HUNT, ROLLIN - Criminal/Castle of Nothing

Rollin Hunt doesnt say publicly what planet hes from, but its safe\r\nto say it isnt ours. Disguised as a healthy midwestern boy, Rollin\r\nbegan infiltrating human society at an early age. As a teenager in\r\nChicago he was never seen without a tape recorder or video camera,\r\nusing the flimsy pretext of art" to collect data for his\r\nextraterrestrial research. By his early 20s, he began recording\r\npseudo-popular music as a way to synthesize and transmit his findings.\r\nA capable anthropologist, Rollins songs deftly penetrate various\r\nhuman types--the Criminal, the Bum, the Waitress--while his music has\r\nthe odd quality of being both robotic and soulful. Rollin Hunt may in\r\nfact be a cosmic being who has been programmed for earthly love.\r\nThere are echoes of other aliens whove come to visit our\r\nturntables--Joe Meek, Roky Erickson, Sun Ra--but Rollins outsider\r\ntake on humanity has the unique quality of tenderness. Much of his\r\ncharm comes from his bumbling attempts to approximate our\r\nculture--like Balki Bartokomous of TVs Perfect Strangers, he can be\r\npainfully foreign, employing stilted grammar and forgetting the names\r\nof holidays. His pop sense is likewise skewed; Jessica Hopper, writing\r\nin the Chicago Tribune, describes his sound as "unearthly\r\nshoo-be-doo... as if someone was trying to imitate the Shangri-Las or\r\nthe Ronnettes but only knew them from a thirdhand description." Its\r\nnot surprising, then, that hes caught on among certain warped\r\nsegments of music-lovers. A bunch of worshipful foreigners have even\r\nput together a tribute album, cryptically titled Him Who Is There,\r\nthat portrays Rollin as some sort of oddball Messiah. Theres a sense\r\nthat this visitor, this interplanetary innocent, might have something\r\nimportant to teach us about human life.\r\nThe two songs on this 7" serve as a raw and startling introduction to\r\nRollin Hunt. Already hailed as "savant-garde," his musical\r\nexplorations of Life on Earth will continue with a full-length album\r\ndue later this year on Moniker Records (recorded with whiz-kid\r\nproducer Donny Schroeder). As suggested by one of his early home\r\nrecordings, titled (significantly) Dear People of the World, Hunts\r\nmusical messages are meant not only for aficionados but for our entire\r\nspecies........................................Are we ready to listen?" - Moniker.