HAINBACH “The Evening Hopefuls” (Spring Break Tapes)

On The Evening Hopefuls, German composer Stefan Paul Goetsch reworks pieces of orchestral rehearsals for a score that he had written into something otherworldly and magnificent. Culled from three hours of music he rearranged and reworked in his hotel room, The Evening Hopefuls drifts on another plane of consciousness, one halfway between sleeping and waking. To think of the source material as something other than the final product here is strange – this tape feels so complete, so considered, the music becomes its own entity and takes on its own persona. I say that of course without hearing the original material, but it’s hard for me to discuss within that context. Still, if you were to try to pin it down, you’d have some wildly unearthly material to describe – not only are we talking about a partial dream state where snippets of potentially meaningful communication appear and are lost in the ether, we may also be recipients of messages from other civilizations elsewhere in the universe. It all depends on your perspective. Regardless, we immerse ourselves in Goetsch’s master craftsmanship, buoyed by our own context, and drift on our imaginations toward meaning. That’s what music listening is all about anyway, right? Imposing a worldview upon a feeling. Hainbach’s output defies easy interpretation, and it’s all up to you. Listen deeply. Laugh knowingly and worriedly at the track title “The White House, Hell’s Valley,” and be renewed in the end by the hovering brilliance of “The Evening Hopefuls.” Be wary, be wise, but breathe deeply and be overcome by Hainbach.

Hainbach
Spring Break Tapes

-- Ryan Masteller

BUS GAS “Live On Leave Us” C27 (Spring Break Tapes)

On “Top Ten Funerals,” Bus Gas slather deliberate coats of synthesizer tones and various other loops on top of each other until the entire fourteen-minute composition is a viscous iridescent lava flow more suitable for drastic landscape change (if the landscape was composed of marshmallow) than overt introspective heart-tugging. I get it – thinking literally about the concept of “Top Ten Funerals” is a silly thing. First, I haven’t even been to ten funerals (thank god), so I can only back away and chuckle to myself a little bit when considering a list exists somewhere for someone who has a) been to enough funerals to be able to even make a list and b) has the constancy of character (I guess) to rank one funeral ahead of another for whatever reason. I can’t even fathom the idea. It’s funny to me. You may fail to see the comedy in the track, but it’s there.

I doubt the collective known as Bus Gas set out to make me smile like this, but the Nebraska drone crew sure does plaster a grin all over my face regardless. Divorcing myself from the absurdity of the concept of “Top Ten Funerals,” it’s easy to get utterly lost in the majestic waves of pure tone that almost literally (I mean, I’m picturing this music liquefying and spilling out of my speakers, to be sure) wash over me, fully encasing me in their physicality. It’s almost amniotic within the secure environment of this music, but it’s filled with enough tension in its chord progressions to serve as a reminder that we’re out here in the real world, sort of. “Infinity Cymbals” continues unbroken from “Top Ten Funerals,” but there’s nary a percussive instrument to be sensed. Guitar is the main event here, and its majestic presence is underscored by a continued multitude of synthesizer flourishes, less thick, sure, but no less gloriously iridescent. More intensely focused on disruptive behavior than on ambient therapy? Absolutely. Still, Bus Gas’s sonic magma flows from fissures in conscious reality, and once it is upon you, there is no escaping its density. Perhaps life is lived better that way. For me, I’m still smiling upon this marshmallow bedrock, content to let Bus Gas do its thing and terraform the whole shebang right in front of me, and over me, and even through me.

Bus Gas

Spring Break Tapes

--Ryan Masteller

CONTAGIOUS YAWNS “Some Places Aren’t Around Here” (Spring Break Tapes)

