Muir pulls from a large assortment of movies, however about half of his samples are from two surreal, bold works by Michael Zen, Falconhead (1976) and Falconhead Half II: The Maneaters (1984). These motion pictures fetishize leather-based, rubber, and a mysterious central determine who wears a big falcon masks, but they lavish as a lot consideration on radiant lighting schemes and pitch-perfect musical cues as they do on our bodies; the result’s dreamy and languorous, not in contrast to Muir’s compositions. The soundtracks of each movies are astonishingly deep, framing homosexual intercourse with a pioneering meld of jazz fusion, classical, digital, and new age: Herbie Hancock, Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, Iannis Xenakis, Bela Bartók, and the Polish Nationwide Radio Symphony Orchestra all make appearances. Such an eclectic mix anticipates the broad and stylistically agnostic ambient style that thrives at this time.

We sense that Muir is attempting to position himself as a heady, technically good sound artist in a queer lineage, whereas trying again at a time when homosexual males had been pigeonholed as chilly, superficial lovers of robotic music—how detractors described disco. Homosexual males, in keeping with this homophobic logic, had been at all times sniffing medicine and having inconsiderate intercourse. But the porn actors who Muir samples are having considerate intercourse: “C’mon, I’m bored with this bar,” one says on the finish of “Cruisin’ 87,” after a 20-minute drift from a fleeting, optimistic overture by means of the damp echoes of Muir’s stacked samples, “Let’s go to my place.”

Muir culled this album from a combine he assembled for the San Francisco label Honey Soundsystem and a sequel he put collectively a few years later. These units had been filled with readability, knitting collectively often audible coitus with cuts by extra up to date producers. However all the pieces on Bathhouse Blues comes from classic porn—the music, too. Muir layers, screws down, and loops web rips of VHS tapes and studio recordings of his soundtrack choices till they’re all however unrecognizable.

The outcome can really feel like a dub of his two unique mixes, however as a substitute of twisting the bass knobs, Muir mucks up the environment. He muddles Tangerine Dream and Vangelis into somber atmosphere. The disc’s B-side, “Pipe Dream,” rumbles and whooshes whereas crickets chirp within the background. Shut listening reveals a couple of grunts on the music’s finish, maybe from a intercourse scene, however these connective utterances are buried and denatured. Bathhouse Blues has already hypnotized us with an exploration of how lust will be solitary, even in a spot full of individuals.