One of my favorite post-punk, no-wave obscurities and it comes from my hometown of Saint Louis. Have you ever heard of this? Probably not. Most people from Saint Louis aren’t even familiar with it, which is weird because if anything should be held up as proof of regional genius, it is this. But then again, The Philosophic Collage knew they were going to be overlooked and that is why they wrote Planned Obsolescence. “An apathetic god’s amusement is no insurance”, indeed. Of course obsolescence is rarely a barometer of quality. It is more often than not a barometer of “access to resources”. Consider, that if you have shitloads of money behind you, you can force your way into popular consciousness. And since money is the reward for compliance in a social order drenched in banality, rarely will you find brilliance in popular culture. And when you do, it is almost certainly unintended or accidental. So by definition, the search for true genius will take you to the obscure and undiscovered. And many times, you will come up empty handed. But the transcendence junkie can’t stop looking because every once in a while he/she will find that moment of brilliance. Like this four song EP by The Philosophic Collage. And although all of the tracks on this monster are brilliant, the true standout is not Planned Obsolescence but instead, Toxic Poppies which has some of the best lyrics ever committed to music. Wordplay seemed to be one of the strong points for Timothy Tyme, who produced, engineered and wrote the songs on this EP. The whole thing reeks of nihilistic art-students inspired by no-wave, amok in a recording studio at 3 AM. What is not to like about that.