Now for the sudsy sounds of SOAPLANDS friends. This little delight comes via No Rent Records. A swell label that is on top of their game no doubt. Sycophant lips are fat and juicy folks and mine are thin and chapped... so this is for real! Just FYI. I tell the truth. I am also single and available for most parties and get togethers. I will include my pager number at the end. I will buy you beer! If you pay it. Sorry. I am desperate and addled. I used to have standards. Now I only have the memories and most of those were written on blackboards. Damn, sorry, cannot focus right now. Maybe it's all the dopamin contained herein this release that got released by No Rent. IDK. Anyways I am worried about the cave boys in Indonesia or wherever. If you are reading this and they have since perished I am sorry. If they are still in there then this is still topical. If they were rescued then I lost some money... but how will they adjust to life on the outside i wonder? With everyone knowing they are as stupid as they all are you know? Nobody wants to be failed spelunker. It just sounds bad. Uh... where was I before I wrote that stupid line? Oh yeah... tape review of SOAPLANDS with it's titles that give off a contact high all of their own. Neato. Send more now! Ha Ha. Okay then. Blah blah back to before I wandered off in a rantle. That's a rattle + rant folks. Okay go... [cont. from above] but here is no exception to the greatness and swiftness like a puma that is No Rent Records! Try to follow. I'll try to throw you off. This may or may not be called fun. Not sure. Never had any before. And so we go...
Pretty dark blue tape here which was undoubtedly made in a shop. White pad printing and a two page j-card printed front and back. Neato. Clean too. How befitting really. Great job all around on the tangibles. I want to add real quick (which means ramble for me) that this tape runs the same on both sides. Meaning the whole album is recorded twice. When it flips the album begins again every time. Flip it over and guess what!? It's the same thing again. Now some less experienced person may scoff or roll eyeballs but stifle and hear me out on this. I have thought long and hard on this exact subject in recording aesthetic. I lead a very exciting life no doubt. Anyways I’ll explain why this is always better to do if you can afford the extra tape length friends. First you do not have to worry about splitting an album up by hacking it in half timewise. Which we all know can be a pain in the old uploader. Second your listeners will benefit by not having a forced even if brief interruption that is unnatural to the initial flow of the album as it was intended. Well usually anyways unless you are a super tapehead and planned a bathroom break accordingly but that would be a rare exception I am going to have to say. Thirdly it is a known fact that tapes can accidently if one is careless enough be re-recorded over. Okay only if the tabs are left in but sometimes they are and then shit gets dangerous. Anyone familiar enough with tapes has done it at least once and if not it will happen eventually I promise. Either by an a-hole friend or when you are baked like a kite. Ben Franklin style you heard! Then forever after that that song you smudged will always have that stupid little reminder of your dimness upon it as to mock you for being such a clutz or having crappy friends. Not only when you listen to your own messed up tape but whenever you hear the actual song played anywhere. Your mind will make sure to add it in your head. It will haunt you till the day you die I promise. So yes... two sides are much better than one here. You will always have a backup. There is more but I forgot so I will shut the front door and review the actual music finally.
It was good.
No I am being silly and you can’t get off that easy anyways. I could go for days about my kitty cat’s sleeping habits and preferences for kibble alone. Don’t provoke me! The cover art tells me that I am in for some vapor love whether I like it or not. I have my moments honestly. Meh but I am right as it plays... well at first... wait… it seems maybe… no this is more. Getting excited now. Prose time... an urban sprawl futuristic rustic banana pancake whiffle dick bat waffle huckleberry karate kid cinema magic the gathering in a Chinese internet cafe ain’t got shit on this! I am a moron… sorry. Took a lot of head trauma as a youth and/or I have tourettes I am pretty sure. It is how I felt though honestly for a second. Music is hard to put into words sometimes you know? Good ones anyways. I say anyways a lot in this review. Pause and reflect. What are you doing with your summer days and or life Andy? Got kinda dark there. Okay stop and continue now also again pretending that didn’t just happen. That was a note to self just ignore it. He does it for attention and it is sad. Don’t encourage it. Moving on then… I have nothing to compare this music to just yet as it covers a bit of everything really it seems. All the popular non popular little pocket scenes of the day. Groovy melting pot of youth culture sounds here. So as I pull random words from my burned out archives here are some that are not mine actually...
‘The Birds Above Methadone Mile’ is the name of the first song. It is an atmospheric tripout launched into a huge wide black hole. Much like your mothers… er... of invention i mean (ask your dad about them. You will know how cool he is upon his answer.) if she was blasted off on a rocket ship in the future (or: ‘into the future’... whatever works for you!) and if they were thawed out from cryogenic preservation pods and fully revived. Walt Disney is her bunk mate too. Wow I am bad at this writing stuff sometimes. My bad reader dudes of all gender belts. So get ready to blast off with me anyways and oh oops... I have just exploded on the launchpad. Bodies are on fire and a woman is crying hysterical. Sounds like my first… nevermind. So like other similar tragic moments I have encountered of my own non stop sobbing as I stand at public urinals while leaking nothing but my own tiny tears… this too is promised to be a short thing that I stretch way way out beyond what it really is and should be... okay? Okay. The let me pop some more pills and away we go… again...
