JO MILLER-GAMBLE “Free” (OSR)

This album is great. It’s also difficult. Jo Miller-Gamble is dorky and guileless. I wish the vocals were clearer so I could understand the words better. On first listen I didn’t like it, and I thought to myself, “Well, maybe it was made by a bold and silly teenager.  Since I don’t want to say anything mean, I’ll put it aside for now.” Then I played it again, and I started warming up to what I found repellant at first. I noticed the somber beauty of “Scent of Life,” and I realized that I had misinterpreted this album. Try listening to “Scent of Life” when you’re feeling relaxed and see for yourself. The songwriting is good. Miller-Gamble is “free” because of his depth. There is a depth to this album that can be appreciated once the superficial confusion has been passed through.

Osr-tapes.bandcamp.com/album/free-osr58

-- Kevin Oliver

MODERN CHAIRS (OSR Tapes)

This two-song tape (repeats on side B) comes in an o-card slipcase with a bright, attractive sleeve. The group, which includes OSR alumni Francis Carr, Zachary Phillips, Christina Schneider and features Alexis Graman on the second track, offer up a couple of nifty off kilter pop selections.

I hear guitar and synth along with slightly off-key vocals but not much else in the way of instrumentation.

"Modern Chairs" is my personal pick of the two and it exhibits why the components can work in a pop setting. I'm. Less excited about "Relative Strangers" but must admit it has it pleasures too. The question that kept going through my mind was would I sit through a whole album or a show of this. I can't tell you but I will confess I keep listening to "Modern Chairs" repeatedly. High marks for originality. This borders on outsider music. Eager to hear another two track single.

https://osr-tapes.bandcamp.com/album/modern-chairs-osr70

-- Bob Zilli

TERRE ROCHE “Imprint” C51 (OSR Tapes)

I was a terrible guitar student. My teacher was nice enough, an older guy (to 16-year-old me, anyway) with some pretty good chops, probably played in a bunch of bar-stuck blues bands. Friend of the family, kinda. He probably had no interest, really, in teaching me. Every week, he probably thought the same thing when he saw our minivan pull up: “What Pearl Jam song does this little shit want me to teach him this week?” I’m not proud of that part of my musical education. I learned bar chords at least.

Terre Roche is also a guitar teacher, and I wonder if she’d have infinite patience with me. Not that I need guitar lessons anymore – what am I, 16? – but I wonder nonetheless. I wonder truthfully how much of me other people can handle at one time. I mean, I’m not a handful or anything, and I’m pretty nice, but I’d probably still be an insufferable music student. As an insufferable music critic, I have to say that Terre Roche’s style is safe and inviting, and this is someone who has played with Robert Fripp, of all people. She stays in her folk/blues wheelhouse, hanging out there with bassist and producer Jay Anderson, folking it up, bluesing it up, folk/bluesing it up, folk/folking it up, whatever, man. I guarantee that if Imprint was on a major label rather than OSR Tapes (and no disrespect meant to OSR Tapes whatsoever here, those unrelentingly optimistic curators), it would get pretty good placement at the Starbucks cash register, maybe even heavy rotation on the PA. Impulse buy, baby. Perfect for drinking lattes to.

Terre Roche

OSR Tapes

--Ryan Masteller

DAGA VOLADORA “Chiu-Chium” C21 (OSR Tapes)

I can’t read any of these liner notes because I decided to take German in high school instead of Spanish. (Sue me, I’m German. Our language is romantic.) Thankfully there’s a nice English explanation over at the OSR page, so now I know that Cristina Plaza is Daga Voladora’s mastermind and that she’s from Spain. Which explains the liner notes. Here’s another neat tidbit I’ve learned from the page: “chiu-chium” is the onomatopoeic representation of the sound made by a flying dagger, “una daga voladora” in Spanish. What a coincidence! I betcha Cristina Plaza has a copy of Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers (with Spanish subtitles of course) that she watches on repeat. It would make a lot of sense.

Anyway, Plaza makes incredibly lush, sometimes fuzzy bedroom pop, a triumph for the medium. Plaza’s warm voice coos over the enchanting melodies, and the only hint that this might be a one-person four-track project comes in the form of the clearly Casio beats at times. But hey, that all adds to the charm, and I’ve definitely been won over, even though I can’t understand a word Plaza’s singing. Looks like music is turning out to be the universal language. Take that, love! And, uh, mathematics. Oh, and keep your eyes peeled for those flying daggers – they’re silent until they strike.

OSR Tapes

Daga Voladora

--Ryan Masteller

JIMMIE PACKARD “Singing Your Requests” C60 (OSR Tapes)

Jimmie Packard (b. St. Patrick’s Day 1919; d. 2003) is part of Vermont’s “secret history” according to curator Zach Phillips of OSR Tapes, who released this second “reissue” of Packard’s recordings. (The first, A Time to Look Back, is also available from the label.) Packard’s music was unearthed from a private collection, and thus a minor legend was born once Phillips got his grubby little mitts on it. See, Packard has a robust bio which I’ll plagiarize healthily here: “experienced luthier, operator of Jimmie Packard’s Instrument Repairs in his hometown of Wilder, Vermont, daily music instructor, radio DJ …, bandleader, … ridiculously prolific home recordist, and father.” In that you can infer a somewhat prolific man who, in the 1970s and 1980s, home-recorded many, many songs. On Singing Your Requests, we get a set of country standards featuring gorgeously layered guitars and Packard’s honeyed tenor. The material was absolutely tailored-made to be sung by the man, and the posthumous release should only enhance his legacy and legend.

