The question of whether untrained musicians really make music is an on-going debate for some people, but I find the whole thing moot. "Does the sound interest you?" should be the only question you need to answer. Many seem to be polarized around No Neck Blues Band, and generally anything causing so much discussion is cause to check it out.

Assembled by the band from many hours of recordings, Clomeim (a made-up word?) is a sprawling collection of "jams" by the "mysterious" entity of The No Neck Blues Band. The opening and closing tracks "Silurist 1" and "Silurist 2" are mostly rhythm-less conglomerations of sounds from every instrument in sight: twittering synths, slide whistle, hammered cymbals, wah-wahed guitar, slowed down voice. Things happen quickly, but quite split-second, but more like a bulldozer making a pile-up in the music store.

The rest of the pieces have some sort of rhythmic underpinning, and here's where I begin to understand the frequent references of NNCK to Kraut-rock: they definitely have that vibe, while not really sounding like any particular entity. Their rhythm is a slippery thing: drums play what sounds like time, but keep changing it up � where's the down beat? � and the bass plays riffs or lines that seem to come at the rhythm sideways, locking up in very odd places. This weird rocking moves the pieces forward in a different way than normal rock and roll's 1234. It's as if whole genres of music have been smeared like wet paint.

"The Coach House" sounds the most "normal", with it's loping drums and echoed guitar. It almost sounds like some weekend garage blues band trying to expand their sound. The addition of melodica only adds to the oddness. Their method is shown best on the longest track, "La Promesse Miruco", thirteen-plus minutes of slowly cohering sound. Beginning with buzzes and what sounds like someone cooing, a beat slowly accrues under out-guitar flailing. When the frenzy softens a bit, bass and drums begin a glacial move toward lock-step, which never quite happens; as the rhythm continues to almost solidify, the other players fall into groups or masses of instruments that float over the top of the brew, like grease rising to the top of soup. These masses move independently of each other and the rhythm, like differently weighted pendulums swinging. At times things become heated, or at least some things become heated as others cool off, and a less-than-coherent female voice croons over most of it. Other tracks display the same attempt to weld seemingly incompatible instruments and approaches together, and maybe this is the problem that some people have with NNCK. It just doesn't go where music is "supposed" to. Funny, I thought that was the point. If this isn't a completely new musical language (as member Dave Nuss expounds in a recent interview) then it is at very least a unique syntax.