Did you know that Contagious Yawns and I are best friends in the whole world? There’s a “full disclosure” I bet you didn’t see coming. Problem is, Contagious Yawns doesn’t know it yet. Maybe that would have become apparent to you the more you read, since I’m only referring to Contagious Yawns as “Contagious Yawns” and not as the artist’s real name, because you know what? I don’t know Contagious Yawns’ real name. I even went to the website, but there’s nothing. I’m sure it’s not a secret, even though everything about the rollout for Some Places Aren’t Around Here was a secret (more on that in a minute). But Contagious Yawns and I are now secret best friends because we’re both wild and crazy about 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I basically only ever refer to Arthur C. Clarke and nobody else in my writing because what’s the point? It’s all right there. No one’s ever provided a better fictionalized account of the evolution of humankind, and it’s fascinating to consider the cycles during which event occurs at some point on the timeline that accelerates the potentialities of existence. And Contagious Yawns has now provided an alternate “soundtrack,” or a reimagining of the mood at least, of Stanley Kubrick’s film. It works so sublimely that it’s impossible not to be reminded of how awed you were by the moments in the film where Dr. Dave Bowman observes the Monolith as a portal or a wormhole to a distant point in spacetime, and enters it. The Contagious Yawns brand of retro synthesizer scoring transports you right there, just like it’s intended to do.

Much of the tape generates the jaw-dropping realization of a lifeform’s place in the universe and how existence within it is based pretty much solely on that lifeform’s ability to adapt to new conditions. Waves of cosmic synthesizer will conjure those feelings in a person, and they’re welcome blasts of star stuff. The idea of technology and its danger (e.g., specifically HAL 9000 here) is also represented, as is the idea that pretty much everything outside the tiny dot of habitable real estate will kill you in an instant the moment you’re exposed to it. “Nature of Force” and “The Holes in My Eyes” have that sense of dread. Space is just crazy, and there’s no way to reference it in your own mind without understanding that you’ll die in it in a heartbeat. But by the time “New Consciousness” arrives to close out the tape, I understood what was going on, and I realized that I was yelling, “Yes! Yes!” at my computer screen because I felt the cosmos around me in ways I’ve never felt it before. The atomic minutiae was perceptible to me. All thanks to Contagious Yawns. So let’s all hang out – I’ll bring my Blu-Ray copy of 2001 and we can hang out and remember how good this film is. We can go over to my buddy CY’s house for the viewing party. (You won’t mind, will you?)

(Oh… the “secret” thing? Yeah, I got carried away by the music here. This was part of a 2-tape “mystery artist” batch at Spring Break Tapes, where you ordered the tapes without knowing what was coming. Whoever made the plunge absolutely got their money’s worth. Do it again, SBT!)

Contagious Yawns

Spring Break Tapes

--Ryan Masteller

AMULETS “Auras” C26 (Spring Break Tapes)

Loops. Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em. Isn’t that how the old saying goes? Or wait – that’s not exactly right. There’s no reason you can’t live without loops. In fact, I might go so far as to say that loops actually make your life better, even all the time! Yeah, that’s more like it. Loops are always good, never bad, and can bring the dead back to life.

OK, maybe I went a little far at the end there, but holy moly, do I love me some loops. And who better to bring the master loopage than Amulets, aka Randall Taylor of Austin, Texas, on his debut for the swell-ass Spring Break Tapes? No one, that’s who. Taylor’s pretty much cornered the market on ambient guitar tape releases (I think he’s released around twenty thousand this year alone), and Auras does nothing to dispel the sense that he’s still riding that peak. You go, Randall Taylor. You go.

True to form, Taylor fills this teal-shelled cassette with glorious tones that wander through landscapes and bring worlds into being. Also true to form, he wrings emotion from his wordless guitar-and-sample pieces, leaving all listeners a conflicted mess by the end of side B. That’s fine – if you don’t have feelings, you shouldn’t be listening to this kind of introspective stuff anyway. Take side A for example, “The Coldest Time Was Always Midnight” – the title alone tells a story, one that screams sadness and disillusion, sure, but Taylor backs it up remarkably well with his music.

But it’s side B where the “Amulets way” really shines – Taylor crushes it on “A Funeral by the Sea.” The track plays like a processional to the titular service, mournful, respectful, and accompanied by waves crashing against the shore on a cloudy, autumn New England day. When the synth enters about two-thirds of the way through it, I’ve become a mess, or a bird, or the deceased ascending, but who knows because I’ve lost myself in it. That’s good composition. That’s Amulets composition.