For me, son of a boomer and nostalgia hound, I’m reminded of my paternal grandfather, who was a few years younger than Packard and outlived him by about a decade. The photos of Packard certainly help to further that idea – my grandfather stopped paying attention to fashion sometime around the early 1970s, and before you think I’m poking fun at Packard’s seventies polyester cowboy getup, I’ll promise that I’m not – it’s a good feeling that reminds me of growing up in the 1980s. The music does the same thing – it sounds piped in from another era, and it sounded piped in from another era when I was a kid. I guess that means it’s become timeless by definition. By description, it sounds Hawaiian sometimes, sounds like Burl Ives sometimes. Conway Twitty sparkled onstage, but Jimmie Packard sparked smiles and good vibes wherever he went with his music, it seems. We’re lucky that it’s been unearthed. Well done sir.

OSR Tapes

--Ryan Masteller

HELLIER ULYSSES “Prime Example” C9 (OSR Tapes)

During the great war, battle champion Pattern Is Zappa faced the mighty Dianogah, whose eye was its great weakness, and a few blaster shots would surely take care of it. Sadly, with a shadow of an empire looming, both Zappa and Dianogah proved to be one another’s demise, and the nearby planets shook from the reverberations of the catastrophe. I witnessed the struggle up close, and made it out alive. My trigger finger hasn’t been the same since.

Hellier Ulysses, a four-headed space creature from a nearby galaxy, has taken up the mantle of battle champion. Hooray for freedom! Because of its headedness, it moves in various and hypnotic ways, methodical and exotically elegant. It can start and stop on a dime, and the sounds it emits must be captured, rearranged, and rebroadcast by the most sophisticated audio equipment. The result is musical in nature, jittery bursts of economic energy use that puncture human ear canals with precision. There is no communication wasted. Hellier Ulysses has seven things to say, and it says them in nine minutes.

Because of the brevity with which Hellier Ulysses operates, I tried to race its transmission of Prime Example and write this review before the nine minutes expired. Unfortunately, HU packs way more into brief tunes than I can keep up with, pretty much proving right Einstein’s theory of relativity: the denser one’s musicality is, the faster it seems to go. Or something like that. I had to listen to this multiple times to get a clearer understanding of what was at stake. Give the four heads comprising this being a couple of releases before the music starts going back in time. Maybe then we can all lay down our blasters and live in harmony.

Hellier Ulysses

OSR Tapes

--Ryan Masteller

ASHER HORTON “Mystery Bones” C50 (OSR Tapes)

“OSR Tapes is the logical continuation of the Elephant 6 collective!” you scream at your mother as she hovers over the stove preparing your pancakes and bacon before you head out to catch the bus for school. (Why a high school junior who still takes the school bus rates pancakes and bacon for breakfast before school is beyond me.) She visibly stiffens, but doesn’t turn around; instead, she closes her eyes and licks a bit of bacon grease from her thumb while silently cursing Zeus (she worships the old gods) for allowing a son like hers to be born into this world. She slowly shakes her head and returns to her work as you lean back in your chair until it crashes to the ground. Unhurt, you again scream at the top of your lungs: “Asher Horton is better than Miles Kurosky!”

Dammit, your mother thinks. He’s in my Asher Horton tapes again. She takes a deep breath before turning around and glares at your prone form with a stern look of disapproval on her face. You’re no help as you flail dramatically on the ground, like a turtle with your feet and arms in the air – you just can’t manage to flip over in order to right yourself. It’s a loud, violent process. There’s no question anymore in anyone’s mind why you don’t have your driver’s license yet – you’re a dangerous klutz. “Mom, MOM!” you scream again, your personal volume cranked outrageously to twelve, because it’s one goddamn unit of measure higher than eleven, and Nigel Tufnel can suck an egg! Your mother, patient beyond patient, a saint, a goddess, but still radiating sternness that would require bio suits and a Geiger counter, reaches out her hand and helps you stand. There’s no amount of gentle, jangly guitar pop that could soothe her. Maybe…

Slamming your fists on the kitchen table in frustration and hunger, an unnecessary amount of times that results in orange juice splatters all over the place, you reach into your backpack and pull out an old tape recorder, the kind with the handle on the front, and proceed to play Asher Horton’s Mystery Bones in its entirety, making you late for school by like an hour. Your mom, though, becomes a different person: the cloud of frustration dissipates, and a sunshiney smile of contentment overcomes her face. She finishes making breakfast and slides your plate across the kitchen table, bacon broken into a smiley face over a single enormous pancake. She tips over the maple syrup and lets it ooze onto the plate, smooth and sweet as Asher Horton’s voice. The syrup becomes a lake, then a river that cascades off the table and onto the floor, first taking a detour to your lap. The orange juice drops cover your white Marcy Playground tour t-shirt. You’re going to be sticky for phys ed. You scream at the top of your lungs in utter fury. Your mother doesn’t respond.

This is why you have no discipline: you know your mother’s secret tranquilizer, and it is Asher Horton.

OSR Tapes

Asher Horton / Fox Fun

--Ryan Masteller