MATT ROBIDOUX “Brief Candles” (NULL|Z0NE)

Freakishly folked, Matt Robidoux rounds up a bunch of his greatest and truest musician friends and embarks on Brief Candles, an delightfully laid-back and meditative compositional triumph. I say “freakishly folked” because the tracks here are built mainly around acoustic instruments: guitar, reeds, brass, piano, etc. They also build slowly, often very slowly, each player taking their time to let their instrument find its footing among the others, or even just in the blank space of silence or on top of a gentle drone. To guide a collective through such a delicate framework takes a deft touch. Robidoux has it.

Imagine a 1930s Parisian jazz ensemble, but way darker and more experimental (experimental tape releases forever!). Oh! But then side B happens, and “Reflection Space” cuts a rug with eight minutes of a wild kraut-jazz party, complete with propulsive rhythm. YlangYlang stops by to add vocals to the lurchy electronic “Little Wall,” and the tape closes with 1970s-indebted funk workouts “Lime Green” and “Sunny Rain.” So … there’s no easy way to really know what’s going to happen with this one. You just gotta let it come to you and take you wherever it deigns to take you.

Robidoux is a fascinating and adventurous composer/songwriter, and he proves it here on Brief Candles. This oughta be one you come back to again and again.

https://www.mattrobidoux.com/

https://nullzone.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

PAINTED FACES “Living and Eating Pizza in New York City” (NULL|Z0NE)

When I say limited edition cassette batch, you say “HEY!”

“HEY!”

When I say limited edition cassette batch you say, “HO”!

“HO!”

“HEY!” à “HEY!”

“HO!” à “HO!”

OK, that’s enough. We can shout and raise our hands in the air until we’re blue in the face and our throats are raw and ravaged by our enthusiasm. But it’s not without merit, because that’s often the reaction I have to new NULL|Z0NE tapes, and this one here by Painted Faces is a ripper. David Drucker has been doing his freeform freakout thing for nigh on a decade, and Living and Eating Pizza in New York City, the first PF tape I’ve written about since Hermit of Bushwick on Already Dead (but not the first thing Drucker’s released since then), gets right down in it. Right down in the murk and the mire, right down in the frequencies and the tones, the ones that hover right there above the ground about an inch or two up, spread out like a sick fog.

I like that Painted Faces gets hit with the term “psychOdelic” in its press, because that’s exactly what it is. It’s certainly a trip and a half through Drucker’s mind, but it’s like you took the wrong acid and then fell in a swamp. But Drucker doesn’t care – he’s certainly just more interested in following whatever whim he has wherever it takes him, whether it’s to a bowl of soup or to an air conditioning unit stuck on “grind.” At any rate, it’s fascinating to follow him there, isn’t it? That’s what Living and Eating Pizza in New York City is all about. I think. Maybe it’s also about its titular subject, but who knows. I like pizza.

Btw, there are only 5 left of the edition of 10.

https://paintedfaces.bandcamp.com/

https://nullzone.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

PURE ENCHANTMENT “Humid Misterioso” (NULL|Z0NE)

“Pure Enchantment” is an understatement when you’re talking about these guys. The duo, consisting of Temple of Bon Matin percussionist Ed Wilcox and Ramble Tamble guitar hero/ex-Guardian Alien Turner Williams, spin tropical improv jams of the buzzed variety, their, ahem, humid concoctions quite conducive to lengthy listening seshes enhanced by the sticky icky. Indeed, “Humid Misterioso” is a scaled-back psych haze drifting through the jungle, its dank licks and melted percussion a red-eyed excursion beyond the reaches of the known.

