ELECTRIC SOUND BATH & JESSE FLEMING “Ataraxia Series No. 1: Heart and Insight Meditations” C61 (Crash Symbols)

Crash Symbols has unleashed upon us a new series of recordings, a maelstrom of cassette’d sounds that is bound to rend the very fabric of your being. The first entry in the series promises to shake you to your very core. Indeed, the Ataraxia Series, primed to blast through the cassette community with a vengeance … wait, it’s called the “Ataraxia Series”? I, uh… I think I might be headed down the wrong path here with this opening – I was under the impression that “Ataraxia” was something heavy, you know, with cool black metal fonts? Ataraxia. Yeah. But no, “ataraxia” is defined as “calmness untroubled by mental or emotional disquiet,” so basically the total opposite of what I was going for there. It happens – I am fallible.

Looks instead like I should have looked beyond the cover and realized that the series is actually called the Ataraxia Mediation Series, a “collection of guided and experimental meditation releases” that Crash Symbols is curating. Like those old tapes you find at Goodwill with the dated covers featuring inviting guides or smooth, stacked rocks or water drops or pan flutes – you know what I’m talking about – Ataraxia cassettes will serve as peaceful escorts through the inner workings of your being, acting as an escape from the everyday stresses while simultaneously serving as self-actualizers. Jesse Fleming, an artist from Los Angeles, and tone duo Electric Sound Bath combine their mutual interest in bettering oneself through relaxation techniques, with Fleming reading prepared meditative statements while ESB crafts the atmosphere. The result fills the spaces of your consciousness that have been overwhelmed by modern inconvenience and a fast-paced mentality, all while manipulating your outlook to guide – there’s that word yet again – you toward a sense of inner alignment. How is this not on the lovely Inner Islands label, which specializes in this kind of thing?

Anyway, Fleming’s words over the sound bath are exactly what you would expect from this kind of experiment, and I don’t know if I’ve heard the word “forgiveness” so many times in one sitting – forgiveness of others, forgiveness of self, etc. It’s refreshing in these turbulent times to consider that forgiveness is still an option. What does forgiveness look like again? Well, hey, I know what it sounds like – it sounds like Ataraxia Series No. 1, like coming to terms with yourself, like being a better person after hearing what it’s doing to the deepest parts of your being. It heals while it transforms, and you transcend while you hear, and time stretches out like a flat circle so that you encompass the forgiveness and the forgiving, living and understanding at the very same moment. You won’t even come out the other side an “enlightened jerk face” (ha, Jesse, good one), but a human being ready to interact with other human beings. Isn’t that the point anyway? You may even bond with someone over a good metal record – if you’re willing to forgive yourself first.

Crash Symbols

--Ryan Masteller

TARPIT “Walls and Windows” (All Gone)

Like the bathroom stalls beneath old Veterans Stadium before they blew that abomination right up, Tarpit’s “music” is coated in grime and other unmentionable substances. It is likely that this artist/group is from Philly as well, at least according to the scant pieces of information that the internet turns up. But since I’m not about to poke around the old dark web for any further bits and pieces, you get what you get from me, an honest opinion on a barely coherent industrial/noise album. That sounds like damning commentary, but I assure you, if you’re the type of person who can stomach whatever still crawls in the dark corners of abandoned SEPTA subway stations, you’re probably in for a treat with Tarpit. The clangs, the squirms, the grotesqueries, all serve the greater whole of displacement and disillusionment. Coherence? Who needs it! Get lost in the muck – like, literally get lost until you’re truly unable to find your way home. Become one of the sewer people who are almost certainly living under every major metropolitan area. Especially Philly! One day they will all rise up and reclaim the surface.

