There are 19 Museumgoer EPs, a pretty astonishing body of work. Each and all, charming and entertaining. With the release of Museumgoer 19 (Jan 2022), I summoned up my best David Foster Wallace pastiche technique of not asking any questions, and the enigmatic Museumgoer answered them.
ANCIENT CHAMPION FOR OUTSIDELEFT:
MUSEUMGOER: This one seems to be about doing something and then doing it again to improve on it. I enjoy the ratchet beats on here though I fear putting the metronome track first was a damning move. It’s a bit much to ask the listener to hang on for a few before it gets pretty, but if M19 has an underlying message, that’s it.
ANCIENT CHAMPION:
MUSEUMGOER: Also, I think this was partially inspired by your Music Inspired by the Museumgoer of Baton Rouge album, how clean and digital it is. Museumgoer yearns for digital precision but still fetishizes its iPhone mic/garageband origins.
ANCIENT CHAMPION:
MUSEUMGOER: As a listener, I’m not much of a consumer of dream pop, but the genre keeps creeping in like with “Your Spaceship’s Here” and “Utah Monument” on a recent one. I’m gonna meet the right disaffected diva who likes my “Fender Rhodes through the Grand Canyon pedal” style and we will tap dance our way out of the trailer park into the big time. Or at least a spot on Jimmy Kimmel.
ANCIENT CHAMPION:
MUSEUMGOER: A friend of mine and I did a radio interview once where I was a disgruntled Santa Claus. I recorded answers with long pauses in between and then would burst in with an answer about how difficult elves are to manage. He did the questions in the pauses live on the air without hearing my answers.
ANCIENT CHAMPION:
MUSEUMGOER: There is always one piece on a Museumgoer ep I’m not sure about. Prowler’s Waltz is the one on 19. I’m not sure if it’s really even a waltz. But it’s growing on me. I like rising wobbly synths under the arpeggios
ANCIENT CHAMPION:
MUSEUMGOER: But then Museumgoer is not about confidence. It’s about wonder.
ANCIENT CHAMPION:
MUSEUMGOER: The first track draws feebly from two Alvin Lucier pieces. One is “I am sitting in a room” his big hit where he records and plays his own voice over and over until is dissolves in the room’s reverb. The other is one where a piano plays one note and a cello plays the same note, sustaining and steadily rising for five minutes until the piano plays another note and they arrive at the same one. Except I just did it on pedal steel over 5 seconds. Easy version.
ANCIENT CHAMPION:
MUSEUMGOER: Were I rich man, I’d release these EPs on 45s. If any boutique vinyl labels are listening and looking to sink their money in something, holla!
ANCIENT CHAMPION:
MUSEUMGOER: My all time best museum going experience was at a Mondrian retrospective. I thought I didn’t care for Mondrian’s work until I was in a room with like 20 of those similarly sized totalitarian graphs all with the same PM in the corner except for number 13, where he did a stylized monogram. You can tell he was thinking about it for a long time, never quite working up the nerve and then did it! Snd possibly immediately regretted it and went back to the PM on number 14. I’ve liked him ever since.
Essential Info
Main Image: Mondrian photo by Museumgoer
Museumgoer 19 and all Museumgoer EPs are available on Bandcamp