Well yeah, these guys mess around. Opener “Man in the Coral Castle” is a surprise in the leadoff spot, as it covers twenty minutes like it was staking out enemy encampments all up in its area in what turns out to be inverted observations of itself. Let that blacklit wisdom hit you good and hard, and then close your eyes and open your mind as the groove makes it not matter anyway. These mid-fi astral guides get headier and headier until they explode in cacophony of riffage on the transcendental “Rain Dropping on the Magnolia Tree,” a blistering workout where the jam hits your lungs and stays there, altering your perception till the distortion magically clicks off and we tiptoe to a stop. Sure, that’s as good a spot as any to take a well-deserved break. Drink some water. Have a snack.

https://nullzone.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

ROBERT HAYES KEE “Someone Is Very Interested in Your Life” C47 (NULL|Z0NE)

Some is INDEED very interested in your life. That someone is Robert Hayes Kee, who has recorded you over a period of five years, 2007–12, without your knowledge. Let’s leave aside the ethical ramifications of this activity and focus instead on what you actually have SOUNDED like during that period. If you’re lucky, you will have become part of an artistic endeavor that you likely never dreamed of participating in. In some sense, you are the hero of this story.

“I Loathe Work, and I Love Interruptions” is basically the antithesis of my philosophy, so we’ll leave it at that. I feel you, though. I certainly won’t fault you for falling into this camp. Here, 23 minutes, zero interruptions. “Warbird Skyventures” is all process, all process. In the sky. All process, transmission. We hear you flying; be careful up there. Again, 23 minutes, zero interruptions.

Unadulterated field recordings.

Robert Hayes Kee

NULL|Z0NE


--Ryan 

CASIO ADCOCK “Nope, Nothing Clever” C30 (NULL|ZONE)

Introvert. That’s written in Lee Adcock’s Twitter bio, and I’m inclined to agree, based on Adcock’s output as Casio Adcock. “Nope, Nothing Clever” is defiantly lo-fi keyboard and rudimentary rhythm experiments delivered with a forcefulness that belies the artist’s apparent skillset. It sounds like it was recorded straight to four-track in Adcock’s bedroom; in fact, I don’t think the bass is even plugged in to an amp when Casio recorded it. “Nope, Nothing Clever” sounds like a transmission from an outpost with no one around for miles.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot to like here. Some of the most endearing and interesting experimental songwriting has come from the seemingly hermetic yet eager, and Casio Adcock fits right in with that cadre. This is especially noteworthy given that “for the longest time, Casio didn’t even know she existed.” This is certainly a missive from a self-aware entity.

NULL|ZONE

--Ryan

GERMAN ARMY "Kowloon Walled City" C45 (Null/Zone)

There’s an anti-didactic adage to be gleaned from DFW’s infamous commencement speech, “This Is Water”, in which two young, budding SoCal electronic music artists are walking along on a road towards Joshua Tree and one of the Bishop brothers comes waltzing by and says, “Hey, boys, how’s the German Army?” And then he walks off to get a frenchfry-stuffed burrito or something. After that, those two young, budding SoCal electronic musicians just continue walking along for a li’l bit until one says to the other, “Who the hell is German Army?”

Goddamnedest thing about the word “ubiquity” is that we’ve been using all those letters for other stuff the whole time…

This cassette is already sold out, of course, like every single other cassette I’ve ever received for review by them.  Why the hell does GeAr even bother having people review their stuff if we’re all just buying the damn tapes anyway, well before anyone has a chance to say a damn thing about them? Are GeAr just hoping we’ll continue to assure their rabid fanbase that they haven’t jumped the shark and started indulging in quality-reducing drugs like the Rolling Stones did or something?

Well, they haven’t, okay. Not a lick.

KWC is fanfuckingtastic, just like you’d expect. Groovy, yet reservedly driving, respectfully paying homage to the world’s diverse flavors and swaggers whilst adding a smidge of their own electronic spice, where they see fit, to further sharpen the edges. Perhaps they’re hoping someone’ll get inspired to start a well-meaning cult? Their (primarily tribal) beats ARE undeniably entrancing like that. Yeah. Solid cadences, simple-yet-effectively-bewildering accents & counterpoint. Ceremonial. Quite culty, for sure.

&if you’ve never seen footage* of people walking though the concrete veins of Kowloon Walled City, may I unhumbly suggest you get on that shit right now, while listening to this tape, cranked up LOUD?!

