Critic's Review
François Couture, All Music Guide
Termite Damage is a collection of various performances of this piece (another, more official collage was included on the Leo Records release Insect and Western: Insect Attracter). Eugene Chadbourne and his editing assistant, Vitus Verdegast, assembled a suite from four recordings, all featuring different lineups. Musicians heard include Carrie Shull, Charles Waters, Chris Eubanks, Scott Irving, Dennis Palmer, Evan Gallagher, Ted Reichman, Stuart Norman, and Gilfred Lee Fray. They all follow a graphic score with bits of notated music. Part of the Insect and Western series, "Termite Damage" is something of a cross between contemporary chamber music, structured improvisation, typical Chadbourne humor, and sonic mayhem. The album begins with a Casio quartet. The cheap, preset rhythms of the infamous '80s home keyboard regularly reappear throughout the suite, always disturbingly out of place. There are beautiful moments where Shull's oboe and Eubanks' cello play carefully written passages. In other places, the best way to describe the music is the expression "sonic soup," as all musicians work hard at meshing up their sound with each other. The result, as in most of Chadbourne's insect pieces, is simply utterly strange and extremely difficult. Yet, this particular CD sounds more focused and accomplished than the other installments.
