A certain amount of sublime unease fills Shaggy Black, the debut from the ad hoc duo of Miami’s Dino Felipe and Brooklyn’s Nick Forté, captured under the moniker Felipe + Forté. Strange sounds, sources unknown, permeate throughout the disc. It’s deeply processed and yet presents an undeniably organic presence, a unique anomaly of both resplendent and savage textures. The union of man-made and machine-based sounds creates a truly fucked, purely psychedelic atmosphere of sonic scrawl and blistering fuzz befitting of these times.

Nick Forté met Dino Felipe in the autumn of 2003, during the Schematic cross-country label showcase. As the oddest misfits on a label filled with eccentrics, Dino and Nick were urged to collaborate by Schematic’s label honchos. Correspondence was made and before long, Nick and Dino were mailing new music back and forth, all the while re-editing and manipulating the source material. Tracks were slowly assembled, deconstructed and then regenerated over a period of many months, resulting in this lean, mean collection of power electronics.

Yeah, but what does it sound like? Shaggy Black has somehow transcended the sum of its parts – there’s Felipe’s trademarked tape syntheses & schizophrenic cuts, but when coupled with Forté’s guitar washes and unnerving vocal utterances the proceedings are propelled into an otherworldly domain. Whimsical & frenzied carnival-like creations are jettisoned with moody, slightly terrifying soundscapes. Valid (yet vague) aural comparisons might be made to Alvin Lucier, Fennesz, Excepter, Markus Popp/Oval, Sunroof!, The Dead C and Boredoms.