"I'm going through faces . . ."
This is what the strange being in the shiny masked future person outfit seems to be saying in a sewage choked monster voice. It's most likely a riff on the old Black Sabbath lyric.
The band calls itself Aesop and Walt. It's just one person in blindingly reflective Straylow cosplay gear with a variety of speakers built in that output sound from a tablet manipulated by a pair of gauntleted hands. They perform just the one album length song which consists of a clattery post-dinner-rush-clean-up soundscape which metamorphoses into an arrangement of chunky hydraulic future door noises that then progresses into what sounds like churning gastrointestinal processes which blazes into a driving chiptune funk beat before all but dropping out into a near subliminal basso droning which gradually dissipates into nothing. That's the programmed soundscaping. The vocal consists of a live performance of all dialogues, songs, gratingly empty laughter, and other human sourced vocalizations from the 1968 movie Faces, which has led some to describe Aesop and Walt's show as a solo version of the movie, but I'm not sure that fully captures it. Aesop and Walt's delivery is gross and sludgy like they're trying to sound like a submerged swamp monster or something. I guess maybe the swamp monster's brain was able to siphon the wifi signal of someone streaming the movie on their mobile device or laptop. Most people will not be able to tolerate the entire 136 minute performance, let alone comprehend it. I only blundered into partial understanding by Googling around about Aesop and Walt which is referring to a line of dialogue from Faces-which turned out to be an exhilarating independent movie about miserable middle class white collar types who play out their lives inside boxes of various sizes until the thrilling climactic moment when this gigolo dude busts loose and goes running out of a window, across a roof, down to the yard, down a modest hillside, and into the street all in one take-defintely not that old mumblecore bullshit! It's like the indie equivalent of John Wick or something. Seriously, even if Aesop and Walt isn't your thing, go watch Faces, it's all kinds of fun.
My favorite thing about Aesop and Walt is that they have their own power source so when the venue cuts the juice out of irritation it doesn't mean shit. Aesop and Walt just rock around the clock in the dark, no fucks given, no shit taken.
Aesop and Walt also comes strapped with a rock salt shotgun, a rubber bullet blaster, and a compliance spray dispenser if the audience decides to rise above a dull roar and ascend to full-on heckler status. There's even a video floating around the Internet of Aesop and Walt allegedly deploying a person-portable homebrew kitbash analogue of DARPA's infamous Active Denial microwave weapon to pacify an especially rowdy crowd of beer drinker assholes at a show in Florida, but some say it's a hoax. It's tricky because there are multiple unknown persons touring at any given time as Aesop and Walt, and you can tell it's different people due to the simultaneous bookings in different parts of the country and variations in the detailing of the Straylow cosplay getup. So, it's probably the case that one of these versions of Aesop and Walt is carrying a person-portable Active Denial rig, but maybe not all of them. Some of these people are, perhaps, more ambitious with their DIY loadouts than others, or so it would seem.
To be sure, Aesop and Walt's pop prospects are below zero. I'm not even sure if I actually enjoyed the show, but I am surely grateful that they hipped me to Faces-a movie that is itself a kind of stealth musical if you think about it. Moreover, Aesop and Walt embodies a new artistic militancy, a willingness to do actual battle if necessary to seize and defend their moment upon the stage against all assholes.
The conventional entertainment value is low, but there is surely neatness in this bizarre musical entity.
