MARIO "XBCE" (Dokuru/Viande)




Legions of unapologetically bastardized samples are further tweaked & collaged across an electro-shock quilt of sharply snaking atonal posits and sneaky, temperamental tempo shifts, any room left being taken up by low-voltage hum-haze and electro-acoustic scrape and/or feedback nuance. Great collage soundtrack!

Italy’s own frenetic knob-tweaker/solderer, Mario (Gabola), one half of Aspec(t), and one entire head honcho of Italy’s “Viande” label, cobbles together a language-free set of Cliffs Notes for a treatise on the entropy facilitated via technological advancement; &he achieves. That’s fancy-talk for “this shit sounds like fast-paced modular chaos.” Reminds me of a more caffeinated-to-the-point-of-agitation Headboggle a good bit, and that’s a beautiful, if not bewildering, thing!

http://www.dokuro.it/dk070.html
and/or
http://www.viande.it/

--Jacob An Kittenplan

AMK "How Are You? I’m OK" C30 (Dokuro)





1.
Singularly, a train’s one track mind, wailing in the night; in chorus, each carrying their own baggage, they sing care-free as sirens.
2.
Singularly, each loop a sure-fire earworm, circling seamlessly in the mind; out of sync, each carrying their own self-important vision, they dive, surface, and drown in the rivers of contemplation.
3.
Chirp, whistle, call, salutation, buzz, signal: Crowded awareness stimulators shorting the nervous system, achieving uneasy ambiance, an involuntary mute.
4.
Blown-out rail-commute and/or thunderous, hundred-strong drum circle? It’s all the same in the end.
5.
To play live, chop, screw, harsh, & blend ingredients 1-4 in a concrete mixing bowl. Sit inside and let delay and decay for daze.

http://www.dokuro.it/dk062.html
and/or
https://amk-banned.bandcamp.com/

--Jacob An Kittenplan

SICK LLAMA "Stage Poison" C115 (Unifactor)




hollows static scrape electric squeal & screech interference non-referenceable blown-out fluid and dusted faint breeze-melody machine doubt unachieved swarm removed heart puff and pop

post-first-crepuscular city-less wide wake & molten clip-clip for plod to lumber unoiled blood shot third-stye tighten quiver fulfill chaotic welcome turbulent program saturation recessed signal collapsed seismic transfer releaser ring-rapt soft crashes awash in grit texture scribble mist down of tinkering pipe block wind emboldened hingings on & on to clunk/rest active all ways re-entry zero pulse mystery drag cursory & huff lyrical oh retreat oh molt

tandem aloof dependent deficiently linear hole pause-printed splotch intender torn out footer hold-devoid amateur temper pre-cautious red conjure cheek’d rattler of creek-rot fence sunken trembler rise & fallow frame-free circuit dissolver expect nothingness less than


As with all dying-machine musics, this is recommended listening to in tandem with a bird-sung dawning upon any favored, remote woodland paths.

https://unifactor.bandcamp.com/album/stage-poison
and/or
https://fagtapes.bandcamp.com/

--Jacob An Kittenplan

SUGAR PRINCE "Purple Tape" C30 (Kuma Tapes)




This unassumingly little “Purple Tape” is a brilliantly cinematic, dream-like stream of loose, noisy ambient vignettes wrung out from myriad acoustic and electronic devices, including, but not limited to; melodica, recorder, pre-set beats & keyboard tones* (organ & steel drum, specifically), bowed & plucked cello*, deftly-executed vintage* delay pedal, looped feedback, and drum kit, all with a lovely, soft, cloudy reverb-wash over the whole shebang, allowing drones to morph into riffs to slide into grooves to melt back into drones, and vice-versa. While managing to stay Mellow on each 15 minute side, each of these slabs of calm joy, wonder, and pause practically whiz by while exploring every single nook and cranny that those moods entail. More, puh-lease!

