Barbara Manning and S. Glass lead a small army of guest readers and musicians through barely musical versions of tunes, texts, and tracts. A survey of the exceptional, the eccentric, the feverish, and the pathologically peculiar within popular religious faith, to paraphrase William James, made by others, communicated by tradition, determined to fixed forms by imitation, and retained by habit. 70+ minutes of music fragments leached of melody and harmony, looped, hacked, noisified and depassionated. Includes 24 x 36 color poster.''Barbara Manning began making music shortly after she was able to walk. Highlights of her résumé include the stunning 1212, the dreamo masterpiece Truth Walks in Sleepy Shadows, World of Pooh's Land of Thirst, her '80s paisley outfit 28th Day, tours on three continents, hosting radio shows, and decades of goodwill ambassadorship of the music of the great nation of New Zealand. The duo Glands of External Secretion could be considered her charity work. She first brought S. Glass of Bananafish magazine on board to help record a one-off seven-inch in 1992, and they have continued to collaborate on an infrequent but regular basis ever since, in theory embracing the equilibrium between Manning'smusicianship and Glass's affinity for tape manipulation, but in fact, truth be told, focusing for nearly 20 years less on Manning's songcraft than on extended electronic collages, or what she calls 'scary music.' Self-recorded digitally and on an eight-channel Tascam cassette recorder (seven, actually -- one channel is broken), Reverse Atheism returns to the balancing act of earlier efforts. Somewhat. The cover versions (XTC, Gods Gift, Hank Williams, The Osmonds, Edgar Winter, The Birthday Party, New Creation), barely faithful to the originals, with varying degrees of overhaul, mangling and looseness of interpretation, emerge like seared remnants of a torched London happening from 1966. Cinematic references abound in the form of monologues from Head, Holy Mountain, Help!, Journey Into The Past, Look Around You, Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Toy Story, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Guest speakers include Lucian Tielens (Bren't Lewiis Ensemble), Bruce Russell (The Dead C,), Patricia Rowland (Vomit Launch), Jett Hotcomb (The Talented Hairdos) Thurston Graham (Resistance Works), Scott Simmons (Eat Skull), Dave Gulbis (Celine Dion) Andrew Murphy (Celine Dion, Forked, Smooch), Titch Turner (The Vaticans), Emiko Saito Obsessive-Compulsive Cat), Cristain Ceia (Rumania), Matt Mumper (Beor The Friendly Thing, The Helper), Toni Smith (HappyLucky Design), and Rainbow Cartwheel (This Is Yvonne Lovejoy). Guest musicians include The Freemans (Ukuzuna) on ukuleles and vocals, Alastair Galbraith (A Handful of Dust) on violin, Doug Pearson (International Hello) on electronics,Black Rose (This Is Yvonne Lovejoy) on keyboards, and Earl Kuck (Tedium House) on small motors. Texts by Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Dan Ashwander, Wayne Bent, John F. Kennedy, Flannery O'Connor, Hugo Ball, Rayva Liliana, and Hippocrates traverse the spectrum of belief, resulting in a migraine coexistence of skepticism, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Scientology, paranoid schizophrenia, doomsdays cults, Hinduism, evangelism, Catholicism, witchcraft and wizardry, guardian angels, Armageddon, rapture, postapocalypse, existential despair, purgatory, creationism and Darwinism, intelligent design, conspiracy and hoax, the Tarot, human sacrifice, Sikhs, ascension, royalty, cargo cults, excommunication, alien abduction, the occult, pagans, infidels, heathens, mind control, remote prayer, and, naturally, atheism'. 'A lifetime swimmer in the deep end of The Other, Barbara Manning sings grace-given melodies about things truly next to godliness, filtered through the dark glass of Seymour Glass's foreboding and beatific gauntlet of manipulation. The gospel interrupted. Confronting spirituality on its own terms, they nip from many chalices'. --Angela Sawyer