PEOPLE’S CHAMPS “American Dreamers” (Very Special Recordings)

I don’t think there’s a musical category People’s Champs don’t tackle on American Dreamers, a full-on clusterbomb of exotic pop stylings made especially for the visionary in all of us. (Well, maybe not noise. Or metal. Or punk. The heavy stuff.) There are hints of funk, Afrobeat, pop, world, rock, R&B, dance, reggae – shall I stop yet? I guess I will. I hate bombarding people with genre lists, but it’s sort of the first thing you notice about People’s Champs – they’re just so comfortable with one another that their songwriting exemplifies the degree to which they can explore their talents. There’s a lot to like about this.

At times reminiscent of Sharon Jones fronting Fela Kuti’s band, or Sharon Jones fronting the New Power Generation, or Sharon Jones fronting a lot of stuff (the singer sounds like Sharon Jones, sue me!), People’s Champs will hold your attention throughout its nine songs, never staying in one place at one time. And hey, check this cred out – the horn section features members of The Superpower Horns, who only worked on Beyoncé’s albums Beyoncé and 4. Has anybody in your band recorded for Beyoncé? I didn’t think so. Go back to the garage.

Very Special Recordings

People’s Champs

--Ryan Masteller

MONTE BURROWS “Ikki Ni” C20 (Wounded Knife)

Field recordings drone and decay, seemingly piped in from another planet while this one crumbles around us. There’s a narrative in the press release about human ruins, time-crumbled monuments to an era of growth and prosperity, now left to erode with the weather and even more time. Stumbling upon such ruins generations later, is it even worth remembering who initially built them? Does history matter, or is the past a curiosity experienced merely through happenstance?

Monte Burrows, aka Joe McKay, explores these ideas on his new tape for Wounded Knife, Ikki Ni. On it, he presents the past as a relic, but one experienced as a monolith throughout the ages, quiet, still, eternal. Anybody remember the old console game Shadows of the Colossus? Great game. Ikki Ni taps into that vein of distant, nagging emotion, as well as a determination to survive, even though it’s pointless to try. No matter what kind of order we attempt to impose on life, our lives, other lives, it always falls victim to entropy.

Side A, “Silhouettes 1–5,” is the perfect encapsulation of vague reminiscence presented as music, as recordings fade in and out, leaving only representations of their existence. They tug at memories, evoke nostalgia, and dissipate as ghosts do when they’re finished. “Shadows of Manitou,” side B, does a similar thing, except it repeats until time defeats it, and it decays into static that is broken by otherworldly tones, music from another universe that has seeped through where the division between worlds has grown thin. It’s like a transmission from different ruins, similarly aged, but just slightly different. Physics and history collide and become sound, and all of us who can hear it become aware.

Monte Burrows

Wounded Knife

--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