All Gone

--Ryan Masteller

LUNG CYCLES “On Being Lumpy (2016 Edition)” (Lily Tapes and Discs)

Gorgeous bedroom acoustic folk music, à la the lo-fi Midwestern indie scene in the late 1990s early 2000s. Originally released in 2011 on CDR, ON BEING LUMPY is the product of Ben Lovell, the man behind Lung Cycles, who decided that enough time had passed that he could revisit these songs without being horrified by them in some way (he says he was “frustrated and anxious” at the time of their recording, and if I were Ben, I may have just let the tapes collect dust in a shoebox under my bed – or, uh, in an unused folder on my desktop?). The songs live on their own, depict a specific time in one’s life, and speak to the fear inherent in the unknown. I get it – I went through that kind of period before, and Ben speaks to the me of that time, likely how ON BEING LUMPY acts as a snapshot of his own life. The music is split between instrumentals and vocal pieces, and regardless of which is doing the heavy lifting, there’s still an element that can be easily latched on to, an emotional point of reference that keeps the tape moored to an actual real world. It makes me wonder – how would I respond to a time capsule from the me of 2011 here in 2017? Would I understand where I was coming from? Would I be able to relate? I don’t know. Listening to this makes me sort of want to dig deeper into my own musical past, pull out some of the tracks I recorded with … oh god no – oh, I really WAS a Primus fan at one point! Time to take these tapes to the incinerator – sorry Ben, you and I may connect on some of the emotional checkpoints here, but I’m way too embarrassed to release any of this junk. Good on you for plugging along a listenable path in the first place!

Lung Cycles
Lily Tapes and Discs

--Ryan Masteller

DANE ROUSAY “blip” (self-released)

I wasn’t sure how “minimalist percussion” was going to translate from a concept to a reality, but once “blip” the album started zig-zagging through my headphones, I wasn’t sure if I’d even be able to escape it. Dane Rousay isn’t content to wail away on a drum kit like a basement-bound Neil Peart wannabe – no way. At times, I’m not even sure he’s playing “drums” or percussion or something – I have every reason to believe he’s processing these sounds through some kind of computer program. But you and I know better. The whole point of “blip” is the inventiveness on display, the “magnification” – Rousay’s word – of minimal percussion until it becomes an overwhelming maximalist production. At times I feel like I’m listening to an electronic glitch producer, but the tones and the timbres discourage me from that line of reasoning rather quickly. I’m reminded of the time I was in a band in college and we instructed our drummer to play like Aphex Twin, although I realized later I should have said Autechre. Assuredly, “blip” is nothing like that. It was a weird digression that I just thought of.

The sound is incredible, and makes the idea of a fully “percussion” album less avant-garde-y and more accessible than it probably has any right to be. Because it exists on the nexus of acoustic instrumentation, rigorous composition, and virtuosic playing bordering, as I’ve said, on the unbelievable (it’s actually injected with way more humanness and feeling than any technological composition whose feeling is sheened away by processing), “blip” probably has ripped a hole in the space-time continuum and plowed a nonlinear path in a direction unforeseen by physicists. From tuned and hammered glass (?) to an actual kit, Rousay’s playing is considered and resourceful, and it’s clear that the ideas he’s got kicking around in his head are well worth the attention of those with even a passing interest in percussive arrangement. Then, “blip” is a triumph, something to return to time and again with questions like “How’d he come up with that?” nagging the backs of our amateur minds.

And goodness – the “blip” art is fantastic, a gorgeous job all around. Kudos to Grace Herndon. And it’s mastered by Marcus Maurice, whose More Eaze work I’ve profiled in the past. I’m pretty sure “blip” is the complete package.

