood. Defying easy categorization, Insect Ark’s uncommon sound is in part the amalgamation of these two women’s passions: Schechter’s sinister bass lines and unconventional use of lap steel guitar (and her complete omission of electric guitar), and Spungin’s lucid, exacting drumming and synth work with her own hand-built analog noise pedals (Ormus Electronics).

How could a combo named the Insect Trust be anything other than eclectic? Hoboken Saturday Night (1970) was the second of two platters from an interesting aggregate whose core consisted of multi-instrumentalists Luke Faust (harmonica, banjo, electric piano, fiddle), Trevor Koehler (baritone sax, soprano sax, piccolo, sewer drum, flute), Robert Palmer (alto sax, clarinet, recorder), Nancy Jeffries (vocals), and Bill Barth (lead guitar, steel guitar)…