Diet of Worms gathers experimental artists for Louie Louie reinterpretations

Scheduled for release on July 21, 2025, via the Irish imprint Diet of Worms, The Sky Was A Mouth Again is a 22-track compilation built around a shared constraint: reinterpreting “Louie Louie”, the 1955 Richard Berry song that became a cipher for everything from garage rock irreverence to FBI suspicion. While the tracklist is unified by this anchor, the recordings diverge sharply in tone, structure, and fidelity. The result reads less like a covers album than a loosely aligned international bulletin, passed through broken radios and field recorders.

Title: The Sky Was A Mouth Again
Artist: V.A.
Release Date: 2025-07-21
Genres: Avant-garde, Experimental Music
Label: Diet of Worms
Description: 22 artists reimagine Louie Louie on a compilation from Diet of Worms out July 21, 2025. Proceeds go to MAP and UNRWA for humanitarian aid.

Unlike 2024’s Hunger Is Violence, which focused on Irish-based artists, this project involves a wider network. Contributors include Charles Hayward (This Heat, Camberwell Now), Elias Bender Rønnenfelt (Iceage), Amber Meulenijzer, Maarja Nuut, Alex Macfarlane, Lea Bertucci, Valentina Magaletti (Vanishing Twin, Moin), Conrad Standish (CS + Kreme), and Wild Billy Childish & CTMF, among others. Each track presents its own dismantling. In some cases, the song’s lyrics are fragmented beyond legibility; in others, the rhythm is slowed to near stillness or pushed into erratic loops and textures. The source material becomes secondary, a ghost structure beneath ritualistic reinterpretation.

The compilation includes contributions from bands and collaborations working within loosely defined regions of noise, free improvisation, post-punk, minimal electronics, and fractured folk. Notably, the duo Garbaggio brings together Nic Offer (!!!) and Sadie Laska (Growing), while I.U.D. reunites Laska with Lizzi Bougatsos (Gang Gang Dance). White Magic, featuring Mira Billotte and Tim Horner, appears alongside newer projects like Nonpareils, the pairing of Aaron Hemphill (formerly of Liars) and Angelika Kaswalder.

The tape cover, designed by Irish visual artist Cian Walker, avoids explicit imagery, instead using pale gradients and negative space. As with previous Diet of Worms releases, the artwork functions as a secondary field of interpretation, neither guiding nor editorialising the music it packages.

Proceeds from the album are directed to Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) and UNRWA, with a stated aim of providing direct medical and humanitarian assistance in Gaza and the occupied territories.

Diet of Worms has positioned itself outside of conventional genre marketing, focusing instead on what it terms “communal political recordings”. Previous releases have drawn from regional experimental circuits, improvised radio, and audio diaries. The label does not maintain a regular release schedule and avoids digital streaming platforms in favour of Bandcamp, with occasional cassette and vinyl editions distributed locally.

The artists involved in The Sky Was A Mouth Again operate in overlapping but distinct domains. Lea Bertucci, a composer and sound artist based in New York, works primarily with tape manipulation, saxophone, and site-specific installations. Her past releases include A Visible Length of Light (Cibachrome Editions, 2022) and Of Shadow and Substance (SA Recordings, 2024). Maarja Nuut, originally from Estonia, integrates archival folk material with electronics and prepared violin. Valentina Magaletti, active across multiple projects, has recorded extensively with Tomaga, Vanishing Twin, and Moin, and is associated with improvised percussion and modular synthesis. Charles Hayward, drummer and vocalist for This Heat and Camberwell Now, has worked in experimental music since the 1970s, with solo output spanning minimalism, tape loops, and politically driven songforms.

The tracklist includes contributions from less documented acts as well. Burger Service, Guests, and The Shifters provide versions that feel structurally disoriented but grounded in specific material interventions: shortwave static, detuned guitars, single-mic room recordings.

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