Dane Rousay’s WEB SITE
Dane Rousay’s BAND CAMP

--Ryan Masteller

SUPLINGTON “Repeating Flowers” (Youngbloods)

Producer Nakula Fogg’s output as Suplington is as gorgeously experimental as downtempo electronic music gets. Mixing found sound with his own minimal synthetics, Fogg creates a world as tactile and all-encompassing as the stages of life, death, rebirth, and everything in between. Fixating on a mood rooted in these natural processes, Suplington’s REPEATING FLOWERS wallows in the basest elements of existence, thereby enveloping any and all terrestrial entities and objects, glorifying them in whatever state they happen to be. It’s not hard, then, obviously, to get lost in the music, a chill mix as indebted to trip hop as it is to ambient, a Boards of Canada descendent without the obvious beatwork. The music easily takes over your current state, flowing through your consciousness and working on your perception as you begin to become aware of each living thing in your field of vision. Your hyperawareness causes you to get deeper into the music, and a cycle of symbiosis ensues. Do you really need REPEATING FLOWERS like a shark needs a remora? You might, at this point. Repeat REPEATING when it’s done if you don’t think you can stand another minute without it.

Suplington
Youngbloods

-- Ryan Masteller

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UMBER SLEEPING “At Last You Can Fly” (Halfshell Records)

Taking the best of Cold War–synth pop and mixing it with kraut influences, Umber Sleeping, mainly the project of Peter Tietjen, cuts a rug on the catchiest of catchy bloops and beats. Like some of my favorite synth bands from twenty years ago or so, like Pulsars or I Am Spoonbender (but without the mathy-ness of the latter), Umber Sleeping is easy to throw on and enjoy on any occasion. And if you’ve read any of my reviews ever, you probably know that I’m a sci-fi nut, so AT LAST YOU CAN FLY pretty much scratches that itch in all the right places. I mean, look at some of these track titles: “Where Is Neptune?,” “Atom,” “Starro” – OK, maybe it’s only a handful that point directly to sci-fi, but still, the music is totally all Isaac Asimov on us. Freaky future space colonies and that kind of jazz, set to music for mass consumption, likely individually packaged and portioned for maximum caloric efficiency on the intake. But that’s food, this is music. You won’t regret your decision to emigrate to a frontier planet. There’s even a track called “Dr. Monroe,” and if he doesn’t inspire confidence, then I don’t know, you may be lost to the cause. But hey, at least you’ve still got your Umber Sleeping tape, right? … Do you?

Umber Sleeping
Halfshell Records

-- Ryan Masteller

WILD ANIMA “Blue Twenty-Two” (Blue Tapes)

BLUE TWENTY-TWO logically follows BLUE TWENTY-ONE, which I just so happen to have reviewed a bit ago, but this is a completely different kind of animal… a wild one! Without the “l.” Anyway, Alex Alexopolous uses barely anything more than her voice, wordless, chanting, wafting through time and space. It’s a gorgeous instrument, and, steeped in mystery, it drifts through forests, beckoning travelers to remote monasteries where the only sound heard in the hallowed halls is Alexopolous’s voice. High above the walls in a tower a light shines as a beacon, a light that never goes out. Only those in tune with the reverberations of the vocalizations on a deep, subconscious level can find the monastery. I found it. I’m glad I did. Like Enya on a Julianna Barwick trip, Wild Anima fills the air with magic, and soft light seems to permeate the woods even in the middle of the night. Did I say “gorgeous” yet? I’m about to – it’s gorgeous stuff. BLUE TWENTY-TWO is the kind of thing you can throw on at a séance, a wake, a Renaissance faire, or during a D&D session, and it would be the perfect accompaniment to the more enchanting moments of a fantasy film. I find myself visualizing all kinds of things while it plays (as if you couldn’t tell). I’ve got the original version, but the re-release comes with ten extra tracks, all remixes. It’s sort of odd hearing Alexopolous run through the remix ringer, but it’s decidedly not unpleasant … just different. And that’s OK. Come for the voice, stay for the reinterpretations. All good in the end.

