Having never actually been stuck in a damp, dark hole for four days, I have absolutely no idea what goes through one’s mind during such an ordeal. Your mind has ways of tricking and sneaking up behind you, and after four days that's going to start to happen. Probably a lot. And when that starts to happen, from what I can surmise, the sounds you'll hear in your head will sound a lot like Over.

At first glance, Over's cover seems to feature a rather significant typo. Could Jarboe, a member of incendiary weirdoes SWANS, be collaborating with the very talented, yet relatively obscure Telecognac? "No way, not in this lifetime!" you might say. But you’d be dead wrong. For those outside the loop, Telecognac is Chris Roseneau and Jon Mueller, whom the rest of the world know better as two thirds of post-rock stalwarts Pele. Exactly how the duo got together with the legendary Jarboe is a complete mystery -- but with results this good, who really wants or needs to know?

To be fair, this is not a collaboration in the traditional sense. Rather than getting together in a studio and working out part after part, Jarboe sent Roseneau and Mueller the song "Under" for them to do with as they saw fit. The boys then enlisted the help of a few friends and went to work with fiendish glee. The three manipulated pieces that comprise Over are the result, and their sheer aural audacity will leave you simultaneously scratching your head and clamoring for more. "Manipulation 1" sounds like a torture killing recorded for posterity, which is first slowed down then sped up, chopped into a million pieces and then put back together again in a completely random order. Its mindfuck avant-jazz drumming and ghastly ambience might be enough to make more timid listeners soil themselves. The subsequent "Manipulation 2" is the shortest, and most minimalistic piece on the record. In it, slow-burning piano line marches through the backward looping guitars as if on a 1000-mile death march to the end of the Earth. The finale, "Manipulation 3", sounds like fourteen minutes of utter confusion, in which drums and Casios throw punches at thin air and random blasts of noise permeate the otherwise tranquil proceedings.

I have no idea what he original version of this song sounds like, and I really don’t want to know. I do, however, hope that another collaboration between these two parties comes down the pike fairly soon. The world needs albums like Over, if for no other reason than to remind us that inspiration often comes from those places (and those people) where you would least expect to find it.