Ape School

VINYL FORMAT. Michael Johnson arrived in Philadelphia a swamp-ape from the Florida Panhandle to lead music technology studies at a downtown arts university. Instead, he discovered in its hallowed halls the derelict crown-jewel of archaic analog electronics with which he would forge his image of the Ape School. Armed with the Moog Modular synthesizer he helped revive - just the fourth born and installed by the hands of Robert Moog 40 years earlier in 1965 - Johnson conjures original songs from beyond his prior tenures in Kurt Heasley's Lily's, and Sub Pop's Holopaw, using the Modular to wave lush motorik dreamsound throughout dynamic instrumentation and his distinct croon.

This second one-man-does-all album by Johnson - the first to use the animistic moniker - marries primitive songs with incorporeal sound: glamatic pop explorations, navigated by studio light, coalesced over time, wine, fallouts, and Rundgren-style self-control.