I get kind of apprehensive when I see a CD cover with skeletons on it, but then again, Legendary Pink Dots' 'Shadow Weaver, Part 1' had skeletons on the cover and was a pretty good album. Truth be told, the artwork on this (taken from "Triumph and dance of death", Giacomo Borlone de Buschis, 1485) is better than on the LPD album, but the music is in no way similar. Scott Scholz studied composition with Don Keats and Lynn Baker at the University of Denver's Lamont School of Music, and has worked in a variety of pop, rock and experimental music ensembles focusing on adventure and transformative practices. Scholz currently plays in Irregular Verbs with Jay Kreimer, and Tiny Tongues with Joseph Jaros and David Moscovich. He is also a music librarian and runs the review site Words on Sounds and hosts podcasts from the same. 'Whip Sigils' is Scholz's first solo album.

In the early days of the COVID pandemic, Scholz started a project to explore how previous cultures had addressed pandemics musically. This simple premise became an ever-expanding series of inquiries over the next three years, leading him in directions he never imagined. The result is 'Whip Sigils,' a suite of pieces incorporating melodies drawn from Medieval self-flagellants and victims of the Albigensian Crusade. The source melodies are embedded in the music horizontally and vertically in a variety of ways analogous to creating visual sigils out of letters: they are embedded in counterpoint, transformed into texture through granular synthesis, or blended within harmony. Where the melodies can be plainly heard, they are often microtonally altered in tribute to Middle Eastern influences on the early secular songwriting traditions of Western civilization. Performances are realized with a combination of electrified versions of ancient middle eastern instruments (oud, saz, and tanbur), microtonally modified guitar, and software synths.

The initial sounds on this album were kind of cacophonous electronics, something not unexpected on a No Part Of It release. After the first track ("Nu ist diu betfart so here") things settled into a more melodic medieval groove with oud, guitar, and saz, drones, choral voices, and minimal electro-acoustic percussion. The tone is at times melancholic, pensive, mysterious, and enigmatic, yet mostly faithful to its source material. The last track is more experimental - "Le Bouvier" (live at Bitchwizard April 2, 2023) which is pretty cool and unlike the rest of the album. Scott Scholz has created a work that defies easy categorization but I believe is an important link to a certain type of early music that gets very little attention. Kudos to Arvo Zylo for taking a chance putting this out, and definitely to Scott Scholz for creating it. Highly recommended!