“What’s absurd,” Mitchell hummed, “is this fantasy that the disasters on his island could ever be excised from his creative work.”

Alfonzo was excited. He knew Kombu’s recordings. Koko and Le Bruit et l’odeur were masterpieces that expanded the scope of what music could be.

A crowd had already filled the club by the time Alfonzo and Mitchell arrived. These young creatures brushed against one another in the dim expanse of T-shirts and plain workwear, even though most probably held post-industrial service jobs.

They were assembled to experience sonic pain within the safety of a herd. They were there to bask in the music made by machines not working, or working only to make noise. The crowd came to feel its own wildness. The animals were hushed and heaving. Something secret was about to commence.

Mitchell and Alfonzo hummed as they sipped their grass beers, waiting.

“You know who’s a good boy?” Mitchell asked.

Alfonzo rolled his eyes. “Who?”

“You are.”

“Thanks, smartass.”

A great whistling announced the appearance of Kombu. Alfonzo and Mitchell craned their necks to see the famous dog and his panda drummer. The musicians arranged themselves before a little stand covered with wires and homemade instruments, and when it was clear they were about to begin, the room hushed.

The musicians began to play with electricity, with repurposed machines that were not originally instruments. They began at a deafening intensity and climbed from there. It became so loud that whatever they were making no longer felt like sound. It had grown into something like an enclosure, a din hut. The audience huddled together within this shelter of sound. Alfonzo hummed. Shelter in place. But the waters were rising.

Kombu communed with machines and let them freely express their machinic natures. His instruments roamed landscapes of pink-and-white fuzz; gnashing, repetitive static; and deep purple tones. He built long-duration auditory phenomena with static electricity discharge and temple bells. It was feral music; it scavenged outside the known categories. His oily slick, lightly haired music flopped beneath sonic snow that fell copiously amid spacious ballads sung by repurposed sonar machines. The music served salt-and-pepper coils and cosmic microwave backgrounds sprinkled with a few seconds of birdsong fed through heavy effects pedals.

The panda strummed on springs and rattled an empty tuna can. The dog manipulated fuzz and distortion pedals with his paws. The two musicians were nudging every animal in the room toward an edge. The set moved along with atonal romance. This was beauty from the most hopeless hope-filled mental space.

The sound was a shelter, but it was also the storm. The sound was the ocean and its waves. Microtones tossed and rose and fell on the surface of deep sound.