SUGAR PILLS BONE “Is This My Husband’s Cemetery?” (Bad Cake Records)

 

The burpwave pioneers return. Here on this hill from which they previously ascended to destinations unknown, Sugar Pills Bone materialize again packing a cassette blaster filled with devious samples that they manipulate and curdle until the result barely resembles anything but a melting toy box full of malfunctioning Teddy Ruxpins and my-first-boomboxes. The fact that they’re doing it in the middle of a graveyard should be doubly off-putting. Because when one manifests materially upon a hill, that hill must be the site of a cemetery – it’s simple logic. In this instance, there’s a service going on. Burpwave in your face has you questioning the titular question, because that’s all you can do in a situation like this.
 
Is this my husband’s cemetery?
 
Isn’t it all of ours?
 
The duo of Boney Dog Davis and Sleepy Sugar Thompkins don’t take this seriously. They don’t take any of you seriously, especially not the ones who are mourning. They’re too busy making up their own genres (burpwave, duh) and crafting compositions for it. Here, they’ve simmered a “split pea symphony in burp minor” for us, because that totally makes sense and no one should ever question it. It’s a quick blast of dirty plunderphonics, samples both obvious and obscure colliding against each other, overlapping, decaying, sandpapered till they sound as abrasive as sandpaper feels on your face. It’s also a friggin joyride, a blast, a hard shot to the cortex, something carefully crafted or haphazardly chucked together – I can’t figure out which, or if both, the balance. Regardless, the scales align perfectly at THC-choked enjoyment. Try figuring out all the hidden messages in your dorm rooms, you dweebs.
 
Seriously though, these people at the cemetery are going to have to disperse or else risk a permanent catatonia. Who knows when Boney Dog and Sleepy Sugar are heading back into whatever Lodgespace-adjacent dreamworld they originated from. Gotta light?
 
https://sugarpillsbone.bandcamp.com/
 
https://badcakerecords.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

PAPA MANZANO “Ritualism” C28 (Bad Cake Records)

Amidst this chaos of beheaded source material and foggy synth modulations lies a floating bedrock of near-noddable sway, its fractured raft-guts syncing up just long enough to bang into one another to form a soggy, slippery beat or two before drifting apart again, splinters of tonality and discord littering the surrounding surface. One part sound-collage and two parts horror-movie-climax,  Papa Manzano’s “Ritualism" is a bewildering trip down scary-ry lane!

https://papamanzanomusic.bandcamp.com/

and/or

https://badcakerecords.bandcamp.com/

— Jacob An Kittenplan

DERE MOANS “Future Deli” (Bad Cake Records)

Full disclosure: Tony Lien and I both sling as much horsecrap as we can over at Tabs Out, writing our minds out about all kinds of outsider sleaze. Not that that’s going to get in the way of how I feel about “Future Deli,” Tony’s 2018 release as Dere Moans on his own Bad Cake label. I would feel positively about it regardless. This is just a fact that I think you should know. Professionals don’t hide this kind of information.

“Future Deli” is outsider sleaze of the highest caliber. “This is a concept album – envision a deli filled with happy autonomous robots beeping around while forever cleaning and getting orders.” Tony’s got a bunch of synthesizers, or at least one really good one, and he perfectly encapsulates the electric bustle of a downtown sandwich shop in some sort of Philip K. Dick reality. Although, robots probably shouldn’t eat any of the meat – that would mess up their circuits and stuff. I’m assuming there’s no humanity in this future. We’ve barely got 10, 20 years as it is!

Speaking of circuits, Dere Moans is a project essentially BUILT on circuit manipulation and the sound that comes from it. Good thing Tony’s incredibly playful when he’s around his gear, otherwise he’d be crapping out concept albums with overarching themes of Terminators and mass destruction and nuclear wars and that kind of jazz. But he sticks to the human stuff, the stuff we can relate to, and as such we can dig into a Dere Moans joint and blast off to whatever future our imaginations can drum up. If it so happens to involve sliced meat, all the better.

Dig into the full Dere Moans and Bad Cake catalogs, because there’s SO MUCH you’re gonna enjoy once you get started.

https://deremoans.bandcamp.com

https://badcakerecords.bandcamp.com/music

--Ryan