Marking 52 years since their formation, Smegma returns with Folklore & Concepts, a vivid summation of their commitment to playful deconstruction and unyielding experimentation within the American avant-garde. Released on Gilgongo with a handmade xerox/collage sleeve sourced from the Ace archives, the album distills Smegma’s guiding principles: no musicians, no rules, and every session an invitation to collective sonic ritual. Continuing a tradition started in the basements and living rooms of Pasadena and Portland, the ensemble—featuring Ju Suk Reet Meate, Oblivia, Ace Farren Ford, Dennis Duck, and an expanded cast—blends tape manipulation, human mouth sounds, modular synth, horns, and field recordings into a fluid, unpredictable atmosphere.
“Folklore & Concepts” defies easy categorization. The album unfolds as a series of inspired group jams; voices, pan pipes, and electronics converge in bursts of free improv that oscillate between meditative trance and exuberant chaos. The band’s loose collective approach ensures nothing ever settles—prepared piano morphs into feedback loops, beatnik fingerpops collide with wild dog barks, and passageways open onto psychedelic noise, rambling spoken word, and flashes of genuine humor. Smegma’s outsider ethos is compounded by their conscious refusal of both mimicry and refinement. Every sound, whether considered or accidental, contributes to a world where ancient folk memory and futuristic distortion occupy equal ground.
Throughout Folklore & Concepts, traces of past collaborators, punk energy, and inexplicable impulses are surfaced, referencing their roots among the LAFMS crew and encounters with both the Portland punk scene and international noise artists. Yet even as they nod to traditions—free jazz, rockabilly, musique concrete—the band insists on their own principles: embrace limitations, hold onto curiosity, and let the process dictate outcome. The result is music that is communal, irreverent, and startlingly fresh even fifty years on.
This new LP is both a celebration and an act of perseverance; Smegma, never content to “fit in,” remind us that the most lively folk is that which refuses to ossify. For dedicated listeners and the newly curious, Folklore & Concepts is a dense, unruly, and generous example of outsider ensemble art—where each noise, gesture, and fragment proposes a subtle politics of resistance and ongoing reinvention.