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An1D1OC5EMA
Disclaimer: Neither CG nor I can vouch for the accuracy of the claims made in said video.

https://nullzone.bandcamp.com/album/kowloon-walled-city
and/or
https://germanarmymusic.bandcamp.com/

-- Jacob An Kittenplan

THE ELECTRIC NATURE “The Place of Dead Roads” C30 (\\NULL|ZONE//)

This is how we’re going to do this. 

We’re gonna strap in. We’re gonna get ready. Because The Electric Nature is back, it’s in the air if you can feel it, in that muggy, awful Athens, Georgia, summertime atmosphere. The. Electric. Nature. Lightning shooting through distant clouds. It is moving toward us.

“The Place of Dead Roads” seems formless, a great remote mass. The trio – Michael Pierce, Michael Potter, Thom Strickland – makes an ever-intensifying racket, building to hurricane strength as their performance progresses, live and unaltered. The hair on your arms is sharp as tacks, erect and rigid as the power flows through you.

Believe in the power, in the sheer zen of utter obliteration. It’s so much bigger than anything, this cleansing destruction.

The Electric Nature

NULL|ZONE

--Ryan

FLESH NARC “Songs of Reality” (NULL|ZONE)

Ever wondered what a US Maple/rRope/Skeleton Key hybrid sounded like with Auto-Tuned vocals? If so, then friend, I’ve got a treat for you. Enter the mad realm of Flesh Narc, a concept that sounds like it came from a terrific 1980s action movie but is actually a quartet of dudes whose madness burbles so close to the surface that they can barely step into society without the average citizen passing to the other side of the street when they see Flesh Narc coming their way. This madness seeps into every second of “Songs of Reality,” a tape that’s as invigorating as it is sort of terrifying but also super abstractly listenable, like if Justin Timberlake got caught in a blender and found that his tonsils were the best tool to help extract himself. (Spoiler alert: he didn’t make it.)

At times a noise recording masquerading as rock and roll, at others rock and roll becoming inverted by some sort of gravitational anomaly, “Songs of Reality” straddles the very line of existing and not existing, valiantly attempting to prove its existence by shouting itself into existence. It’s the kind of wavering reality alluded to in platitudes like those spoken by the great Dr. Buckaroo Banzai, such as, “No matter where you go, there you are.” It means nothing and everything, a Zen riddle simmered too long in a psychic saucepan. Except violent – almost way too incredibly visceral for prolonged contemplation. See, Flesh Narc batter the airwaves with a devious ruckus only hinted at by their contemporaries, and you pretty much have to make snap decisions or you might find yourself brained by a toaster oven hurled by someone ELSE listening to Flesh Narc. Gotta keep your eyes peeled, you people are everywhere.

Flesh Narc

NULL|ZONE


--Ryan

X.NTE “CLOUD2” (\\NULL|ZONE//)

We have lost the will to exclude breakcore from our lives. X.nte, from Atlanta, Dirty South, makes obsolete the many years between the last time I bought a Digital Hardcore or Squarepusher CD and this present moment, and holy god it seems like I never should have stopped lining the shelves of my collection with this stuff. “CLOUD2” is a massive headrush, a MASSIVE HEADRUSH, in case lowercase letters didn’t do it for you there. They don’t cut it.

Interspersing remixes of other artists’ material with x.nte’s own, the producer weaves jagged and delirious electronic mayhem, a seemingly never-ending digital environment where we must navigate between EQ stalactites and stalagmites through a subterranean vortex. It’s impossible to loosen my white-knuckled fingers from my armrests – by blood’s pumping, my teeth are grinding in lockjawed intensity, I’m hyperventilating like I’m in the emergency room, I’m sweating through a jacket and two shirts.

I’m the pilot of a pixelated spacecraft dodging enemies and debris in tight quarters. It’s a goddamn exhilarating ride. I think an enormous NES ate me and I can’t tell the difference anymore.

