by Hane C. Lee

The temperature is –2 degrees, the roads are iced over, and the half-pipe in the backyard is buried in snow, but Chad VanGaalen isn't letting it get him down. In fact, the self-taught musician is contemplating coating himself in tinsel for a belated CD release party for his latest Sub Pop album, Skelliconnection.

"I love the wintertime. It's a positive place for my brain to be. It's really quiet; the sounds change 'cause it gets insulated by the snow, there's a peaceful quality," the Calgary, Alberta, native says. "There's no static, no white noise in the background. Everything is covered in snow. It's kind of romantic, it's cozy."

Romantic and cozy aren't words that immediately come to mind to describe Skelliconnection. Self-recorded in VanGaalen's basement on homemade instruments and various electronics, the eclectic album staggers back and forth between genres like a coworker who's had a few too many at the Christmas party. There's the staccato dissonance of opening track "Flower Gardens," the joyous would-be hit-single "Burn 2 Ash," and the synth-soaked electropop slow burner "Red Hot Drops." Even the abruptly quieter second half isn't exactly peaceful, with lyrics like "All the seas ridden with disease/Bless the poor dog that gets eaten by the fleas" in the dead-on Neil Young impression on "Mini T.V.'s." Instrumental bursts of toy piano skronk punctuate the middle and end of the album.

VanGaalen's musical schizophrenia probably stems from the fact that he didn't listen to much music until later adolescence — too late to develop sentimental prejudices for the bands he might have grown up with. "I didn't even really like music that much when I was a kid. I liked sounds [records] I had animal sounds [records] and nature records that I really liked," says VanGaalen, who is also a skilled animator (he's created all of his own music videos). Then, in his teens, a friend turned him on to Sonic Youth, which subsequently opened the door to post-punk contemporaries like Big Black as well as avant-garde composers such as Glenn Branca, John Cage, and Steve Reich. Nowadays he's digging artists as diverse as the Slits, Captain Beefheart, Al Green and Joni Mitchell.

If the lack of exposure to pop music early on has made VanGaalen more of an egalitarian when it comes to taste, it's also resulted in a wide-open approach to making music. Living in Alberta helps too. "I'm pretty far removed from any sort of scene, so it allows me to do whatever I want, I can start from scratch," he says. "I really love hip-hop. My dream is to be an MC, but I'm a really bad MC. Mostly I'll stick to the instrumental stuff and save the MCing for when I'm drunk and with my friends."