BLUE SHIFT (Puik)

Another mysterious Belgian release from the vaults of jelle crama, presumably on his prolific but secret, often unlabeled, multilingual, impossible to decipher lettering label Puik. Jelle has made a name for himself in a million ways and one of them is by putting out mysterious tapes of people from all over, making you question if the artists are real and if the tapes are even legit. The one i hold is totally unmarked on the J-Card, just his trademark gloops of globs for artwork, and scrawled on the cassette "Blueshift." For those unacquainted, Blueshift is the solo work of Providence's Cybele Collins primarily channeled through a solo violin. This tape is one sided and travels nicely; it's one of the many graces of the cassette format that it undermines the concept of 'tracks' and allows the whole side to flow together with each track working off each other, departing or complimenting and this release takes advantage of that property.
Harsh staccato stabs that sound as if a drum solo and a guitar solo somehow shared a windpipe, breathing the same ferocity. This almost sped up sounding warp mutates into what feels like a final stand, the last round of the battle, all the teeth have fallen out and it's an impact match. A drummer is added to the mix making the music more physical and accenting the already percussive nature of the playing. Moving from the harsh, though clean moments the atmosphere becomes more open, obscured by space, with slight plucks and clucks of strings and an exhausted breathing, almost animal sounding, taking over the horizon. Though not suggestive of resolution there is a quiet, meditative quality to the remainder of the tape with a real focus on detail though tripping and stuttering as if there is just too much to enjoy, too many places to look.
A really great tape that has a real esoteric feel both in its musical efforts and the presentation and though remaining obscure and barely terrestrial it has a real tangible beauty.

http://www.jellecrama.com/puik/

ORPHAN FAIRYTALE “Big Bear” (Puik)

Another neon-silkscreened 1-sided recycled CS of plinky-plonky Casio ping-ponging from the lovely Ms. Fairytale on Jelle Crama’s label. “Big Bear” has been out for a while but it’s as relevant as ever because no Orphan stuff sounds dated cause it’s all spooned from the same bottomless bowl of fantasy porridge. This OF outing is as SK-heavy as ever, but instead of keys the primary audio source is muted drum sounds, which her sampling style transforms into near tribal-levels of polyrhythmic pitter-patter, like a million tennis courts of bouncing balls. Near the end of the A side she does a weird sound FX piece that sounds like someone playing a harp inside a helium balloon floating above a rush-hour freeway. Kinda reminds me of recent weird LPs on Ultra Eczema. Which of course is a good thing.