condition (record/cover): M / NM

The third and final Kangaroo Kourt LP, issued privately in 1991, after which Dusty Lee and Treva Dea shifted to the new Mauve Sideshow name and the Refraction Sound imprint for Dark Flowers (1990) and Stray Apparitions (1991). Atmospheric Distortions is therefore both a goodbye to the earlier project and, on closer listening, a dry run for what would come next.

The methodology is unchanged from the two preceding Castle Records LPs: side-long tape collages, Dea's voice at the centre, Lee's Mellotron and processed electronics spreading outward around her. What distinguishes this third record is the increasing confidence of the compositional pacing. Fewer abrupt transitions, a more sustained weight in the drone beds, an ambient-psychedelic density that anticipates the Mauve Sideshow dialect almost directly. Viewed in retrospect, Atmospheric Distortions reads as the last Kangaroo Kourt and the zero-eth Mauve Sideshow record.

Lee and Dea would subsequently relocate from Houston to Seattle, which placed them inside the ambit of the local ambient and ethereal labels that later took up Lee's projects (Refraction Sound, Ventricle). The Houston phase of their work is small but self-contained; these three Kangaroo Kourt LPs are its complete record.