NONHORSE "Nobody, Never, Yeowe” C86 (Five Records)

ATTN: Weirdos,

If you’re interested in experimental music, sound collage, audio diaries, and/or pretty much losing your mind, you really oughta read this guy’s manifesto, accessible via the first hyperlink below. Really. Take the time. Even if you don’t get around to the sounds, it’s truly inspiring.

There is no way to really “review” this tape other than to alert you to what it stands for; a general expanding of your consciousness concerning how you feel about certain sets of statistically unrelated, dynamically divergent sound relationships. Well, that and what it sounds like to walk through an art gallery consisting of someone’s random thoughtsketches, but HEARING a lifetime’s differing aesthetics/perspectives instead of just SEEING them. If that didn’t make sense, it will after listening to this.

http://nonhorse.com/statement.html
https://fiverecords.bandcamp.com/album/nobody-never-yeowe
and/or
http://nonhorse.com/

-- Jacob An Kittenplan

NONHORSE / HORSE HEAD “Horse Split” (JK Tapes)

Two totally unrelated musical projects thrown together on a C30-something because they both have “horse” in their band name (in case you didn’t infer that from the title) on this new tape/CDR label. Gabriel Lucas’ Non-Horse outing here is a recording of a pretty good live set, lots of smearily collaged sound sources bleeding into one another…wind tunnels, rain, acoustic guitar plucks, beans-in-a-tin-can, factory clatter, melodica? Typically untraceable and mysterious. The jam dwindles out on a smoky/jazzy vibe, and then Mr. GLC gets on the mic and thanks everybody for coming and says it “was worth the 8 hour bus ride” and mentions he has merch for sale. Hopefully he sold some stuff! Orange County outcasts Horse Head are on the flip, and they hold down their rep as radical unpredictables. Apparently they’ve become a sloppy/outsider boogie band in the interval since their last release? Baffling. Slow, 3-chord basement rock with basic basslines, nasally angsty singing, and messy drums. Oh well. I guess it’s good to have zero clue what a band is going for sometimes. Tape comes in a nice thick white vinyl tape case and is drenched with spray paint and peeling labels.

NONHORSE “Xol Mic” (Abandon Ship)

Holy shit. Mr. GL Crane is back in the solo saddle, and this time he’s got something to SAY. After Rigor Lore’s exploratory symbioses and Drone Moral’s mellow light brigade, Xol Mic feels like some full-on OPUS shit. Overt tape-ripping, yearning female voices, bright buzzing clouds of smokescreen noise-dream…this is a long, strange trip. 90 non-stop minutes of Non-Horseplay might be a bit too much for frailer-eared souls to ingest, but Abandon Ship chose to crank out 300 of these monsters for planetary consumption, so it might end up being his most widely-heard release. Which would be rad actually, as this is definitely the weirdest, vastest, and most tangled labyrinth he’s ever carved on to cassette. Every musical instrument and sound effect ever invented stops by at some point for a cameo appearance. It’s like We Are The World or one of those guest star-stuffed orgy TV specials. Nothing and no one is excluded. This tape is a universe.

NONHORSE "Drone Moral" (DNT)

Cinematic mechanized soundscapes/soundtrack for an emotional documentary on a run-down appliance repair shop in east Brooklyn? Esoteric, but strangely moving. Gabriel Lucas Crane’s solo tape hiss enterprise forgoes the circuitry vignettes of Haraam, The Circle of Flame and Rigor Lore in favor of a single 23 (symbolic like the Jim Carrey movie?!!?!) minute disembodied drifter. Warbling murk loops, echo clatter, stuttering tape delay…Non-Horse speaks the language of sound effects. And, on Drone Moral, he seems to be saying something pretty deep. Only downsides: 1) same jam on both sides, 2) illegible insert, 3) dubbed cheaply, so you have to CRANK the volume to hear what’s going on.