SOFTEST “Six Wishes” (Inner Islands)

Softest is a recording moniker of Braeyden J. McKenna, and you should know who he is if you’re reading this page or any other page devoted to tape releases or spectral guitar ambience. He’s a co-founder of Inner Islands, the label on which this tape is released. Inner Islands has been covered here many times. Look it up. The label is also a repository for this kind of music, devoted as it is to contemplative and meditative thought through sound. Hence its name, which is a nod to personal examination and subconscious connection, where peace and harmony wash over the listener, leaving them to their solitude on their own, ahem, inner island. Of course.

McKenna is like a guru within this idiom. Here, as softest (lowercase, of course, except when starting a sentence – see above – as all good English grads understand), he provides the titular six wishes, longings, hopes, laid out in musical form and stretched to magnificently peaceful lengths and, if we’re getting all 3D within our own heads, breadths and depths. Each “wish” is a cascade of gorgeous guitar, synthesizer, and field recording, processed to specific frequencies for maximum astral projection. Wanna think of McKenna as your spirit guide here? Go ahead.

As with McKenna’s other works, his output as softest is intended for purposeful reflection, and headphones are recommended. This is exactly the kind of album you need to put the madness of the world to the side. It is a needed respite from the echo chamber of dissention and cruelty pinging off the walls of our foreground and feeding back until it becomes an unmanageable mental burden. It’s spiritual release.

Softest

Inner Islands

--Ryan Masteller

ROPAL JAGNU “Silo” C20 (OJC Recordings)

Ever wonder what your guts sound like when represented by musical instruments? Ropal Jagnu surely has. They/he/she/it (I’ll go plural “they” for now) have stuck their heads inside the open abdomen of a living thing and used it as inspiration for their music, which is a form of seasick synthesizer freakout. Silo, a noun having nothing to do with guts, for some reason, sort of resembles noise rock in that there’s drums and distorted/buried vocals (and weird, trippy guitar) along with the synth. And that synth – it’s pushed to the fore for 10 minutes on each side, sounding suspiciously like a street-corner politician (or preacher) punctuating his points for effect. If a synthesizer could literally pump its fist in the air, it would sound like what’s going on in the middle of “Silo” (the track).

“Ripple,” side B, sounds like a confrontation between R2-D2 and a bunch of alien space thugs. It’s better than the Grateful Dead’s fucking “Ripple,” that’s for GODDAMNED SURE.

(Nick: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

Anyhoo, Silo’s certainly a welcoming and rewarding twenty minutes if you need a combination of punk distilled to pixels and a malfunctioning arcade game slowly melting down from the inside.

OJC Recordings

--Ryan Masteller

SCOTT WAINWRIGHT “Strangers Here” C50 (Saw Music)

I listened to this tape while sipping on a glass of apple juice, watching the sun rise before heading out to get to class — and oh my Lord, this is an acoustic album worthy of a listen. Scott Wainwright is, without a doubt, an exceptionally skilled musician.

I was pretty wary of listening to the tape when all I’d seen was the cover, just because it looked so country-esque, and goodness knows how much I hate country music. But my oh my, was I disillusioned. Country music? Hell no. This is a mellifluous concoction of newborn daylight, autumn airs, and a single elegantly rustic guitar.

Every track is a similarly enlightening experience. Can you hear the rusty leaves crackle under your feet on cold, parched pavement? Does the brisk breeze blowing back your scarf and hair feel as good as it sounds? Will the warmth of a new sun dawning on your face and on your soul bring excitement and joy or melancholy and tears to your eyes?

https://scottwainwright.bandcamp.com/album/strangers-here-2

—M. Syed

CHANNELERS “Essex” (Inner Islands)

Water. Water is the key, and water is what Sean Conrad, aka Channelers, aka label honcho at Inner Islands, aims to, er, immerse us in throughout his new ambient masterpiece Essex. I mean, look at that cover, for crying out loud! That’s a person wading into a lake or something. See those ripples emanating from the hazy figure disturbing the stillness of the surface? For all we know, they continue infinitely out of frame. Who cares if that would fly in the face of physical or thermodynamic laws – physics and thermodynamics don’t rule my imagination, that’s for sure! Nor do they have any purchase within the psychological framework of human consciousness. So I can drift in them for the rest of eternity, on an endless, unbroken liquid plane, and not even worry about how the universe works. I can just be.

There it is. Just be. Can you imagine tuning your own consciousness into the exquisite life force of the cosmos, or expanding your perception of that cosmos so that you realize its existence inside of you? That’s the whole Inner Islands aesthetic – expanding within, journeying to the isolated regions where you are filled only and permanently with peace and harmony. Traversing vast expanses of water. All in the name of true, uninterrupted rest.

