SLOW TONGUED BEAUTY “Sopportare” (Monorail Trespassing)

Walking the finest line between harsh noise and black metal, Slow Tongued Beauty, aka Ryan Scott Kerr, unleashes a maelstrom of highly digitized mayhem that’s truly impossible to ignore. Rhythm insinuates itself under the constant white-hot blaze of electronic aggression, although it tends to drop out suddenly during quieter ambient passages (before, obviously, coming back in and scaring the crap out of me – I have had to adjust the volume [and my pacemaker] while listening). “Sopportare” means “to bear” in Italian (thanks Google Translate!), and if “Sopportare” the cassette is any indication, Kerr’s has been bearing quite a heavy burden for an awfully long time, and this release is, ahem, his release, a primal scream of gnashing demons rotting the very interior of his heart. He also has some other releases, so perhaps we consider this a therapeutic outlet. Regardless of Kerr’s intent, his recordings are as gripping as a Velcro body suit at a fabric convention (clearly don’t know how Velcro works), and it’s impossible to turn “Sopportare” off, no matter how overwhelming or distant it gets (or how broken the “Stop” button on my tape player is). It’s the latest in a long line of solid and sturdy Monorail Trespassing releases specializing in the artistic within the static and the void.

Slow Tongued Beauty

Monorail Trespassing

--Ryan Masteller

Monsturo - CTS14 (Monorail Trespassing)

    Monsturo is composer and experimental performer David Rothbaum. It is said that this tape “CTS14” is made on a modular synthesizer. While I do believe it was, it is pretty interesting how patient he is with his machinery. One doesn’t hear the typical Wendy Carlos/Blade Runner approach that most modular synthesizer performers bring to the table while listening to this tape. Instead on this tape the listener must bask in the faint light that Rothbaum brings out from the tones on this tape. Imagine you're trapped somewhere and light only peaks in through holes in a steel door, but that light is what keeps you sane and it becomes what you cherish most. While it may seem like a test of endurance at times this Monorail Trespassing release I feel is meant to put you in a different state of mind and pull out the meditative side of the listener.

    All in all the tape looks solid and follows in the layout of previous monorail tapes. It looks good and is worth picking up if you are ready for it!

Listen and Buy HERE

TERRORS: “Inequipoise” c30 (Monorail Trespassing)

Don’t let the fact that this is on Jon Borges’ harsh/drone-notorious Monorail Trespassing label fool you, this thing is straight-up pop music. True, there’s a little bit of ambience on the edges of these songs but, for the most part, it’s pretty structured. I don’t actually know who the members of this band are, where they’re from, or anything like that. I can’t even tell with great certainty what instruments were played at specific parts, the production effects make guitars sound like pianos and vice versa, which I believe are the key mainstays (with a couple of additional string appearances). The style is slow and echoic, sparse instrumentation, but a dense sound, with so much reverb that the lyrics blend into one another and the music seems to hold on forever. The liner notes state that it was “recorded in a window” (assumedly the one on the cover), and it’s almost as if you can feel each chord drifting away, out into the night air. Maybe it’s better that the source remains a mystery for the time being, this might even be their first release for all I know. Hell, this could BE Borges’ work for all I know, but take what I don’t know and stuff it in a sack, this tape has a great sound and a lot of replay value, highly recommended.

Ltd. edition of 125

http://www.monorailtrespassing.com/

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/

TAIGA REMAINS “Glass Estuary” (Monorail Trespassing)

More stunning, stellar drone-weaving by Students of Decay CEO Alex Cobb. His two sides here are a bit more contained and to-the-point than usual (it’s a C20), but the brevity doesn’t detract from their flying, floating attack on the mind. The A side is a classic Taiga tidepool of tonal levitation and shimmering surfaces, but the B braves harsher terrain, welding together I-beams of radiant distortion at a construction site on the surface of the sun. The volume grows aggressively (which makes you appreciate what a killer dubbing job was done on these tapes, deafening and clear, with no hiss) before finally tailing off in a slow-motion fade to black. As satisfying a drone C20 as you’re likely to find anywhere.