David Gest, Liza Minnelli, Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor

The Howling is a collaborative project started by writer Ken Hollings and sound artist Howlround devoted exclusively to their shared love of text, audiotape and Trash Aesthetics. An intense collision of spoken word and analogue tape effects, The Howling provide the missing link between John Cage and Suicide.

The duo tease their new album, Incredible Night Creatures of the Midway, with its second cut, 'David Gest, Liza Minnelli, Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor'.

This 'Trash List' was originally compiled by Ken for inclusion in Inferno, the first volume of his Trash Project, published by Strange Attractor Press. In the end, the list didn't fit with the book's overall structure, so it was set aside only to be rediscovered when The Howling started preparing for their first live appearance. The text's main theme (and recurring refrain) was inspired by a group photograph taken at the March 2002 wedding of David Gest and Liza Minnelli. This haunting image is all over the Internet and very easy to find.

The cut-and-splice patchwork of found sound that accompanies the text is entirely sourced from items that feature on the list itself, cut to tape and played back at random while being blasted with copious amounts of feedback and amplified hum. Robin spent a long weekend immersing himself in a world of trashy trailers, sugar coated breakfast commercials, garish equine cartoon adventures, unconvincing explosions, reality TV ghouls and – most upsettingly – at least one low-budget cinematic adaption featuring the slapdash application of green body paint. This soundtrack plus a severely diminished faith in humanity were the result.

'A plague upon this Howling. They are louder than the weather or our office.' William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act One Scene One