Continuing from a previous note where I briefly wrote about Feeding Fingers’ history with microtonality that you may find here, I thought I’d extend that thread for anyone that might be interested—this time focusing on our work with odd time signatures, odd meters and more generally, rhythm structures that don’t sit comfortably inside regular repetition.
With the album, I Won’t Eat the Horror, the focus shifted away from the microtonal pitch systems that we explored on Do Owe Harm and toward something more temporal: how rhythm behaves when it isn’t built around evenly repeating cycles.
Rather than starting from a fixed meter, many of these pieces began as phrases with their own internal shape—ideas that felt complete before they were ever placed onto any kind of sequencing grid. Because of that, time signatures were often secondary and sometimes not really the point at all. What emerged instead was a kind of controlled instability.
In some tracks, that instability maybe appears as more familiar asymmetry—groupings that might be described as additive meters (5/4, 7/8, or patterns like 3+2+2). But even then, the intention wasn’t simply to “use odd time” in a purely technical sense. It was more about letting phrases land where they naturally wanted to land, even if the results didn't feel perfectly symmetrical or predictable.
In other pieces, it all moves beyond counting altogether and more toward layers that don’t fully align with each other. One part might imply a steady pulse while another subtly resists it, so the listener is, presumably, never fully anchored to a single, stable sense of “where 1 is” in many of the songs.
As the record moves through tracks like “Barely Two,” “Each Smiling Someone,” “Chalk and This,” “Strangled Little Else,” “I Can’t Be Beautiful,” and “Stapled to Your House,” that relationship to time becomes more fluid. Repetition is still present, but it behaves more like variation than looping—each return feels familiar, but slightly shifted and never quite identical.
It’s maybe worth mentioning that not every track on the album is built around unusual meters. Some are quite conventional and simple on the surface, which is part of what, hopefully, makes the contrast work across the record as a whole.
For listeners who are curious, it might be interesting to listen for which pieces feel slightly “off” in their timing and to try counting along in order to see what’s happening underneath. There isn’t always a single correct answer, but making an attempt often reveals a lot about how the music was constructed.
At a certain point, describing all of this purely in theoretical terms feels a bit cold and limiting. What became more important, for me, was the listener’s sense of arrival and interruption—moments where things resolve as expected, alongside moments where they don’t quite land the way you anticipate.
Looking back, all of this sits somewhere between traditional meter and something more flexible: not strict polymeter in an academic sense, but a constant push and pull between different pulses, phrasing and memory.
A few additional notes on collaborators and visuals for this album:
“Stapled to Your House” features a beautiful and complex animated music video by our long-time friend and collaborator Steven Lapcevic. Watch it here:
https://youtu.be/B_vA0XbtAQE?si=L6JLwYY4VFsGoSER
“Goodbyes That Last for Years” has a video by Tom Brown, which, in its experimental approach to image and rhythm, may call to mind filmmakers like Stan Brakhage. Watch it here:
https://youtu.be/BOv9BjDeIAQ?si=ZI_x-BS0P4kC66Ox
The album art was created by our dear friend Agnieszka Wyszła, whose work, in my opinion, brings a remarkable sense of depth and color to the visual identity of the record.
These artists each contributed something essential, I think, to how the album is experienced—visually as well as sonically. I encourage you all to follow their work and support what they do in their own right.
Agnieszka Wyszła: https://www.instagram.com/agnieszkawyszla/
Steven Lapcevic: https://www.instagram.com/stevenlapcevic/
Tom Brown: https://www.instagram.com/tombrownvisual/
DIGITAL: I Won’t Eat the Horror is available to stream wherever you prefer to listen. Here it is on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/intl-de/album/3K7eoiTcfkNEdHKw1dBWAN?si=-eAs6PMtQJyxjdg-D7DvzQ
PHYSICAL: The album is also available as a physical edition via Bandcamp, which I’d encourage you to pick up simply as a way of having it in hand as a piece of art. Get it here:
https://feedingfingers.bandcamp.com/album/i-wont-eat-the-horror-2021-album
Enjoy,
Justin
FF
Site: justincurfman.net
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JustinCurfman1
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