ABBY LEE TEE “Imaginary Friends I” C20 (Czaszka [Rec.])

Austrian artist Abby Lee Tee goes right where I’m interested in going when considering works of experimental composition on tape: the imagination. Tee has some imaginary friends, it seems, as fourteen “Simulacra” represent over the 20 minutes or so that this tape lasts. These sonic representations offer a glimpse into Tee’s mind, and it’s an intriguing, playful, and mesmerizing place to be.

Utilizing “everyday-life sounds as well as acoustic instruments and field recordings,” Tee crafts a living, breathing menagerie of sound and compiles it into an artistic whole. “Expect obscure soundscapes full of grunting hedgehogs, squeaking otters, sizzling electric fences, and whistling water kettles.” “Imaginary Friends I” certainly is as tactile as that sounds, and part of the fun is trying to parse the sources. Regardless, this tape is inviting and strange, vivid and imaginative. There’s that word again! Can’t escape it.

Abby Lee Tee

Czaszka (Rec.)

--Ryan

MELFI “Four Concerns” C30 (Czaszka [Rec.])

I listened to “Four Concerns” at nighttime on July 2, 2018, and the ambience of the evening accentuated the processed cello, field recordings, and modular synthesis Melfi utilizes in this work. From the moment the cello clips Paul De Jong’d their way in stereo across the speakers, I was hooked.

But the cello’s not all. Melfi proves to be a master manipulator of mood and tone, and although much of the two pieces here are said to be “improvised,” there’s very little chaos or unintentional disruption. “Four Concerns,” while split into parts “I” and “II” across the sides of the tape, comprises a full vision that indeed “seem[s] to follow the course of a story.” It’s a work that surrounds you with itself and settles in to all the cracks and fissures of the moments of your life you spend listening to it.

As I sat and contemplated “Four Concerns” on the evening of July 2, crickets and frogs joined in the festivities outside my window, their song an accompaniment to Melfi’s machinations. It fit perfectly, so much so that I invited them back for an encore performance the next evening. Melfi’s unintentional collaborators were glad to oblige.

But after that they’re no longer welcome. A man has to sleep sometime.

Czaszka (Rec.)

--Ryan

JESSOP&CO. “A Perfect Example of Dislodging” (Czaszka)

In National Lampoon’s Calcutta Vacation, the hapless Griswold family ships the cherished family truckster overseas in a classic fish-out-of-water sojourn story that’s ripe for comedic interpretation. In the midst of their travels, Clark and crew encounter a couple of young local experimental producers/musicians named Anupal Adhikary and Subho S. Sharma, and hilarity ensues. The Griswolds are, ahem, dislodged from their trans-America trekkishness and plopped into unfamiliar territory, and their ill-preparedness bubbles quickly to the surface as stacks of research materials lay untouched in the Illinois public library system.

JESSOP&CO. are well met on the Griswolds’ travels, the duo introducing the family to the polar opposite of Lindsay Buckingham’s “Holiday Road” with A Perfect Example of Dislodging. A fully Indian experience, A Perfect Example mixes found sound culled from the duo’s everyday existence and spins it into a confection of ever-shifting sonics that proves to be shaky ground when one is trying to find their footing for cultural immersion. Quick question – do they have peyote in India? Is it as good as the peyote we have here in America? (And I’m not one to compare, I’m just overwhelmed by sound is all.) Dislodging is (probably) like being on peyote and doing the whole Eastern spirit animal guided meditation thing instead of the Western one, where Johnny Cash voices a space coyote.

Ol’ Clark and fam sit uncomfortably on the couch at polite and awkward attention while Anupal and Subho play them their latest masterwork, and for almost an hour they risk sidelong glances at one another while the sounds permeate the room, the only other noises being the stray “Don’t touch that, Russ,” or “Button the top of your blouse, Audrey.” Where JESSOP&CO. succeed is in a realm where the Griswolds have never traveled, never even conjured the possibility of enjoyment. But as the camera pans a bit to the left, an easy chair comes into view, and I am sitting upon it with a grin plastered on my face, listening to Dislodging and reveling in every second of it. I peer from behind black sunglasses, and my unwavering smile is the Lynchian counterpoint to this half-baked comedy. I am not perceivable except on the fringes of Anupal’s and Subho’s consciousness, and that’s more due to the peyote than anything else. We hover there in existence, and we absorb what JESSOP&CO. have recorded. The Griswolds become like plaster, crack, and crumble. For reasons.

We return to life, and I disappear as the family continues on, probably getting involved in some sort of food or lodging mishap along the way. That’s an easy target. Good thing Cousin Eddie didn’t make the trip, presumably because Dennis (edit: Randy) Quaid was in the mail (edit: jail? You got me on this one). The Jessops are left in the company of Jessops to ponder their momentary encounter within the National Lampoon orbit, and we muster the rest of our sanity to continue on with the day.

JESSOP&CO.
Czaszka

-- Ryan Masteller

FISCHERLE “Post-Functional Dub Objects” (Czaszka)

If a man spoke to me in slow motion, agonizing over the flow of syllables and words that would emanate from his mouth, I wonder if I would be able to edit the language somehow as it emanated from him. I can imagine the words, visibly hanging in midair (like some sort of I Heart Huckabees fever dream), and me, poised with editorial pen, crouched in anticipation, like a tiger stalking its prey. Every grammatical nuisance, every incorrect punctuation mark or dangling modifier would be mine for the slashing. My hyper-intensified state would push the bounds of relativity, allowing me to move so much faster than the man speaking that the blur of my actions would alter his exposition so much that it would internally affect his thought process. I’m a ninja of the editorial world – a pen-wielding, night-stalking warrior.

Mateusz Wysocki, aka Fischerle, had an experience as a hitchhiker where one of his drivers also spoke in slow motion. But instead of parsing the words of the man to molecular distinction, he ruminated on the predicament of relativity in a different way. How do you derive meaning from language that describes an object that is already gone, so far gone, in fact, that the outpouring of the speech still discussing it takes on an abstract characteristic, one that hovers in time between past and present and barely connects them?

Post-Functional Dub Objects attempts to recreate Wysocki’s experience through sonic manipulation, and what results, while loosely connected to the obvious “dub” category, is thoughtful composition filtered through this conceit. He nails the idea that place and time, removed from one another yet still connected in one person’s mind, can take on intensely variable characteristics depending on viewpoint. But in addition to all of this, and to extract myself totally from this academic quagmire, it’s also a pretty bitchin’ tape. You listen to Post-Functional Dub Objects with a loose connection, an ear divorced from uptight scholarship so that you can actually enjoy the forays through the electronic landscapes FIscherle’s creating for you. For you! Listen to them, enjoy them, pretend you’re a pen-wielding hero from an Eastern epic, unmoor your mind from concepts of inelastic space-time. If you skew your perspective in just the right way, you’ll be in for a serious modular synthesizer treat.

Fischerle
Czaszka

--Ryan Masteller