*guessing here

https://sugarprince.bandcamp.com/releases
and/maybe
http://averyferal.blogspot.com/

--Jacob An Kittenplan

MODERN WOLFSKIND
"Twee-Eiige Eenling" C40 (Self-Released)




At times, with blissful swells of consonant light, but mostly utilizing bump-in-the-night plucks & bows, Groningen, Netherland’s one-man haunt-fest, Modern Wolfskind, weaves together an ever-shifting slew of out-of-sync electric guitar textures, processings, and a few mysterious, treated loops, all this spooky warpage (& weftage?) melding to yield one uneasy sound-quilt, replete with ouroboroan duvet cover, to snuggle up in and contemplate anxiety’s suffocating swaddling to. Not for those with sensitive nervous systems.

https://modernwolfskind.bandcamp.com/album/twee-eiige-eenling

--Jacob An Kittenplan

LOW PRAISE "Expectation(s)" C13 (Self-Released)




Oakland’s Low Praise re-hash some 90s post-rock vibes by blowing off the dust stuck to Jawbox & mid-early Sonic Youth records. What sets them apart from being an expert, mash-up of the two bands are some lock-step dual semi-harmonies sung over top of it all. Sounds like a full car ride back after going to a punk show the next town over.

https://lowpraise.bandcamp.com/

--Jacob An Kittenplan

THE TUNNEL
"Plasma Den/Overland" C8
(Glorious Micro Cosmic Sound)




SF’s The Tunnel marry So-Cal’s desert-stoner rock vibe with the Bay Area’s love of darkness and the avant-rock. The result is a groovy-eerie haze of surfy/trance-inducing riffs punctuated by impassioned-if-not-creepy croonery. Pretty sure some form of good-natured moshing happens during their live sets. I’ll have to research that personally.

https://thetunnelsf.com/track/plasma-den

--Jacob An Kittenplan

ERIC WALLGREN "Delicious" C29 (Midwest Action)



Back-seat, washed-out guitar chords & jangly leads, impeccably-tasteful, driving bass lines, no-frills percussion and that speak-sung, bottomed-out baritone vocal delivery that wavers intentionally juuuust outside of harmony…

Arise, ye LOUtheREEDan congregants and rejoice in this Delicious series of psalms! Not since Adam Green’s “Minor Love” has an artist so thoroughly appropriated and re-imagined TRANSFORMERS and spun it into a fresh new set of rock-fucking-solid singalong jamz. If Lou Reed had started out on a K-Records budget, this is, without a doubt, what it would have sounded like.

When this dude comes to town and plays your neighbor’s backyard bonfire, light up your sparklers and sway along to the Ballad of Huff Tillman, a gloriously glib tale not-not involving an alternate-universe Michael Jackson and his rise to fame on the carnival circuit.

https://midwestaxn.bandcamp.com/album/delicious
and/or
https://eric-wallgren.bandcamp.com/releases

--Jacob An Kittenplan

NYXY NYX "Magic Coffin Ride" C46
(Blight Records)



Got rid of the vehicle over 15 years ago, but “Magic Coffin Ride” makes me wanna drive. Slow. At night. Along muggy, cornstalk-lined backroads. All windows down. Let them bugs on in. Maybe annoy some o’possum or other. 

This is that kinda tape. From back in the day. Fit right on any 90s slowjamz mixtape. ‘longside those noisy/alternative/shoegaze/jangly-pop greats. Talking Modest Mouse, Dinosaur Jr, Pavement, Smashing Pumpkins here, easy-peasey. No questions asked. No eyebrows raised. Those unexpected hooks. Modestly mixed vocals. Quirky leads & accents. Delay & warble for daze. All slow and swagger. Make ya lean out the window & hi-hat-tap that side-view mirror. Busy, heavy, lagging, glorious.

and/or

--Jacob An Kittenplan


VARIOUS ARTISTS
"A Birth Place Is Not A Grave Site"
C240 (No Part Of It)




This split/compilation/set took forfuckingever to write a review for because it’s a goddamn beast. The literal dozen of disparate artists, the behemoth content, the artwork (there’s an actual rose-stamped wax seal atop vintage wall paper AND a found polaroid included with every set, for fuck’s sake); all of it is polarizing and jagged and overstimulating and infectious in a mood-plague sort of way. It’s, it’s, it’s pretty fucking great, if you’re a masochist. Arvo Zylo does one hell of a job summing up the content on his own nopartofit.blogspot.com, so I’ll highly recommend reading that after (and maybe before) stumbling through my own impressions of this impressive culling of audio insanity.