Wild Anima
Blue Tapes

-- Ryan Masteller

ANDY ORTMANN “Cave Wave” C40 (Tabs Out)

Andy Ortmann runs Nihilist Records, but the fantastically titled CAVE WAVE is a Tabs Out joint. Andy likes to manipulate sound – seemingly inconspicuous samples and synth patterns resolve into weird psychedelic fragments that burrow into your brain and alter your vision, as if you were ingesting mushrooms through your ears. My ears have ingested, and I am a victim of the subterranean bonesick mesmerism. I am the Toxic Avenger, or maybe another Troma property, but I’m certainly worse off in my molecules than I was a half hour or so ago. It’s like the electrons in my body have all started to decay, slowly loosening their connectivity to various protons. And my mind – it feels like it’s being controlled subliminally. You may ask, how do you know if your mind is being controlled if it’s subliminal? I think that my mind has always been controlled, and it’s taken CAVE WAVE to draw attention to it. This neon green nightmare fantasy straight outta Haord (I am wearing my “Straight Outta Haord” t-shirt after all) is not straight outta Haord but is functioning in a similar form. I am off balance. I am unclear. I am disoriented. I am thrilled. Andy Ortmann is the exact dose of bewilderment in these times when everybody’s right and I’m wrong. I should take a step back and wallow in being wrong, in being submerged beneath the surface of this planet, surrounded by reverberating catacomb walls, and ride the wave of the cave till my brain breaks from the effort. It won’t be long now – I’ve become sure of very little, and I’m awash in oversensation.

In the end, the one thing that I’m actually sure of is that Andy Ortmann is probably a crab person.

Andy Ortmann

Tabs Out

-- Ryan Masteller

LATHER SOMMER DUO / OPEN SEX "A Tribute to Tony Conrad'" (Self Released)

Lather Sommer Duo side 'Conrad's Demons': If before recording his awesome solo album for the Melvin's series of 3, now 4 solo albums, Dale had taken a trip to Tokyo to pick up some psych inspiration, this is what the '92 Dale Crover solo album may have sounded like. Now classic sounding dirgey riffage, big sounding work-horse drums with wah-stomp feedback bends injected in the meat. Dood in flannel gripping a can of skuzz dream demo. Perfect for pulling all nighters in the van.

Open Sex side 'Fight the Snob Art of the Social Climbers': Take it down a few notches to the jammier, building on itself, airier Open Sex side. It's good to relax after the intensity of the LSD side. Open Sex knows the very open roads. 2 Drummers working very well together, a patient guitarist & an organist on the verge of rapture. The music seems to tell a cautionary tale. There's mystery ahead, mystery behind....better watch your speed.

https://lather.bandcamp.com/album/a-tribute-to-tony-conrad

--T Penn

STAG HARE “Starlights Gloom” (Inner Islands)

Stag Hare, we hardly knew you. Saying farewell to any artist we love is always a hard thing, and it’s no less difficult realizing that this is Willow Skye-Biggs’s last go-round under the current moniker. Stag Hare has always been such a go-to concept for melancholy ambient tunes, and it’s also been the obviously-in-love-with-humanity celebration soundtrack for the meditative set (see, specifically, the 4CS set Tapestry), so it stands to reason that there’s no shortage of contemplative electronics and synthesizer flourishes on STARLIGHTS GLOOM. Recorded with Skye-Biggs’s son in mind over a period of multiple years, the tracks on STARLIGHTS GLOOM pulse with nocturnal energy, flitting through forest clearings like pixies in search of mischief. This quick-moving Stag Hare is somewhat unusual given the slower burn of earlier releases, but the 4/4 rhythms and indebtedness to an environmental, arboreal vitality is a welcome diversion, and a fitting endpoint. Even with the beats and periodic vocals, this Stag Hare release retains the classic Stag Hare hallmarks: an embrace of the natural world, of people, of peace, and a musical color palette that’s inviting and mesmerizing all at once.  As with most Inner Islands releases, STARLIGHTS GLOOM is an inward-facing document, but it’s the one closest to realizing personal wholeness and bursting outward to engage more than just the self. Knowing that, I can’t wait to hear what Willow Skye-Biggs comes up with next. What, did you think that just because she gave up the Stag Hare name that she’d simply disappear into the ether? You’d be dead wrong! (Well, I hope you would be anyway. Here’s to more music!)

