The Chaotic Patriotism of MrDougDoug's Election Day Album Will Make You Want to Vote

It all ends today. After an interminable bout of partisan brawling, international intrigue, accusations of fraud, outright racism, and allegations of sexual assault, the long run to the United States' 2016 general election is finally over. It feels weird, like this chaos that's been brewing over the course over the last couple of years has finally lifted—as I cast my ballot this morning I felt something like relief, at least before taking out my phone and diving back into Twitter's endless scroll of election info overload.

If you too have felt overwhelmed, well, MrDougDoug is here to help. Doug Kaplan, one third of the Chicago experimental trio Good Willsmith and co-founder of the label Hausu Mountain, is back under his solo moniker with a tape recorded just for election day, titled These Magical Numbers. Composed of a 33-minute piece called "69 Starspangled 420" and a shorter second track called "182 In Reptiles We Trust 666," it's a dizzy, slap-happy, sensory overload, equal parts terrifying and absurd—sorta like this election has been all along.

In a document Kaplan sent via email that he described as "essential album info to get woke," a fictional Fox News employee named Jimmy™ teases out the info that the A-side is composed of samples of 69 different renditions of the US national anthem, juggled by Kaplan live through multiple different tabs of YouTube. There's also some babble in the pseudo-interview about reptilian overlords and as such the second track features a sample of the Republican presidential nominee professing to be a snake, but looped and repeated until its unrecognizable, surreal, and sickening. But hey, that's the state of the country right? Just when you start feeling unsettled, crank the A-side again and put your hand over your heart as the world burns.

One of his bandmates summed it up best a few weeks back. "If D****d T***p becomes president," the Good Willsmith Twitter account wrote. "Doug is going to end up in jail for this."

MrDougDoug is self-releasing These Magical Numbers today digitally and on cassette. You can snag a copy over at his Bandcamp for the all-too-appropriate price of $4.20.