………………………………..


side a: 156
Thunderous clomping of horsehoof blends with an onslaught of canon explosions, the soft kiss of steel as it slithers, warm & bloodwet, back into its limbo/sheath. Condensation from battled breathing fogging the slotted brass helmet. All the crickets, as they lay in wait. If chainmail and visors had recurring knightmares, this is what they’d sound like; a condensed epic of cyclical forces, each destroying the other in asymbiotic fashion, until the hovering tractor beam takes hold. Quite a Jacob’s Ladder finale!


side b: NOVOSAK
In an alternate universe, Pauline Anna Strom’s “Trans-Millenial Consort” is a searing drone-opera about pissy electrons commuting to and fro betwixt an innumerable series of long-distance jobs that nail up their shutters at random. Novosak manages a tightrope balance between long tones rendered fairly smooth, lightning hot, and crushingly heavy. Pretty much uncoolable lava/feedback. Think of a possessed Eliane Radigue, with anger issues, and far less patience.

………………………………


side c: MORGAN GARRETT
Harsh wall vibes with gripping industrial/noise-rock aesthetics. Death gasp electric chair diva passages. Like if Daughters stayed up for a week straight on a hunger strike, then broke their silence to deliver an irritation-assault via dinosaur drum machines and a few dying sequencers.
Dynamic pop movement and release amidst a backdrop of psychotic breakdown.




side d: GNARLY SHEEN
As the name implies, this artist manages to appropriate some Gnarly hXc/punk recipes and metal/classical leads, and then slathers them with a greasy, noisy/ambient Sheen, thus suffocating them in the interest of hermetically sealing off the former trope, using its subsequent death and decay as fertilizer for better garden beds…for better zombies… to spring forth from, whenever some better occasion arises. In keeping with the themes of “ABPINAGS”, it stands to reason that, perhaps, a Grave Site COULD, indeed, be a Birth Place. “side d" is a great document showcasing the seduction of listening to treated acoustic instrumentation alongside subtle-yet-blown-out electronic textures.

………………………………


side e: LALEMUS
Look, we all know GeAr aren’t the only ones allowed to wax lyrical on what the earliest séances and ceremonies of other planets (and galaxies) might sound like. Lalemus, too, is an entrancingly intuitive conduit for conjuring up sets of bewildering visions:

Faint, back alley wafting 1920s muted brass section meets early 1950s factory percussion ambiance meets haunted by dial-up-bitcrusher dinosaur lamentations from the primordial soup. Gregorian devotionals in praise of a digitized ocean’s King’s Tide celebration. Post-beach apocolyptixx. More tribal remixes of well-loved shiva-the-destroyer jamz. What parties haven’t been "killer", anyway?


side f: ARACHNAD
After sides a-e, f’s ARACHNAD begins by providing a relatively gentle Yield sign, a limbo, a purgatorial waiting room for us to process this first half, with notions of subtle toil, minimal brimstone-boil texture, and a stoic reminder of what’s always to come with any other No Part Of It release; more challenge, more pain, more gain. As one’d imagine, this recuperative rest station doth not last long…

Arachnad then switch it up, substituting their introductory, more mellow contribution, with outright catchy DUNE-dance numbers, bleeding in tortured drum machine lines and some simple synths to color in their hellscape of melodic, if not dismally melancholonic, arrays of misanthropic throbs & shimmies, giving a whole new meaning to the imperative “get down”.

………………………………



side g: BOYLE
Mysterious, meandering flute passages and spring-coil toilings laid o’ertop mildly massaged percussive field recording loops and ER fluorescent thrums (and their all-pervasive trebly hums)! This nervously blissful meditation plays out like a host of fevered daydreams from the infirmary at the foot of great mountains, where angsty water pipes hammer out their thermal distress upon the haunted convalescent below.


side h: MARK SHIPPY

Pulsating swarms of deep static-drone, tortured electric guitar treble-yelps, and one staggeringly nasty riff attacking and abating, exploring and imploding. Without a single percussive kiss, Mark Shippy turns the stoner riff on its sticky skull, replacing hedonistic might with unrelenting terror, all the while commanding our spines to systematically weave like slo-mo palms in a hurricane. it’s ugly. it’s heavy. it’s everything you’d expect from No Part of It, all without adherence to any formula. Is that the formula? no.

Slow, seamlessly blended descent into an all-alarms chaos that renders itself atmospheric, like that fucking meme with the dog sipping coffee in a room that’s on fire & looks around & says “this is fine”.




