Jim Shepard - Pick Through the Wreckage With a Stick

Zaius Tapes have done what Siltbreeze wouldn't, and have brought back into print this art damaged beauty by Jim Shepard, originally released by the latter in 1995. Even within Shepard's catalogue of fried and barely alive avant punk iconoclasm, Pick Through the Wreckage With a Stick feels especially inscrutable, a ruptured assemblage of lo-fi guitar exorcism that seems to evade easy classification. The good Dr Zaius makes reference to Burroughs, which feels just about right in capturing the wrongness of Shepard's approach, a splicing of art rock freenness, spirited calls from the void (and perhaps beyond), and tape hiss scrawl, in service to just about anything but any conventional understanding of song. A kind of punk rock as imagined by the holy trinity of Conrad, Jandek and Burroughs? If such a thing exists, then this is probably it. And if it doesn't, then they've finally made a monkey out of me....