‘Serotonin Jacuzzi Lust’ and we are only on the second song! Can you imagine! Remember there is another side as well to get through…. that title though! Ha Ha. Even I can’t make this stuff up friends. I like Soaplands. Cray cray indeed. I promise I will never say that again until I find out what it means. Then we shall see. Somehow I ate a bag of magic mushrooms I had been saving for... I don't know. I guess it was for this SOAPLANDS review. lol. Oh snap I need to be quieter with my writing. Neighbors just banged on the wall like they are the police. Who does that? So back to the song title. I can't make that title up as Soapy already did and that would be plagiarism and I'd go to jail. Unless I made vaporwave then it would be acceptable and called progress. I'm JK... but NR. Still not sure what vaporwave even is honestly. But I pretend to with the yutes and we both nod with sure faces as we pass. Both having no idea in our heads that would constitute an understandable definition of the so called genre. Anyways I think the best is it's just plunderphonics using only 80's aesthetics. Think that is as close as anyone will get.
Okay I think I'm having a flashback now... feeling good again. Back in white bars of slippy sliding soap cake action. Sorry that was dumb. I blame the drugs. Anyways I think Soaplands has a good doctor and/or medical plan based on these titles alone and I would like their number please. Leave it in the comments. Those got to be good for something anyways. I imagine SOAPLANDS has a medicine cabinet filled with good time goodies. Oblong happiness and every other shape you can imagine with divider lines for easy well dividing of pill highs. Various colors like a Chinese smorgasbord which I'm not sure even exists but the majority of you will never know that so I will leave it in there... and bottles... plenty of medicine bottles. Made out to fake aliases and others containing friend's parent's names of which I am sure they were given the proper permission to take. Rule one: never ask questions. Remain dumb as... uh... um... point is ignorance is bliss my homies. Stay dim. It's what's in right now. But yeah SOAP has got the dope in more ways than one and all are fun. I am jelly without peanut butter right now honestly. Munchies! Gimmie gimmie gimmie! Haha…
And one more ‘Haha’ maybe... but then, wait, what’s that… Oh?… OHHHHH! THE SHIT SON! MY JAM IS HERE! (after some really bad and overly sweaty dance moves that were edited for content from this review i sit back down and continue… cool story i know ☻) This song is/was/always now is feeling nice all up on me. Sounds weird I know but remember: DRUGS IS BAD. So don’t take them. Give them to me and I will destroy them properly. I do the lord’s work I know. It’s because I love you all. Yes you read that right… I love you all! Awe. This is some good shit. I am feeling it big time now. Music and drugs have me happy as hell I think I am the Jesus Christ maybe even! My mother’s name is Mary. Anyways I am sensing some real intangible golden audio in orbital here right now friends. This is that secret special sauce they tease us about. Warbling in my outer spaced apart regions on it’s way to my own home milky heartlands. This is the greatest thing I’ve ever felt/heard and it maybe just the drugs talking but Soap is dope as shit to me right now and I love them like fam! Beautiful stuff ladies and gentle creepers. Sweet virgins should blush near here and the naughty neighbors even will quiet down some to hear when it’s dank like this is. The grim grimey danger underlining this expanding sound is bubbling up and over like a satellite of love overdub. Yes I think I am peaking right now and these are good drugs. Yes I like it slur(s) and mad-damn(s) and also BRING MORE DRUGS PLEASE! Can’t wait to see what this song’s title is going to be… YES! YES! YES!
‘Techniques Of Religious Ecstasy’ is this third track’s name and like I said for the whole paragraph above already but hey i’ll write another as I am feeling it... so oh chico this is what I signed up for to be honest. Some unhappy mutated crossover experimental sounds and angst at play. Power electronics with a death industrial pace forced back by a dark ambient downpour. A sudden chill runs down my spine and unties my shoelaces. This is a sock knocker friends. I could easily use one of three wishes I rubbed out on my lamp to demand a full album of this kind of gnarly heavy stab of induced agony via pure noise. All this in just this one song and over before it gets even close to old by me. Super duper neato. A Soaplands fan is born herein undoubtedly. Thank you. So like all good things it passed quicker than I would have liked it too but I will get to listen to it again on the flipside. Sweet.
Now for the last song ‘Godmode: Potential Immortality - Pure Pleasure’ as I think I may be coming down now. I need water and a clean place to sit. Good luck. Anyways this song has not just a long title but it is also the longest song on this tape. A befitting end to this rather super short album. A dark ambient like song that runs 8 minutes of the entire 15 minute album. But it is a lovely or rather unlovely somber melting away point to ease/disease you back into oblivion. That old abyss which stares back into you like Nietzsche promised it would. I think I’m coming down now.
So all in all and back again on side 2 (or side B… ‘B’ as in butternuts). I really did enjoy this. Complete from the very bottom of my tiny shriveled black heart muscle long atrophied in mummification. Blessings to Soaplands and No Rent Records for this… and before I sleep for a week I just want to say… bring on the damn full length! I will write a book about it. Haha. No lie.
Soaplands “S/T” on No Rent Records
or:
norentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/s-t-nrr68
(sic) @ et al... ☻
▬Andy Tithesis
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