Don’t stop purchasing x.nte’s “CLOUD2” from \\NULL|ZONE// till it’s gone. Edition of 50. 

x.nte

http://nullzone.bandcamp.com/ 

--Ryan Masteller

LEISURE SERVICE “Dank Hell” C30 (\\NULL|ZØNE//)

Leisure Service, aka Michael Pierce, is a tricky customer. Maybe you read into things like record sleeves – or in this case J-cards – and book covers, and you think you’ve got something pinned down, only to find yourself not only wrong but dead wrong, face down in puddle of goo, wishing you hadn’t fully prepared yourself for an eventuality that existed only in your mind. That’s me right now – pushing myself up to free myself and especially my face from all this goo!

Dank Hell sounds like a slog. Doesn’t it? Maybe a miasma of power electronics awaits the listener. Four lengthy deep dives into harsh noise wall with no escape at the other end. Track titles reading like recipes from the nihilist’s cookbook: “Satan’s Sulphur” and “Human Intention” and “Which Strain” and the title track. But guess what? All that potential negativity is released into the recesses of imagination as soon as the play button is smashed and the ominous synth squiggles of “Satan’s Sulphur” gain their crispy beatwork, electronic pulses with the head-nodding intensity of, dare I say, a Wax Trax! revival festival? Oh – oh my, I can’t believe my ears. This makes me … what’s the word? Happy? Happy. That’s it. Feet moving, bass grooving. I mean, seriously, “Which Strain” would probably find itself at home on Daft Punk’s Homework, and that’s a pretty fantastic place to find oneself at home.

It’s not all sunshine and lollipops – and actually, there is very little sunshine and there are very few lollipops, it’s just that the relative lack of unremitting black evil kind of puts the nice stuff in relief – and, in fact, “Dank Hell” the song is a subterranean, nocturnal, introverted, [insert-similar-adjective here] dub minefield stretching almost nine minutes until the density of its bass causes the track to collapse in upon itself, bubbling out of existence. Still catchy, but certainly shadowed by its sinister intentions. But Dank Hell the tape is a fantastic listen for even the most casual of electronic music fans, a portal into a dimension where mood meets accessibility and everyone’s a moon orbiting the righteous musical quasar that is Leisure Service, at least until Michael Pierce gets tired and needs to hit the hay.

https://nullzone.bandcamp.com/

-- Ryan Masteller

FUTURE APE TAPES “Camouflage Music” C50 (\\NULL|ZØNE//)

“The Future Ape Tapes need another release from the Future Ape Tapes,” so says “Release,” the inaugural song to Future Ape Tapes’ inaugural release on \\NULL|ZØNE//. As we enter this ouroboros situation, where the ape eats its tail somehow, and we suffer the consequences (apes can’t bend like that…), I am reminded that the Future Ape Tapes do not live in an insular world where their output is considered and consumed by Future Ape Tapes alone. There is an external existence where we are, we listeners, and we are confused and frightened by the sentiments of “Release.” The world needs another release from the Future Ape Tapes, don’t you see?

Camouflage Music is music hidden in plain sight. The requisite sonic barfage is whirled into terrifying maelstrom of experimentation, googly-eyed synths and samples colliding with live instrumentation and vocal-processing gymnastics that barrel toward the end of the runtime with overt disregard for bystanders. Plain sight? Squint and you glimpse a pop hit, a “Dry the Rain” High Fidelity gag that propels every basement-dwelling sonic scientist to the fore of popular imagination. But Future Ape Tapes are exactly that – the future. The present isn’t ready, save for the 25 or so of you lucky enough to score the physical artifact, or the 800 or so others dropping hard cash on digital files. We are all experiencing the milk of human indifference through Camouflage Music, an indifference to the unfortunate human condition that the Ape Tapes are reflecting, and that indifference will be our downfall. Hail the future – may it come sooner than we hope.

https://nullzone.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan Masteller

SMOKEDOG “Drinking Under the Table” (\\NULL|ZØNE//)

What’s missing is the “You.” As in, Smokedog is drinking you under the table. Because somehow they’re still recording music here. Still standing. Maybe still … smoking? Or maybe they’re too insular a bunch, and they really are drinking under the table, with their recording equipment, encased in a perennial cocoon out of sight of everybody else that happens to be around at any given time. They’re too busy in their own heads, they have no time for you wandering around the kitchen looking for the bottle opener.

