Baltimore pipe-organ repairman Caleb Johnston is touring with an organ of his own devising, reverse engineered from several vacuum cleaners, and he plays it like a little kid abusing a thrift-store Casio, leaning heavily on a few keys or absentmindedly wandering over them all. He performs in incomplete sentences–you get the feeling he’d be spinning a grim fairy tale if only he’d fill in the blanks, but his languorous fogs lack verbs and his twinkling tufts lack subjects. His organ warbles and fades in and out, like it’s hooked up to a weak battery, and though the air sounds like it’s being sucked down instead of blown through, at the same time the instrument has a tone like it’s throwing up through a long metal esophagus–you get whistles, snores, squeaking brakes, tolling bells, National Weather Service alert beeps, and the repetitive cranking of a car that won’t start.