Stag Hare                                                                                                                                                                                    Inner Islands

--Ryan Masteller

POACHER “Veterans Day” (Freak Machine)

Heavily industrialized electronics and musique concrete meet the actual American holiday of Veterans Day, presumably with a sense of commentary of some kind. Open your imagination and let the vulgarity overwhelm it. Harsh noise of constant battle sometimes gives way to speeches, sometimes “The Star Spangled Banner.” Terrifying in its mulching of modern constructs, tangible in its thick, desperate, and violent preparation. Is that gunfire?! Jeez. I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep anymore. Not just tonight, I mean anymore. I don’t know if there’s any possibility of coming back from VETERANS DAY, from Poacher, from wherever the crap Belchertown is (Pioneer Valley of Western, MA -editor). There’s probably an armed militia group waiting there somewhere for Poacher, and maybe now somewhere for me too. Oh man, I hope not!

Oh, wait, the commentary is how we’re going straight down the toilet. All of us. Look at this beautiful, wretched grave we’ve dug!

Freak Machine

--Ryan Masteller

ADRIAN KNIGHT “On the Prowl Again” (Galtta Media)

This Adrian Knight fella’s pulled it off. He’s got everything stacked against him, pretty much, from a stylistic perspective. Optics are straight from the Har Mar Superstar sleaze wallow, the all-in look, the feel, not giving any wiggle room for interpretation of whether he’s sending himself up or 100 percent serious. Yeah, Adrian Knight acts cool, but in a Doogie Howser kind of way, ill-fitting blazer over white mock turtleneck on the cover, khaki slacks, turn-of-the-1990s sunglasses. The cool rocked is of the junior-high variety. And weirdly – that’s OK. The music is a soft-rock/synth-pop hybrid, somewhere between Tears for Fears and Hall & Oates, but with a few Jens Lekman touches thrown into the mix as well. And here’s how Knight has accomplished something worthwhile – he sells this sound, this lifestyle, way better than he probably has a right to. (That’s where the Har Mar comparison comes in, not remotely in the music itself.) Normally, I’d look at this cassette and not give it a second thought, but it would be a mistake to do so. Yeah, it may seem like Knight’s a kid playing grown-up crooner to the lucky ladies in the audience, he pulls it off nicely. The ladies in the audience truly are lucky, because Adrian Knight gets them – he’s sensitive, and he’s oh-so-clearly a grownup. That’s the key. Be a grownup.

Galtta Media

--Ryan Masteller

BOYSCOTT “Goosebumps” (Pizza Tape Records)

Strangely enough, this band is out of Nashville, Tennessee. Goosebumps by Boyscott is an incredible combination of surf, pop, and psychedelia. I can’t say enough good things about this album.

Boyscott is really just a one-man band started by Scott Hermo. He even wrote most of these songs while still in high school which makes me even more upset with how amazing it is. Back in high school I could hardly even finish writing my terrible three-minute acoustic love songs.

This album is the joy of summer while still remaining deep and heartfelt. The jangly choruses with such crispy, twangy lead guitars would be enough to bring a tear to Brian Wilson’s eye. This album really makes me want to go down to the lake back in the 80s and get some ice cream. Favorite Track: Embarrassingly Enough.

Boyscott

- Garrett Douglas

BURNET207 "Inter" (Jacktone Records)

This music at first glance jumps out and asks "whats my appeal..". Precision controlled electronic parts evocative of Kraftwerk, Drexciya, or even Yellow Magic Orchestra; with an element of elegant simplicity and a spotless melodic approach, artist burnet207's 2016 Jacktone Record's release is sadly SOLD out.

