New Words and Music: Cesspool Dreams: Stranded Islands

I’ve been a fan of Cesspool Dreams, a duo of Jeff McLeod and Matt Finney, since they started releasing music with dark, Urban Southern Goth(ic)-tinged spoken word. Finney’s persona lives somewhere near those of Troy James Weaver, Breece D’J Pancake, Kathe Koja, and even some of the less surrealistic of Weirdpunk Books releases. When Jeff asked if I wanted to work on a track for an upcoming release, I immediately said yes and then ran into trouble wanting to celebrate the spirit of their past releases, but also not copy Finney’s voice. Hopefully, I accomplished that. When using my voice, I tend to hide or disguise it for various reasons, but I couldn’t do that here.

Here’s a description from the Bandcamp page: Take a deep, dark journey with Stranded Islands, the latest installment of drone-driven, analog synth-laden, guitar-sprawled Southern Gothic spoken word musicks from Cesspool Dreams . . . this time featuring 8 different voices and tales from people originally from and/or living in the Southeastern United States.

Stranded Islands is available now.