QUICKSAILS "Silver Balloons in Clusters" (Deception Island)

Quicksails is the solo project of Tiger Hatchery percussionist, Ben Billington. Unlike his fierce work in Hatchery (or his staggering 90 minute solo percussion session for 905 Tapes) Billington indulges in synth and electronics as Quicksails. This tape for the Deception Island label follows up a very cool tape on Cylindrical Habitat Modules. Silver Balloons sounds cleaner and the percussion and synth elements are less integrated creating a contrasting pallet of smooth synth-tones and reverberating bells, cymbals and other percussion. Billington seems to be occupying dual roles here as keyboard/electronics guru and percussionist. The synth is certainly the central element pushing each track but it feels fresh to have percussion in the mix.

Update: UK label Under the Spire has since pressed Silver Balloons in Clusters on vinyl

IS "All Class" (Community College)

If dear reader is interested in the sort of conceptual harsh noise artist who references Henri Bergson and Martin Heidegger in the same breath as Phil Blankenship and Whitehouse, you might already be familiar with Is, the prolific project of Chicago's Bryan Tholl. This new slab on the Ohio-based Community College imprint saunters down a few different avenues ranging from contact mic'd scrap metal rattling to hissing white squall to subdued rumbling. Side B's "Trochoid" is probably the more successful in pulling off a combination of these textures, ending up with a compelling pairing of half low-end wall, half high-pitched drone. Copies are still available as of this writing. Comes with a glossy heavy-stock j-card.

www.somnimage.com/is.htm
www.myspace.com/isthisis
www.myspace.com/communitycollegerecords

HOT AIR BALLOON RIDE "Oktoberfest" (Deception Island)

Prankster noise, particularly of the kind that references Top-40, is almost by definition not classy. If the movie Amadeus taught us anything though, it is that manners aren't always found at the heights of human accomplishment. In fact, a complete lack of manners and passion for the crude may be at the center of genius. Who has not heard of the asshole-genius before? And don't all American's love Andy Kaufman by this point? But when it comes to noise, anything with a sample of Paris Hilton turning into a harsh wall of fuck-you is typically chocked up to being some amateurish bedroom project by a 15 year old living in the middle of nowhere, a place that culture has obviously not reached. Well, perhaps Hot Air Balloon Ride will happen change this stereotype and bring noise up to the same wider expectations of American cinema. Beginning with a pitch-shifted baseball game announcement, Oktoberfest shows no signs of being more than dicking around for just long enough to be worrisome. It is at that point, when you start wondering if just how long this nonsense will go on, that a rich, high fidelity, curtain of digital sounds is dropped and a your eyes open wide. While the change from dumb sample to intense noise is nothing new, the complete lack of "fuck you" attitude on this tape makes the experience more than brand new. It makes it classy. So by the time that the Stone Temple Pilots samples begin, one doesn't find themselves listening to a dumb joke, but rather just accepting sound as sound. Only the quality of assembly matters, and here the energy remains at perfect pitch throughout its 30 min. This tape is refreshing and groundbreaking. Band and label having associations to the Emeralds/Beemask/newyoungOHIO camp means that something beyond accidentally hip sounds is happening out there. The future of noise and cassettes will largely be defined by these folks.