Mike Kelley – Yummy Puffy Mommy Yoni

The cover of Mike Kelley‘s latest CD shows a moonlit landscape in which a pink unicorn is being buttfucked by a a well-hung satyr. The female unicorn (Kelley has provided the traditionally sexless creature with a delicate pussy) rears in fright or pleasure while the satyr’s mouth drops open for lust. ‘Yummy Puffy Mommy Yoni’ reads the title of the CD, and the subscript: ‘Mike Kelley performs ethereal melodies on the Alesis QS6.1 electric keyboard’.

The CD contains 26 short tracks in which Kelley explores the possibilities of his synthesizer assisted by friends and colleagues. Doing so Kelley playfully deconstructs New Age music, with which certain synthesizer effects have become associated. Pompous track titles such as Birth Of The World, The Epic Dawn, Winds Of The Nether Region, leave no doubt about Kelley’s intention to invade and bring to its doom the New Age. Other titles refer to composers, such as Vanginus (a perversion of Vangelis), Emersonian (which both refers to the transcendentalism of the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson and to composer Keith Emerson), and Plink Plank Plonk (a title borrowed from Leroy Anderson’s Plink Plank Plunk).

Unicorns and satyrs are not the only fantasy creatures that turn up on this CD: the title The Bowels Of Ghidrah, a dark throbbing hum interspersed with wails from the deep, is a reference to a three-headed monster from a Godzilla movie. And finally, the title track, in which “Yummy Puffy Mommy Yoni” is repeated by a choir consisting of Molly Fitzgerald, Mary Clare Stevens, and Amy Wong, stands midway between a nursery rhyme, a commercial jingle, and a pseudo-religious chant. ‘Yoni’, by the way, stands for ‘vagina’ in the Kama Sutra.

The 26 pieces – beautifully recorded and mixed by Scott Benzel – leave no stone unturned when it comes to deconstructing New Age notions and music. At the same time they give proof of Kelley’s versatility and creativity as a musician. The fun Kelley and his friends must have had in putting this CD together is certainly contagious.