………………………………

side i: ILTH ZONGZ
Opening: unencumbered, loose syncopations of some possible typewriter battery & glitchy loop, but it’s ever Reichian evolution keeps it fresh, whilst low-hertz damned-souls-in-lamentation-in-slo-mo tremoloes siren, dead center, in the mix. Are these spirits being pummeled or are they summoning catastrophic comets to surround them like quirky quarks? By the denouement, a stoic celebration may have been achieved.

Volcanic contractions and their syncopated moans spook equestrian poltergeists into harried pacings of the caldera.

Possessed contact mic energies attempt to corral a likely bowed cello/contrabass’s sleepwalk/lumbering about the warehouse-scape. Trebly plinks melt into soupy pond-skips as the whole primordial soup reconfigures itself.

By the last slurp, no one is sure: are these repeated pleas “SOS" or “SO WHATs”?



side j: MOULTTRIGGER

The name of the game is “destruction”, the rules, lie. As in, denounce “fidelity”; as in, obfuscate. Moulttrigger K-N-O-W-S the beauty of a microphone’s limitations and takes painstaking steps to forge meditative riffage to showcase them.  At times, it’s outright dancey; at others, catastrophic.




………………………………

side k: ANASTASIA VRONSKI

Anastasia Vronski’s contribution to this epic 12-sided collection snakes its way through static, seismic rumblings, ghostly world beats, and garage-burning blackmetal aeshetics, all while maintaining an undeniable, dissociated noise stock. These 20 minutes play like their own mixtape within the compilation with the unifying glue of manic darkness holding it all together.

side l: DJPTSD

So, of course, to round this whole shebang off, Arvo Zylo chose to close out this six-tape collection with some poignant, deeply hypnotic spoken word-centric industrial funk/noise. That’s right. and, it’s a hair-raising documentation of human corruption and mental/spiritual degradation that’ll haunt anyone willing to listen between the lines (and do a little homework on the subject matter being touched upon).

………………………………………………

I’ve probably listened to this entire compilation about 20 times through, and the implied constellations keep coming, with every listen. It feels kinda criminal that there are so few of these collections to go around, but I hope that somebody’ll maybe press it to 6xLP wax some day, when we move away from formula, in the interest of darker moods.

http://nopartofit.blogspot.com/

and/or
https://nopartofit.bandcamp.com/


--Jacob An Kittenplan

LIDA HUSIK
"Motheroceanmorning" C36
(Fish Prints Inc)




In less than FOUR months time, Fish Prints Inc (li’l sibling label to I <3 Noise) has already put out a handful of quality, quirky releases from largely unsung/underrated artists from around the world. First, there was a twee-pop demo by Nelories, from Japan, 1990, followed by a brand-spankin’ new album by Cryostasium, an avant-garde atmospheric black metal project out of Boston. Then came a re-release of a 1997 album by German electro-diva, Barbara Morgenstern, followed by a brand new offering, which found her ever-darker and more powerful.

And now, PDX’s Lida Husik kicks out her first proper recording in nearly two decades, after taking a long hiatus from a decade of exploring punk & electro-pop psychedelia (in the 90’s…see a pattern here?).  2018’s “Motheroceanmorning” finds LH trading in her trusted, busy electronic beats & slick studio mixing of vocal harmonies/canons for a more earnest folksy, country-blues repertoire, she alone physically playing her catchy honky-tonkin’ arrangements and softly cooing along, old-timey-like, in a now huskier contralto.

It’d be great to catch her and maybe Michael Hurley trading off songs at the Laurelthirst someday!

https://fishprintsinc.bandcamp.com/album/motheroceanmorning
and/or
https://lidahusik.bandcamp.com/

--Jacob An Kittenplan

TO THE WEDDING
“here & how / silver currents”
(self-released)




Hello cassette gods subscribers! We have for you today notes on TO THE WEDDING’s double EP cassette tape “here & how / silver currents”. Have you heard Lauren Grubb’s music before? It does all the right things. Sometimes it sounds like Scout Niblett is playing the guitar with that wonderful fuzz sound that often times needs no accompaniment besides a VOICE. But then damn when everything else comes in, the dreamy guitars and hard-hit drums and powerful bass—WOW! This is the right kinda of dream pop. They’re from the bay area, this band, but sometimes it sounds more like they live in the desert with lots of rattlesnakes around, a haunted and open space where you can see for miles and miles—as far as their sounds travel, to where the skyline meets the sea or sierra. This music stretches far and wide and is good for, in my little opinion, long travels on the road or in the air or on a boat. These sounds are lush, rich, dreamy, uncompromising and psychedelic in calm and chaotic kinda way. You’ll like it if you give it a listen. Really there’s nothing to dislike.

