$LOW “Lolly Gas” C60 (Albert’s Basement)




One of my absolute favorite sound sculpture/collage labels of all time is Lawrence English’s Room40, from Australia.  Both he and his label put out truly engaging sound art; at times serene, at others alienating, but always, Always, carefully arranged to provide an unspeakable story arc for the mind to interpret away, again and again, to its heart’s content. If I had the money, I’d buy everyone a copy of “Site-Listening: Brisbane”, a sound collage of field recordings that is woven together so expertly, I’d swear it was a dream sequence. It’s fanfuckingtastic and worth a hundred bucks in my mind, but easily orderable from Experimedia for well under ten.

If I sound like a commercial here, the ickyness is due to my delaying the non-preferred activity of doling out a “bad review” of $low’s tape “Lolly Gas”, which was also produced from the Australian that released this one hour long tape of digitally delayed guitar feedback. I really, really, really did not enjoy listening to one full hour of this. I know first hand that it is damn sure fun to dick around with delay pedals and feedback, but to release a tape of it? One full hour of it?

I hazily remember reading online record reviews in my late teens (nearly 20 years ago! Ack!) and there was this posit that, and I paraphrase capital-R Roughly, here; “If Maynard (Somethingorother) shat on a microphone and released a [recording] of it, all of TOOL’s fans would eat it up and clamour for more.” If I were a more enterprising person, I’d slap a TOOL sticker on this bad boy and E-Bay it for a hefty sum. Am I being too harsh? Judge for yourself via clicking the link below.


- - Jacob An Kittenplan