DIAMOND LEMONADE "Transmissions From The Past" (JK Tapes)
Without hearing the actual sounds on this c-20, the 70's Sci-Fi styled title may seem a little gauche. Fortunately, Diamond Lemonade are running the entire race with this music-from-the-future cliché and end up with completely enjoyable results. Too many noise tapes seem desperate in their attempts at having a theme solely through their use of a "meaningful" name. But Transmissions From The Past is an apt title for Diamond Lemonade's sounds that invoke the early-electronic/synth aesthetic that is associated with not the actual future, but the future as a dandified, fashionable utopia. That of course makes these sounds inescapably retro, but by being presented here in rough gem form of spray painted cassette, one has to wonder if this is the 70's sci-fi fantasy come to actualization. More likely made with a computer or some other DIY thrift store gear than an actual fancy modular synth, this is noodley oscillations and bell-manipulations being made from the layman's world rather than about it. Long before the Wright Brothers people dreamed of flying machines. Dreams that became real, but looked much different than the airliners of today. Well, the once dream of music's sci-fi future may have become real on this cassette. It may not be as fashionable as a Buchla dream, but we all love watching the National Geographic channel. Don't we?