Further widening the gap between ethnological forgery, possible soundtracks and scores, field recordings, American Folk Music, and (yikes) the Residents, old time stalwart, Moolah Temple $tringband, unearths their ninth release, ARCTURUS REIQ (2011). Despite sparse dialog and scant plot, the story of Arthur, Sun King of the Britons, is carried along in a set of 13 ritual episodes.

The music Eden Moor (Ion Muerte) and Johnny Favorite (Brother Jonathan) have produced for the Arcturus rituals varies greatly in flavor, shattering Arthurian preconceptions of the Round Table, glittering plate armor, Excalibur, and the like. Some pieces play like ethnographic renderings of aboriginal dance, others like puppet theater of the criminally insane. Some are private moments in the lives of the various characters, characters who show remarkable emotive depth, singing and speaking only in Moolah Temple $tringband’s imagined ‘Proto Brythonic Ladino’ language.

Moolah Temple $tringband’s phantasmagoria of garage medievalism and bronze age hip hop revels in an imagined animated film’s mad anachronisms, and its resonant interplay of surreal mystery, spectacular cosmic horror, and moments of quiet poignancy.

Pre-production for ARCTURUS REIQ began in July of 2010, with final mixes completed in March of 2011. With the exception of a few environmental recordings, scant samples, and taking advantage of more acoustically sound (wooden) spaces, ARCTURUS REIQ was performed and tracked in an unfinished basement in the Great Smoky Mountains, Jackson County, North Carolina. It shows.

Artistic constraints included no English, no guitar (violated once), manually played live keys (violated twice), and no fiddle (violated thrice). Homemade instruments were employed, in addition to found percussion.