Smokedog, from Athens, Georgia, is so not R.E.M. that it’s not funny, and \\NULL|ZØNE// is so not IRS that it’s stupid. There are thirty-nine free-associative tracks here, ranging from noise experiments, spoken-word between-song live banter, live renditions of songs (all of which are simply “Untitled”), smoky blues experiments, blues experiments, smoky fusion experiments, live half-jams, shamanic nocturnal seshes, acoustic asides, more hairy blues, and all of this is sort of pieced together in a, I want to say, intentional way, but I’m not sure. It’s like if Tonstartssbandht’s music got into a car accident with itself (the music, not the ’Bandht) and fragmented in a bunch of directions. Also if Tonstartssbandht was more into the Dead instead of High Rise and International Harvester. There’s some actual accessible rock music of the classic vein here! The ’Dog’s gettin’ in, gettin’ out, and somehow it works.

But whatever, intentional or not, you can make the case that Drinking Under the Table makes perfect sense how it’s presented, where songs don’t begin or end but are instead entered in medias res and cut mid-riff. It’s a weird, and dare I say bold, experiment, bringing blues music into the realm of noise and just letting it sit uncovered in the microwave until it overheats and explodes and makes a mess that’s impossible to clean up. Maybe that’s Smokedog’s motto: “Making messes you can’t clean up.” Or maybe it’s “R.E.M. is for suckers.” What do I know. Drinking ended up being a lot more extroverted than I expected it to be. Smokedog’s more on top of the table, nude, thrashing instruments, horrifying their roommates. Drinking you under the table, because for some reason you think you can win.

Smokedog

https://nullzone.bandcamp.com/

-- Ryan Masteller

VARIOUS ARTISTS “Exterminate All Rational Music” C92 (\\NULL|ZØNE//)

Welcome to \\NULL|ZØNE//. I hop in the oversized green pipe like an Italian plumber in overalls, a goofy hat, and a mustache and come out the other side in who knows where. No, I know where – it’s a netherworld, a miasma of hellish grotesqueries, where the outcasts of all musical scenes and genres are dumped when their use is determined to be no longer needed. I mean, heck, when there’s no longer a need for endowments for arts and humanities, as determined by our esteemed national leadership, the great unrefined still need some shore to wash up on. And they know it, too! Hey, track one by Sunwatchers is called “There Is No God and Fuck the Government” – haha, wow, that’s a spicy meat-a-ball! To stick with our Super Mario theme, Sunwatchers stomp koopas to bits and watch their turtly guts smear out all over their instruments for inspiration, then free-associate sonics to brainwaves for five straight wonderful minutes. And then for the next 87 wonderful minutes, the gang \\NULL|ZØNE// has brought together does very similar whacked out, brazen, and fully belligerent experimental/improv-y bits of decisive action, complete with mid-album power-ups. Don’t believe me about the power-ups? Doesn’t matter, I hear them. There are electronics, acoustic instruments (some nice, gnarly sax passages), musique concrete (piped-in weirdo radio frequencies), and everything in between, including an appearance by CM and CG favorite Future Ape Tapes! And as usual with these Various Artists releases, you’re bound to discover a new name or ten that you’ll have to do more research on later. For me this time around, I totally got into the aforementioned Sunwatchers, Carey, Alec Livaditis, Ramble Tamble, and Clang Quartet. But there’s so much more on here! And you gotta act fast – there are only 9 left (as of this writing, 3/16/17, probably waaaay before this posts) out of the original run of 50. You know what to do. And you’re gonna have to do it before fricking orange Bowser-man takes away any more of our arts and junk, like our cassette tapes or something equally insane…

\\NULL|ZØNE// on the Bandcamps

--Ryan Masteller