BUDWEISER SPRITE "Muculent Passage" C60 (OMS-B)FORM A LOG "Air Circus" C30 (I Just Live Here)

A C60 of straight noise does not always make me jump for joy, but what we have here is actually quite good. Budweiser Sprite is the one man band of Dan Rizer and he creates a massive sound. Not too massive, however, to take time for dynamic shifts and moments of (relative) peace. This tape is rather epic and has a real nice arc to it. There is some really great mixer greasing going on here, along with a sizable amount of four track crunching, a dash of knob twiddling and a heavy dose of psychedelic doom. It's been said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture and this tape makes me dance about a dungeon ... a really fun dungeon that you will want to listen to again and again.


Form A Log is a Philadelphia super group (related projects: God Willing, Social Junk, New Flesh) and "Air Circus" is their third tape. The first one found them thrashing amiably and amateurishly on guitar/bass/drums. This is an entirely different beast. Each of the three members operates a four track tape player and little else, an instrumentation that seems so obvious in this day and age, but when I saw these guys a fortnight ago at the Montague Phantom Brain Exchange in Turners Falls MA, it was the first time I'd ever seen a band with that particular make up. The live set and the tape are remarkably similar so my impressions of the two blend together. Perhaps even more so than the Budweiser Sprite outing, this tape is very dynamic and displays a variety of forms of sonic trickery. The four track's ability to be used as a mixer or playback device, along with it's variable speed control give the musicians almost limitless freedom. Thing about it: three dudes = twelve tracks of insanity. Like all of I Just Live Here's releases, this looks very nice: a great screen print and a black and white insert with a poem by Alex Hampshire. The label's website (operated by Ren - God Willing) says there are only five copies left, so scoop this up soon!

oms-b.org
ijustlivehere.org

CONTAINER "Container" c30 (I Just Live Here)

At INC this year I bumped into a favorite dude/band/label guy of mine Ren from God Willing / I Just Live Here and asked him how his trip had been so far to which he simply responded "just long drives jammin minimal techno." Then we talked a good bit about the virtues of the genre, I probably made a dick of myself and he probably finished his slice of pizza.

Well, lo and behold, a few months later I set up a show for him in western mass and he hands me a tape by Container and whispers 'it's my new minimal techno project.' Well, if he ain't a man of his word!

The tape starts with what sounds like a creeping synth but very quickly it's apparent the dude was not lying, rhythmic to the core, mostly low end stuttering with the necessary 303 tweaking flourishes and bubbling, burping and percolating weird worlds on top, building and deconstructing the whole way. Slight reverb on the hi hat, heavy envelope effects end up eating the thing alive. Side two is a lot more thumping and has a more thudding 4 on the floor feel with a bit more background "noise" you might expect of a beat tape coming from a noise dude, but i'll be shit on if Ren didn't just deliver two sides of minimal techno for you all!

Always recommended!
I Just Live Here site is giving me some internet grief, but maybe not for you:
http://www.ijustlivehere.net/
and ren's god willing myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/innercarpet

GOD WILLING "Different and Worse" c15 (Monorail Trespassing)

If you haven't been hipped to the sound of God Willing yet this tape is a serious trial by fire. God Willing is Ren formerly of Gang Wizard & Dynasty, a world traveler that has moved from Providence to LA, back east to nashville and now word is that he's back above the mason dixon line in philadelphia; consider it a warning. Though he comes off as a mellow dude, this tape is an unrelenting attack of god knows what, the times i have seen him live it was guitar and tone generators and it was seriously beautiful and moving.

This jam is about to cause some serious bowel movements and isn't at all approaching tonality. After an initial onslaught of heavy burning, the wall comes undone long enough to hear him rip apart whatever was happening electronics flying everywhere building back up to a wall of tantrum inducing sounds.

The second side is a straight laced scorched earth campaign, no hesitation, just grizzle piled on grizzle piled on grizzle. This side, by not coming undone in the middle gives you the pleasure of feeling out the contour of the sounds and waiting and watching the embers slow and transform into crusted over ashy tumbleweeds of rumble and bubble, there's a final gasp/blast at the end but it's almost inconsequential after the whipping you were just handed...

Always recommended.
comes in full color sleeve with minimal grainy artwork and black and white labels on the tape.

available from the label:
http://www.monorailtrespassing.com/

GOD WILLING "Normal Pool" (I Just Live Here)

God Willing’s Ren Schofield pours beer on his head. It’s a kind of trade mark. His live performances play on the tension between potential chaos and total pandemonium. It is for this reason that I can imagine people might overlook the fact that Schofield’s recorded material is totally unique and really fucking good. This double tape, “Normal Pool,” betrays the softer, stonier side of God Willing. Seemingly fueled more by pizza and weed than by beer and adrenaline, the first cassette, a c15, is a “psychedelic guitar” jam. However, it would be an amazing feat to recognize the sound source as a guitar unless told so beforehand. The instrument is denatured by layers of warm fuzz and the attack of the pick is disguised in such a way that we hear only the ringing of strings. The actual sound is more like a pulsating drone, interrupted by swells of crackling distortion. The whole thing has a very calm, expansive feel-- the scope of the piece is like that of a wall-sized landscape painting, with incredible attention to detail. The second cassette is a c32, built from super crunchy, totally blown out, four-track feedback manipulation. Schofield avoids obvious balls-out harshness for a subtler performance. Low frequency oscillations are clipped square by overloaded magnetic tape while a satisfying crackle churns around them. Though, in a sense, more traditional, this cassette use the signifiers of Harsh Noise to drag itself into the sound world of it’s accompanying tape to become a completely coherent release. (Also: “Normal Pool” is totally sold out, but God Willing’s new 3”CD, “Awkward Tub,” on EMR Records, is very similar and fucking incredible.)