And “Rest” is the track that opens Essex, all eleven minutes and eleven seconds of it. And because 11:11 is the magic number on all digital clocks, there’s a numerological element to it that gives it power. Probably. I’m going to listen to it at 11:11 today and see what happens. My guess – the song slows time just enough so that it can be played entirely within that single minute. But that’s just a guess. The track begins the tape perfectly, introducing the liquid theme with pastoral synthesizers, recalling Belgium’s Dolphins into the Future at times, and setting the stage for interior drift. The dual themes – water, introspection – continue with obvious nods: “Regenerations at the Night Pool,” the gorgeous acoustic guitar/synth concoction “Moved by Streams,” and the nostalgic “Longing to Swim in the Realm of My Childhood Dream” represent the former (well, both, I guess), and “Safe Space” and “Passing My Heart through the Place of Questions” the latter.

Undoubtedly Channelers, and Inner Islands in general, exists to provide escapist realms to us weary searchers, those who are disillusioned and fed up with the insanity of the world around us. And Channelers does that, but not at the expense of trying to make oneself a better person. Introspection comes with a responsibility to project that inner tranquility outward, to strive toward bringing that type of peace to everyone. Remember the old Salvation Army motto? Sharing is caring, people! Now, let’s all fucking make this world a better place.

Inner Islands

Channelers

--Ryan Masteller

HEAD DRESS “Slow Chime” C30 (Hylé Tapes)

It’s pretty obvious, I think, that Head Dress would finally appear on the Hylé Tapes roster. The LA-based artist and Norelco Mori podcaster, real name Ted James Butler, is an experimentalist tapehead’s dream, and he fits right in with the Paris-based megalabel’s aesthetic. (I guess I use “megalabel” a bit loosely, sue me.) On Slow Chime, we get thirty minutes of outsider ambient/electronic/drone/noise with dashes of wildness sprinkled all over the place, adding spice and grit and all manner of flavor and texture adjectives to these base descriptors. I’m a fan. Are you a fan? Yes, you are.

“Coats,” “Slow Chime,” and “Gravenhurst” comprise side A and showcase the variety Head Dress utilizes within his compositions. MIDI pops and pings, string scrapes, synthesizer brownouts, and wisps of incandescence characterize these offerings, and keep the listener guessing. But when we hit side B and the entirety of the opaquely titled “TI1 1262014IT” overwhelms you in its enveloping presence over the course of fifteen minutes, that’s when you know Head Dress has won, that he has dominated your ear canals to such a degree that you’re likely a melted puddle of biology when it’s complete. Cacophony for six and a half minutes gives way to wonderfully tuned power drone, all while pumping endorphins through your body as it simultaneously disintegrates it. Cool! And yuck!

That’s where I am after Slow Chime, a floor puddle, an unfortunate result of physics affecting the molecules in my skin, bones, blood and tissue. But isn’t that just how you like your experimental music? Don’t you want it to cause you to evolve in meaningful ways? Or at least affect you to the point where your physical instability can be the springboard that allows others to evolve? Whatever. There’s something in Head Dress’s music that’s vital and dangerous, bewitching and overpowering, and I can’t get enough of it. Maybe you won’t be able to either. See you at floor level!

Hylé Tapes

Head Dress

--Ryan Masteller

CHIHEI HATAKEYAMA “You’re Still In It” C36 (Constellation Tatsu)

Constellation Tatsu has a knack for releasing brilliant works by young, Japanese, ambient-drone sound sculptors (see: Hakobune & Celer), and Chihei Hatakeyama fits the bill, 110%.

What strikes me most about this microtonal soundbath is my own subjective relationship with it -the content is dictated by mood- and I’ve perceived each side in so many different ways that I’m not sure where I stand on the schizophrenic-spectrum anymore. Maybe I can blame it on the tape? Let me plead my case!

At first, I felt bathed in droning, layered sunshine, perfect-temp breezes, ants respectfully tickling my toes, but never ascending past the ankle. Days later, I was trapped in a spiteful-god-directed, single ray of condemnation, trapped in time, Sisyphus waking with stretched hand to wrap knuckles against that goddamned pebble of doom. Yet, day after that, a calm, Equinoxious ambiguity playfully flirted with paranoia more than I’d meta-prefer to. The perceptions continue to evolve, consonance and dissonance cross-dressing into omniscient oblivion.

Another big plus, when turned up, is how frequency amplification varies greatly, depending on my position to the room/speakers. Since realizing this, I’ve longed for the capability to self-decapitate so that I might sway my head about the cabin and drink this wild ride up from yet another myriad of possibilities. Seems I’ve been living in Berkeley far too long.

http://www.ctatsu.com/portfolio/youre-still-in-it/

and/or

http://www.chihei.org/

- - Jacob An Kittenplan