Maniac Mannequin by Walter Campbell

MANIAC MANNEQUIN

Maniac Mannequin is musique concrète minimalism, mania and mash-up, a ridiculously simple method of recorded and manipulated vocal and field recordings. Tracks are eaten, processed, and slowed down until collapsing into themselves, torn-up fragments of audio hallucinations digested and then passed through multiple cut-up electroacoustics.

The title is in reference to the 1987 Lucasfilm Games masterwork, Maniac Mansion, a profound staple of my video and PC game playing childhood and young adulthood. This is a soundtrack for flesh-eating microwaves. Hide the hamster, Weird Ed.

Side A is a run of bite-sized sound excrements exiting the maniacal mannequin’s colon, while Side B becomes more constipated with a steady run of longer samples of digital phonography full of unintelligible animal and artificial decomposition.

Alien and cold, with plagiarized plunderphonics and hauntologies of retail audio and Reinhold Weber, you’re guaranteed to say with great enthusiasm, “Get this off my plate!”, or “I can’t believe it’s not magnetic tape manipulation!”, upon getting a taste of the mannequin’s plastic wrap and latex skin.

Frank Zito meets Frank Zappa in a haunted mansion. This is MANIAC MANNEQUIN.

The mannequin is made up of creepy crawly stems used in the song, "Theme from the Dawn of the Plastic Wrapped Department Store Mannequins", as well as a few from "A Drone in the Dark"

Updated June 3, 2025

Walternative music

Related projects: Dickie Snakedick, book on VHS, NVS

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