Timmy's Organism

Timmy Vulgar, the longtime Detroit frontman of acts including the Epileptix, Clone Defects, and Human Eye, originated Timmy's Organism in the late 2000s as a solitary experimental outlet. Working at home with four-track recorders and borrowed synthesizers, he generated ambient percussion to support his wildly skewed, Beefheart-ian brand of pop music. Initial releases took the shape of multiple 7-inch singles, one of them a self-titled double 7-inch issued by Sacred Bones. By 2009, bassist Jeff Fournier and drummer Colin Sick joined him, converting the project into a touring trio that operated alongside Vulgar’s concurrent commitments with Human Eye. Later singles shifted toward tongue-in-cheek punk, as heard in titles such as “I’m a Nice Guy Now” and “Cold Pizza.” Sacred Bones released the first album, Rise of the Green Gorilla, in 2010, where synth textures still dominated its abstract presentation. Raw Sewage Roq followed in 2012 on In the Red Records. Chicago’s HoZac Records assembled a double-LP anthology of singles and unreleased material titled Singles & Unreleased Tracks in 2014. The trio next signed with Jack White’s Third Man Records, which brought out Heartless Heathen in late 2015. Audio Social Dissent, a split live LP shared with Wolf Eyes and Video, also appeared on Third Man. After the limited-edition Eating Colors LP surfaced in 2017, the band moved to Burger Records for Survival of the Fiendish in 2018, by which point it had solidified into an explosive, occasionally unsettling three-piece favoring a warped yet more direct rock-band format.