tothewedding.bandcamp.com

-- Ricky Lemonseed, esquire


HUMAN ADULT BAND
“T. Penn Collections” C92
(Saga House)





The first thing you’ll notice about this tape is that the A-side is backward. Like, literally, it’s a mirror image of side B in all ways. The tape plays backward, like you’re perma-stuck in the Black Lodge, but the backward-recorded sounds aren’t played forward again to mess with your head. It’s a weird, nightmarish side, only suggesting the lo-fi chaos that appears on side B (and plays the right way). Well, maybe not “suggesting.” It does play everything on side you’re about to hear, just … differently.

The second thing you’ll notice is that head Human Adult T. Penn is a friggin’ weirdo. The Jersey lifer begins side B with the seventeen-minute “Music Is Not My Religion but This Is My Prayer,” a guttural meditation on the low end of the EQ spectrum, dense and noisy and intense. From there he slips into anti–rock music shaman mode, drawing from different iterations of bands he was in (Th’ Summer Dresses, Th’ Horrorday Rounders; Human Adult Band gets credit for tracks B2, B3, and B6) and playing a couple tunes written by people who aren’t him (R. Stevie Moore, Marc Bolan). These are wandering no wave ideas filtered through bedroom DIY, beat ingenuity tethered to necessity as the mother of ramshackle invention.

T. Penn may be a friggin’ weirdo, but he’s an interesting one nonetheless.

Keep an eye out for Philly’s own Saga House cassette label – they bill themselves as “a curatorial project to recycle a load of 1,700 blank cassette tapes and a duplicator found in a church basement in 2014. Saga House is a not for profit endeavor, selling the tapes directly for $3 apiece.” Sounds like they’ve got a lot of good things planned for those 1,700 tapes.


Saga House



--Ryan




METAL DISCO “Vade Mecum” (Detonic Recordings)




Post punk drifted to Australia’s remote shores probably sometime around when it drifted everywhere else – Detonic Recordings just so happened to perfect it in the interim. Or – maybe not perfected it. Definitely “revels in its weirdness” to the full extent that one record label can. Enough at least to cultivate an aesthetic around it.

Metal Disco is the perfect band for Detonic to release. Steeped in synthwave/darkwave/industrial traditions, “Vade Mecum” is recorded so crisply that I can’t even believe this isn’t some sort of hi-def digital version pumped through a $20K sound system. It’s not – it’s just a dude, his synths, and his drum machines on tape. You will not be surprised by the list of artists who have inspired Metal Disco, as lifted from the Facebook page: Cat Rapes Dog / And One / The Prodigy / Soman / Motor / Icon Of Coil / Combichrist / KLF / Ministry / NIN / Black Strobe / Cubanate / Aphex Twin / Orbital / Symphonix / FSOL / Orgy / Fischerspooner / Alien Sex Fiend / VAC / Juno Reactor / X-Dream.

Got it?

You should. “Vade Mecum” is a propulsive nocturnal creation that’s insanely fun from the first minute to the last. It totally reminds me of all the Wax Trax! bootlegs I had in high school. This is just a super fun reminder of how weird and great and dark and clangy one artist can get – Metal Disco and Detonic for everyone!

Metal Disco

Detonic Recordings



--Ryan

VARIOUS ARTISTS
"These Carbon-Composite Poles Are Made For Walkin’" C37 (Strategic Tape Reserve)




Though I’d only had the utmost pleasure of hearing STR alums moduS ponY and Jöns before, I knew I was in for a treat when receiving this compilation tape for review. The wrist sweatband included bewildered me, big time, but reading the J-Card’s liner notes for clues yielded one hell of an A-Ha moment: this tape is curated specifically for fucking pole-walkers! Yes! Interspersed throughout these 19 tracks of Left-Field Electronica, Glitch, Ambient-Noise, Industrial & Vaporwavy goodness are several Nordic Walking gurus waxing philosophical in Swedish & Engrish!

