Making one feel
loopy,
Royallen’s “Found Tape” is a loom
of thrift-store score snippets*,
their decay’d riffs and slippery vignettes
having been appropriated,
decontextualized, and irreverently spliced/looped
into, over-top, and straight through one another,
all minimalist stitches glowing warmly,
the underlying uneven wear of warp and weft
celebrated earnestly as wabi-sabi,
again,
making one feel
loopy.
*snippets pilfered include but are not limited to
various pre-1990:
-vintage infomercial dialogues
-a’capella gospel & worksongs
-saccharine/cheesy soap opera interludes
-piano practice recordings of arpeggios
& raw, faltering recitals
-whispered confessions
-fledgling techno beats
-R&B choirs in their pre-chorus prime
-70s British Folk wankery
-60s flat-pick’d/slide Country & Western guitar
-50s classical romantic string arrangements
-elder pop croon’ry & indecipherable soul vocal swagger
-Liz-Phair-esque muddle of harp-ish piano-bridge
-phrenetic, trebly chaos via orchestral pit
-the list goes on & on, as the tape progresses,
becoming further and further disparate
in genre-pairing.
All sounds melded & ingested, the end result yields either a novelty-seeker’s satiation, a confused/amused notation, or an irritated bystander, begging for the back door, unsure of “what the heck music even is, anymore!”
Plan your picnics accordingly!
https://permanentnostalgia.bandcamp.com/album/found-tape-permanent-nostalgia-no-34
and/or
https://royallen.bandcamp.com/
--Jacob An Kittenplan