Previously, Gregory Scharpen’s work as Thomas Carnacki has been strange in an unsettling way, finding haunted parts of the psyche and probing them relentlessly. For this latest album, the music retains its strangeness but now there is a fantastic, warm feeling running through the pieces. There remains a darkness lurking beneath the surface but Scharpen’s humor is more evident now than before.
 
Alethiometer Records
Inspired by Matmos’ album The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast, Scharpen created an album of pieces dedicated to friends and colleagues. The germ of this album can be found on the tribute compilation, Irreplaceable Hand, a fundraiser for Dax Pierson who was paralyzed in 2005. "Bedtime Story for the Most Fragrant Room in the Ward (for Dax)" from that album appears here and forms a poignant focal point for The Oar of Panmuphle. Bearing in mind that this is probably the oldest piece on the album, it sounds like classic Thomas Carnacki as indeterminate clicks, clacks, taps and rattles chatter over an intermittent metallic bowing.
As usual with Scharpen’s work, there are oblique and not-so-oblique references to Surrealism and decadent literature; indeed, the title of the album alludes to one of the characters in Alfred Jarry’s Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, ‘Pataphysician. One of the best such bits comes early in the album with a dusty loop of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ "I Put a Spell on You" forming the backbone of "Death Dance of the Ant Queen (for Dawn)." The pure bad-ass rhythm and the original song’s pseudo-occult subject matter fit perfectly with Scharpen’s approach to music, especially as the sample begins to break down and recombine in unfamiliar patterns as Scharpen takes the everyday and shows us a hidden facet of it.
Elsewhere, it feels like Scharpen is doing the opposite by using commonplace references to obscure things; many of the pieces seem to use in-jokes or private references as starting points. There are a number of rather odd inclusions that do not entirely make sense to an outsider such as part of a lecture by Jon Ronson about his book The Men Who Stare at Goats on the aforementioned "Bedtime Story…" Undoubtedly the weirdest sample appears on "The Last Trip to Clown Town (for Matt)," a queasy vocal refrain by (presumably) a clown which probably raises a smile on Matt Waldron’s face but I find it perplexing and even alienating (it is definitely annoying!). Yet, as irritating as that particular sample is, the piece works terrifically well within the confines of this strange, strange album.
This personal approach to his music, or at the very least personalised approach, has opened up Scharpen’s music beyond the already vibrant forms it inhabited. Scharpen has hinted that there is at least another album of similar works in progress and I am interested to hear the results of further experiments as The Oar of Panmuphle is utterly beguiling.
samples:
- Bedtime Story for the Most Fragrant Room in the Ward (for Dax)
- The Last Trip to Clown Town (for Matt)
- Encoded for the One-Half, and Not the Many (for Kristin)
 
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