Barring a lone, beat-heavy indie-folk number, the rest of the non-inspirational-speech tracks on this tape set a disorientingly stumbly pace for the flexy-caned urban-hiker to pensively perambulate to, their mani(a)cally upbeat rhythms frequently sputtering and disappearing amidst swirling modular synth work, warbled loops, heavily processed samples, and layered texture upon noise upon mystery.

If you know nothing of Nordic Walking culture and/or simply want to hear some tunes that’ll get your athletic swagger on, do study the link below!

https://strategictapereserve.bandcamp.com/album/these-carbon-composite-poles-are-made-for-walkin

--Jacob An Kittenplan

BARBARA MORGENSTERN
"Unschuld Und Verwüstung" C50
(Fish Prints Inc)





A cursory surface listening to “Unschuld und Verwüstung” will likely find you drawing comparisons to some slower jams by Eleanor-heavy Fiery Furnaces and maybe Ann Steel (with Roberto Cacciapaglia), and you wouldn’t be wrong. Like, at all. However, neither of those aforementioned goddesses sing in German, nor do they evoke even a sliver of the broodiness that Barbara Morgenstern consistently conjures up throughout this dark electro/chamber(ish) pop album.

Through droning bass accordion arrangements, modular synth/piano melodies, grooving drum machine syncopations, left-field accents (xylophone, apocalyptic guitar feedback, harp, & brass to name a few), & dedicated studio mixing wizardry, BM kicks out a diverse collection of get-down-able midnight dance floor jams & moody mantras to nod along to.

&a strapping of good headphones reveal will reveal a whole other rich, inner world, with countless details buried deep, deep, deep in the mix that won’t get heard without concertedly tracking them down.  Happy hunting! Hell yeah, Fish Prints Inc!

https://fishprintsinc.bandcamp.com/album/unschuld-und-verw-stung
and/or
http://www.barbaramorgenstern.de/

--Jacob An Kittenplan

ZIYAD “Compost regrowth”
(Hear Now Records)


Ah the Earth. Nature. Sounds. Music. Ziyad takes you home to our Mother who is Nature. This might be the soundtrack to Planet Earth III where instead of animals chasing each other trying to kill and swallow up their prey, we have all those little and big guys prancing around in perfect harmony. The lion and the lamb. The whale and whaler. Close your eyes and see all the magic of the world float up before in perfect little swells before the petals of multicolored flowers float up in rainbow bursts before they couple, part and become something new—a giraffe or pink pig or fuzzy lil caterpillars that gutslide over dew dappled roses sparkling in the morning sun. But then, by night, things begin to decay, like a stop motion of a rotting fox swelling, filling with maggots who then devour the carrion and replace it with rich soil that will eventually spring up a peach tree. Ah but there’s more. Much more. Soon these nature imagines turn human, especially when we hear LADY MIDNIGHT sing those POP melodies. God this tape is LUSH. DREAMY. and REAL. Real good. Real music. Natural music. Ahhh yes, this tape is for you because it is for anybody.

hnrrecords.bandcamp.com/compost-regrowth


-Ricky Lemonseed

TENDER MERCY “Leave Little Room” (Obsolete Media Objects)




Nocturnal reveries in the vein of minimal Radiohead compositions. Mark Kramer has cultivated a distinctive singer/songwriter style, a black, evocative character, preferring the shadows to the light. His voice haunts the spare guitar notes like an utter specter. Songs like these play over the end credits of drama films that have faded to black following some sort of traumatic event.

The Tender Mercy tape is packaged beautifully in folded cardstock, like an invitation to some midnight affair or strange ritual. Accept it, know that it’s your destiny, and arrive promptly at the given hour. Your life may depend on it.

Tender Mercy

Obsolete Media Objects


--Ryan

CRISTIÁN ALVEAR
“Pieza Para Guitarra Afinada”
C90 (Pilgrim Talk)




“Piece for Tuned Guitar,” which is how you say “Pieza Para Guitarra Afinada” in English (I had no idea), is exactly what to expect from Cristián Alvear over the course of these 90 minutes. The guitarist patiently allows his careful “melodic cells” to settle and grow within themselves, his acoustic plucking a study in discipline and focus. Drawing from Erik Satie’s “Vexations,” Alvear presents a single 90-minute piece that unfolds like clockwork.

