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HollAnd

For the past decade I've been a fan of the work of Washington D.C.-based musician and artist hollAnd but I've never quite known who the hell he was.The various bios for the guy littered across the internet don't offer a hell of a lot of information other than his real name - Trevor Kampmann. Beyond that he's been accused of being a former teen actor, a computer graphics designer and reformed professional skateboarder. Photos of him - what few seem to be available - invariably omit his face.It's hard to say how much of all that is true but it probably doesn't matter.His work stands on its own.He has gained a name as an indie producer who has worked with a number of bands you've never heard of but who are tremendously talented, awesome and worth taking the time to dig up their stuff. He also keeps busy with folks like New York artist Mark Borthwick.hollAnd's work has the austere intellectualism of early Hal Hartley. In many of those Hartley was interested in using repeated and looped dialogue to break down meanings into completely divergent forms of communication. hollAnd is upping the ante by breaking down the entire relationship between the artist, the artwork and the beholder.What's really amazing is that hollAnd heads out into these rather rarified fields of aesthetic endeavors but somehow never loses sight of the songs themselves. Sure you might take the time to dive into the possible exegesis of what is going on but that's not what is going to keep these songs rattling around your head hours later like I promise you they will.What is wonderful about these compositions is that they are stubbornly low-tech and refuse to be restrained by that. The analog synths and drum machines went pretty much obsolete after the 80s when artists discarded them as un-emotional and heartless. hollAnd is here to politely disagree with that assessment. He's here to show you the Casio doesn't have to go the way of the Dodo.While the plastic disposability of synth-pop of the 1980s is now a generally accepted truism I'm here to tell you that really isn't the case. We assume Animotion and Howard Jones were all there was to offer but there was a lot more folks writing songs that dug a bit further under the surface than that.It's not by accident that the B-52s wrote some of the most upbeat and catchy songs of the generation that happened to be about some of the most dark and twisted subjects. Doubt me? Take a listen to just about any track on Wild Planet and break down what they really are talking about.hollAnd's early efforts tap onto this dark vein directly. His almost winsome melodies carry lyrics that are sung with a sad melancholy but make you feel slightly uncomfortable for some reason. Like the B-52s, he's dropping in some rather disturbing sexual imagery that, when you first figure out what is being said, you kind of wish you hadn't listened so closely.But that strange mix of the beautiful and the profane is partly what makes these pieces compelling. The catchy harmonies that are going to stick in your memory dance around the disturbing that will leave a lasting disquiet with you as well. Fascinating stuff that I could barely find at the time and pretty much gave up every hearing any more from ever again.So when he unveiled the austere and breathtaking I Steal and Do Drugs in 2004 I was simply flabbergasted. As incredible as the work he had done before was, this was nothing less than a masterpiece. This is a two-sided CD/DVD that is a collection of seven songs and six films. The films were shot over the course of a year in Iceland, England, and the United States and serve as the "videos" for several of the songs.His previous efforts included some astonishingly hypnotic and…