Cryptooology is the debut studio album by American experimental rock band Yowie, released by Skin Graft Records on October 5, 2004. A band of two guitarists and a drummer, Yowie recorded the album earlier that year at a studio in their hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. The trio wrote and refined the album's seven instrumental songs through four years of rehearsal, devoting close attention to every part of their music—even segments that were only a few seconds long. The resulting music represents an extreme, technically demanding vein of math rock that avoids conventions of songwriting like melody or repetition. Though the band's playing sounds chaotic or disorienting, it is not improvised.
Critics have variously compared the album's unusual sound to free jazz; to recordings by such experimental bands as Ruins, U.S. Maple, DNA, and Mars; and to the compositions of Carl W. Stalling, who wrote scores for Looney Tunes. Cryptooology has received praise for its musical complexity and stylistic radicalism, but even positive reviews typically caution that the album is liable to strike listeners as ugly or baffling. While the band regretted the record's lackluster audio quality, they continued to play rewritten versions of songs from the album at live shows.
Recording and release
The band Yowie formed in St. Louis in 2000. The trio—drummer Shawn O'Connor and guitarists Jeremiah Wonsewitz and Jim Hagerty—spent the next four years composing and rehearsing their first batch of songs. During these early practice sessions, the band would devote a significant amount of attention even to minuscule segments lasting only a few seconds.
In 2004, Yowie recorded several tracks at Penny Studios in St. Louis. The band mastered and mixed the album themselves, as they were unable to afford any other option. The band members were ultimately unsatisfied with the lackluster audio quality of the studio recording. O'Connor said the album "sounded like it was recorded in a tin can by a simpleton, which it was basically"; in an interview conducted more than a decade after the album's release, he said, "I still have fantasies about beating our first engineer to death with hammer."
Yowie were offered a deal to release an album on Skin Graft Records, a label which had become closely associated with math rock in the 1990s. The label's owner, Mark Fischer, met Yowie when they opened for the band Cheer-Accident, who had already signed to Skin Graft. Cryptooology was released on CD on October 5, 2004. Yowie performed an album release concert on November 6. The album was not issued on vinyl, though Fischer expressed interest in the possibility in a 2013 interview.
Composition
Cryptooology runs just short of a half hour across seven instrumental tracks, each of which is titled after a feminine given name starting with the letter "T". Yowie's minimal lineup provides drums and two electric guitars, both using amplification sans effects, performing a highly technically demanding variant of math rock. Though apparently chaotic or improvised, the compositions are highly precise and controlled. Sounding somewhat like free jazz, the music lacks grooves, motifs, or most other musical elements of repetition. O'Connor characterized his band's sound on Cryptooology as "disjointed and random" with "very little repetition of any sort that was recognizable" In a 2013 group interview, the members of Yowie said:
A critic at Punk Planet described the sound as "highly sophisticated noisecore that has no part repeating for more than one second, which means it takes a lot of work to write a five-minute song." Reviewers have noted the relentless approach can make it difficult for listeners to readily distinguish one track from another. However, the closing track, "Talisha", can be heard as relatively gentler than the preceding six songs.
One reviewer likened the music to free jazz and noted are no grooves or motifs, let alone melodies, to anchor the music. That disorientation is just what Yowie intends, of course." The album's sound has been compared to experimental rock bands like Ruins and U.S. Maple, as well as bands from the "no wave" scene like DNA and Mars. According to Joseph Hess, writing for Riverfront Times, the songs possess "a certain air of comical whimsy" and the performances are "like two guitars given raspy, raunchy human voices, and their argument comes moderated by pointed percussion that's harsh but considerate." Andrew Clare at Plan B cited the music of composer Carl W. Stalling—who is best known for scoring cartoons like Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies—and said Cryptooology "sounds like an explosion in a Slinky factory."