I’m as surprised as you are that I woke up this morning still breathing
oxygen on planet earth, huffing down sweet gulps of fresh air while perceiving
the surroundings of my bedroom. It was touch and go there for a while – I just
never know when the universe is going to wink out of existence, so I try to
engender a healthy sense of awe within myself at the most mundane things.
Here’s the greatest news of all, at least on a day like today, when the
act of waking up is itself particularly flabbergasting: you don’t have to
settle for uninteresting music! I sure am not, and instead of reaching for the
go-to morning rock records (whatever your choice is, be it Sublime, Korn, Dave
Matthews, or another musical artifact), I grabbed the top tape off the
#CASSETTEGODS stack that’s sitting by my desk, hoping against hope to be blown
into another dimension (but sort of not hoping that the tape would cause the
universe to wink out – I think I’ve covered that I’m pretty terrified of that
happening). Guess what I grabbed? Guess, guess! Yes, it was Three
Fourths Tiger’s Indoor Voice, but
I’d already reviewed that (two times, it turns out), so I put it back. No, what
I really grabbed was La Forêt Rouge’s
tongue-twisteringly titled (in French, too!) Hors de tout doute déraisonnable (Trilogie du doute II), a sequel
to part 1 of a planned trilogy. The title means “Beyond Any Reasonable Doubt,”
and there is absolutely no way anybody’s going to have any questions about
anything after listening to this supermassive black hole of a cassette engulf
everything in existence.
Over two songs and forty minutes, the four-piece from Montreal melds
stuttering funk, krautrock, and psychedelic Brazilian influences into one
bizarre and compelling whole. Imagine Can and Fela Kuti harnessing Sun Ra’s
comet, and you’re close. Every second is improvised, and the players form their
own magnetic field around one another, a field so powerful that it’s impossible
to believe Montreal, the city, is still standing in the wake of this thing. It’s
cosmic; it’s out there. It’s more powerful than we can possibly imagine. In
fact, I’m willing to bet that the flickering of reality at the edge of my
periphery is actually being caused by me listening to this. Uh oh.
I’m at the end of the tape, and it’s clear that we’re a fraction of a
millisecond away from the universe actually
collapsing in upon itself. La Forêt Rouge is to blame. I have just enough
time (I’m really fast) to finish this review and hit “send” on the email to
#CASSETTEGODS HQ. It’s definitely too late to warn everybody. Oh well. It might
actually even be too late to finish this sentence, come to think of it, so if
you’re reading this and I don’t
--Ryan Masteller
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