Track after track, this lit me up! Post-futurist, melodically diverse; harmonically unpredictable electronic tracks. The programming on this record seems light years ahead, with an ambiguity of how each part was being created with numerous different sounding keyboard, drum, and bass parts jamming in tandem counterpoint.

So if you're looking to blast into a distant future with some sophsticated tantric grooves Inter might be for you. Still available to listen to on bandcamp...

https://jacktonerecords.bandcamp.com/album/inter


--"Jamband" Josh Brown

two guest reviews from up Canada way

A.J. Cornell / S ‎- 1981 / 1999

I was lucky enough to find this tape at a thrift store. Usually, most of the tapes I'll find there will be old releases, so I was quite surprised to see this tape among the oldies! It even came with the download code! This is a split-tape between two experimental music artists, Andrea-Jane Cornell & S. The liner notes says that the first track, "1981", has been recorded by Cornell in one take at CKUT (a local radio station here in Montreal) with a modified turntable, a pitch shifter, a delay pedal, field recordings and a cassette tape found in an antique dresser. The track is intriguing to say the least: we hear a guy and a woman talk to each other over the phone while sound textures evolves in the background. Apparently, the conversation we hear is between two lovers attempting to keep their politically-explosive affair under control, according to the label's website. I found the track pleasing and interesting to listen to. The mood is definitely meditative.

As for the S track, "1999", the tones are harsher and abrasive. The track is much more noisier than "1981"! It's a mix of police scanner snippets and shifting distorted noise. According to the liner note, it has been recorded in Seattle under rain and starlight. I'm much more into ambient and meditative music, so it was harder for me to enjoy. However, I must admit that it has the merit of always evolving and changing, making it more unsettling than "1981".

You can get this tape from the Canadian IO Sound label.


회사AUTO ‎- 仙Android

I bought this tape awhile ago on Discogs without knowing if it was going to be good or not. It turned out to be one of my favorite tape of all time! There's something special about this album inspired by Philip K. Dick and trans-humanism, two subjects that I dig a lot. I guess it's no surprise then that I like 회사AUTO's music so much! According to Dream Catalogue, 회사AUTO is a vaporwave legend, having released, at the time in 2015, more than a dozen classic albums of the genre. Judging from the material on this release, it's not hard for me to believe!

-- Pierre Parenteau

JERMAN • BARNES “Karst” (Astral Spirits/Monofonus Press)

Jeph Jerman and Tim Barnes are electroacoustic savants. KARST is two sides, three tracks, recorded in Cottonwood (AZ) and Louisville (KY), but the sound may as well have been captured on another planet. “Scumbling” isn’t even a real word! Yet here Jerman and Barnes are, using it like it’s something that’s in everybody’s everyday vocabulary. Maybe it should be. Maybe it’s in Jerman and Barnes’s. But until we get the good folks at Oxford or Merriam-Webster to listen to us, we’re stuck with the weird and exotic. Frequently thrilling, “Scumbling” has no interest in staying still or hovering over one musique concréte idea until it’s bored us half to death. No, the terrain the duo covers is wildly interesting, and again, it does not seem of this earth. “Occluded” is a dark, less active passage, with spikes of sound here and there – the meaning here, in this track, is hidden, obstructed, blocked, and other synonyms for “Occluded.” Still, it will wash over you, like darkness, darker than a black steer’s tuckus on a moonless prairie night, if I may paraphrase and/or quote a popular adage. But “Karst” itself is a tone poem of literal tone, stretching for almost twelve minutes, doing its damnedest to keep the other noises scuffling around beneath it in the background. “Karst” the track, the sound, is “Occlud[ing]” the “Scumbling,” if you get my meaning. And I know that you do. And you know Astral Spirits – if you like them and you like the field-recording-meets-studio-manipulation that Jerman • Barnes are slinging, you’ll find KARST to be right up your alley. No matter what planet you’re on.

Astral Spirits/Monofonus Press

--Ryan Masteller