So climb on board that train departing from or heading to Austin, the train that Amulets is conducting, and pretend the sound of the wheels on the track is an infinite loop leading you to the landscape of your dreams. I guess that’s something you can do – why not do it this weekend? It’s not like you have anything better to do. You’ve got six bucks and a mailing address, right? Do it.

Whoa, eight-panel J-card? Don’t hesitate a second longer.

Spring Break Tapes

Amulets

--Ryan Masteller

HEAD DRESS “Rose” C22 (Spring Break Tapes)

I don’t want you to look stupid. You don’t want you to look stupid. So at least we’re in agreement about it. But if you are stupid, and you need to not be stupid, then let me help you – here’s a link to the Norelco Mori podcast, which is a cutting edge cassette program designed to keep you in the know. The deep know. Maybe the deepest. Why all the podcast riffage (and the italics)? Because Ted James Butler, the man behind the Head Dress moniker, is also the man behind Norelco Mori. Consider yourself un-stupidified. The italics? Who knows, man. Sometimes you just need some emphasis.

I’ve written about Head Dress before, particularly his Slow Chime cassette on Hylé Tapes, but I can’t link to it because it hasn’t posted at the moment I’m writing this. You could easily just type in “Head Dress” in the little search field up there, so I don’t feel too bad about it. But here’s the thing – I can still quote myself if I want to, because I felt the same way about Slow Chime that I now feel about Rose. That’s right, it leaves me, upon completion of the tape, “a floor puddle, an unfortunate result of physics affecting the molecules in my skin, bones, blood, and tissue.” This is the result of excellent experimental music, and Rose is no exception to the Ted James Butler discography (or the Spring Break Tapes discography either, actually).

Throughout Rose, Butler manipulates his synthesizers to create weird, wobbly patterns and gnarly headspaces where up is green and three is five. I’m out there, in the middle of it, letting arpeggios squirt through me like neutrinos. It’s impossible to stop, so the only thing I can recommend is to let these twenty-two minutes pass as best you can, because you are powerless to stop the sound. Thank the all-powerful Cassette Gods that stuff like this keeps getting made. Hey, wait, I’m a Cassette God!

Spring Break Tapes

Head Dress

--Ryan Masteller

AVERY GABBIANO “Oracles & Chambers” C30 (Spring Break Tapes)

I only ever read books based on how their covers look, because that’s the only real way you can tell if anything’s going to be any good or not. Right? No? Hm, seems like I’m in the minority on that one. I guess if you don’t put it in such drastic either/or terms, maybe some books whose covers look cool turn out to be good, but there’s a pretty steep dropoff after that initial small percentage. I mean, there are some bangin’ covers in this Amazon top list for March – I’m going to read all of them!

I kid, really. I bring this up because Avery Gabbiano, on his new tape Oracles & Chambers, pretty much puts it all right there on the cover, and in the titles of the two sidelong tracks. “Sacred Incubation Chamber” sounds exactly like what my brain would conjure if I was immersed in a sensory deprivation tank. And if you imagine I’d conjure vast cerulean peacefulness upon an abandoned shore, you’d be absolutely right. Featuring oceanic found sound and gently burbling synths, “Sacred Incubation Chamber” is the auditory equivalent of floating into eternity.

“Oracle of Osaka” is equally tranquil, and equally built upon peaceful synth and found sound. Here something a bit more mysterious, a bit more spiritual is awakened. In accordance with the track’s title, Gabbiano’s sound sculpture approximates the voice of god or the universe through a trancelike meditation, and through it the listener can attain a state of nirvana. Wait, did I say “attain,” as if Gabbiano’s music is transcendent? Well, maybe it doesn’t go that far, but it sure does try, and it gets you pretty far along the road.

So what do you think of the cover of this tape? Look good? Titles sound like something you’d be interested in? Did my humble review make your ears salivate just a little bit? I hope so. Because they should. Oracles & Chambers is a nicely demarcated signpost along the ambient/drone continuum, and it’s worth your while to pop it in and ascend.

Spring Break Tapes

Avery Gabbiano

--Ryan Masteller