BEN TAVARES “Janitor of Lunacy” (Endangered Species Tapes)

“I’ve lost a friend and I don’t know why” – that is emblazoned on the inside of the j-card, the front of which is a doodled caricature of, probably, Ben Tavares. It’s a somber note, but it might be referring to, say, a computer whose hard drive finally gave up the ghost, or a treasured guitar that melted in the microwave. The possibilities are fairly endless.

Tavares wreaks havoc with manipulated guitar feedback, giving form to low-end squalls, the kind that precede massive nor’easters. But the nor’easters never come: the pacing is deliberate, allowing the instrument to drone on into infinity (if it wanted to), and Tavares never lets anything off the leash, keeping the storm at bay. For a dense, roiling fog of ambient guitar work, look no further than Janitor of Lunacy.

Maybe the missing nor’easters are the lost friend ...

https://bentavares.bandcamp.com/

https://endangeredspeciestapes.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

CAPTURE CULTURE “Capture Culture” C34 (Endangered Species Tapes)

Capture Culture (Richmond, Virginia) trades in droning nocturnal arrangements at times drifting and internal, at others noisy and agitated. This self-titled cassette on Allentown, PA’s, Endangered Species Tapes winds through a minefield of emotional triggers, ultimately simmering in sourness and discontent. It doesn’t start out this way, not with “warm night,” a reverie of the summer evening, but it starts to fray around the edges with “long walk.” It’s a little more obvious on side B’s “inequity” and “in a time of want,” with the latter roiling through distortion and noise like a heart beating black blood. Take everything you hope and wish for, let them slowly crumble until they don’t really represent the things they used to, and manifest your disappointment in slowly growing anger and despair. That’s how you get through Capture Culture! That’s your ticket!

https://capcult.bandcamp.com/

https://endangeredspeciestapes.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan                                                                                                                                                                                      

TWO YEARS ON WELFARE “Talus” C60 (Endangered Species Tapes)

Over two loooong tracks, a thirty-minute jawn per side, Two Years on Welfare, aka Glenn Nelson (who also records as Cloud Dweller, among other things), builds heavy drones a fraction of a second at a time, so that by the time you’re listening to a full second, one of the 3,600 total on “Talus,” it feels like the most important, most weighty second you’ve ever experienced in your life. And again, there are thirty-six hundred of these to go, so you better get used to sitting there and getting bulldozed by the weight of Nelson’s guitar, synths, and other electronics and goodies.

“Recorded during the gloom of 2018 at the Cavernlands in Allentown, Pa.” (hey, I grew up right over the mountain!), “Talus” mimics that gloom and “Cavernland-y” feel for a postapocalyptic sojourn deep underground, where you as a human live with the other eyeless creatures in the unending darkness, unable or unwilling to come out and see what’s happened to the rest of the planet. Look, if you’ve gone eyeless in a cave, something out there ain’t good. Might as well just stay in the cave.

Well, until the earth shifts beneath your feet with a massive blast of feedback and noise and forces you to the cave’s mouth back out into whatever it is that happened and bombards you with religious shortwave radio signals. I don’t need this, man! I’m putting my glasses back on.

https://twoyearsonwelfare.bandcamp.com/

https://endangeredspeciestapes.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan