Walter Carson

You can bet your tattooed ass that in a town the size of Lexington, Kentucky, anybody who doesn't play Zep covers or mix Eminem beats counts as experimental. This means oddball musicians in the hinterlands are forced to interact with folks who play radically different styles: The local power-noise dude has to share bills with the local singer-songwriter, the local reggae jam-master, and the local goth chicks (who -- no matter how rural you go -- always come in pairs).

Mike Connelly of Hair Police comes from Lexington, and his Gods of Tundra label recently issued the debut full-length from Walter Carson, a longtime Kentucky chum. Carson, who also jams with Connelly's bandmate Robert Beatty, has in addition released limited-edition titles for Chondritic Sound, Heavy Tapes, Ides, and Rampart. It might seem like Carson possesses a noise résumé from heaven, but don't expect the gleeful electronic wreck of Wolf Eyes or even Hair Police. This is Lexington, remember -- and genre cross-pollination is a rule of the jungle. Carson, for example, is interested in guitar-generated dronescapes as well as murky mellow atmospheres. If noise is what brands a hole in your stinky flesh, think of Carson as one who merely makes it smoke.