But that all sounds like promo copy doesn’t it? What it doesn’t say is Alvear’s playing is hypnotic, likely to put you into a deeply meditative state if you’re so inclined or not careful enough. I was once hypnotized at a Renaissance Faire, and I believe I was made to act like some barnyard animal or another. (I had seen the show before, so I was aware of what could POSSIBLY happen.) I hope Alvear does not have any nefarious tricks up his sleeve, because I will certainly NOT eat weird things or pretend I’m an airplane or wet myself in public again.

Haha, did I say “again”? I meant “ever.”

But if someone drops Satie’s name in reference to their work, I’m in. This is a long damn tape, I’ll give you that, but it’s absolutely mesmerizing. Prepare yourself for some deep listening before you pop this one in, and set your tape player on auto reverse, because I have a feeling if you simply let it go, over and over, you’ll get to some pretty interesting places in your mind. Give it a shot, let me know how it goes.

Cristián Alvear

Pilgrim Talk


--Ryan


-->

LEE NOBLE
"Ashenden" C37
(Muzan Editions)




Everybody knows there are no noteworthy ghost societies here on Earth. There simply aren’t enough Hydrogen and Helium molecules packed together for them to maintain any kind of serious purchase in our atmosphere…at least not for any reasonable amount of time. Negatory. No. All ghosts (consciously neutrino-based) live out their most comfortable, free lives floating about within the miasmic clouds of Jupiter and Saturn, where they commute along well-traversed wind-tunnels carved out (much like deer trails for terrestrial dwellers) through eternally restless hazes of varying Noble Gas concentrations.

&it is along these trusty routes that the melancholic solar-windsong of Lee Noble can be heard, his otherworldly minor synth-swells colliding and infusing like muted hobo-banshees in the night, his counter-textures rumbling, gaseous leagues below, transmitting intermittent shockwaves through the airs, his violently persnickety gales of static careening and screeching to dead haults, just outside the “walls” of these cavernous paths.

This tape is one helluva soundtrack for watching the Cosmos series and/or reading Ray Bradbury to, at Any volume!

https://muzaneditions.bandcamp.com/album/ashenden
and/or
https://leenoble.bandcamp.com/

--Jacob An Kittenplan

CHELSEA BRIDGE “Jo” (American Damage)




Heartbreaking in its naked emotionality, resolute in its momentum, Chelsea Bridge’s “Jo” is a grinding slab of elegance in its ability to combine difficulty with euphoria.

“People think butterflies are pretty and powerless. … It’s not easy, destroying your home to spread your wings.”

Change is a constant on “Jo,” but slow change, chrysalis change, a complete reformation of body and soul and mind. Life ceases to resemble what it was. Endless cycles promise endless possibility.

Chelsea Bridge harnesses the power of ceaseless change and puts it to perfect use: as philosophical introspection put to music, a fascinating study of identity and belonging. Strap on headphones and evolve along with the rest of us.

American Damage


--Ryan

UTICA "Self Titled" C53 (Life Like)



This is one hell of a release to take mid-afternoon naps in the shade to! Just imagine yourself a stoned catfish, lazily hunting crawdads along a mildly murky stretch of the Mississippi River floor, those pesky mudclouds sporadically rolling along, masking the occasional errant pebble’s excited travel downstream, those gentle knocks on the nose waking you up just enough to see a tentative antenna searching out some water-striders. Carpe diem! In a decade or two, that li’l crayguy’s crawgrandchildren’ll be feasting on your decaying remains, so nosh while the sloshing’s good!

Ann Arbor’s UTICA manage to churn up a deceptively simple-yet-blissful haze of New Age ambiance along the shallow riverbanks of droning minimalism. With blurry, bassy piano arpeggios that wax & wane in & out of focus (think mid-tempo parts of La Monte Young’s “The Well-Tuned Piano”) just below major-key feedback and e-bowed guitar meanderings, it’s easy to get lost in trying to track just where the synths end and the strings start, but why bother? 98% of this long, slow-burner is consonantly euphoric, with only a faint, sporadic minor-key visitation that passes quickly without leaving any moody aftertaste. Pretty brilliant stuff!

https://uticasound.bandcamp.com/album/utica
and/or
https://lifelike.bigcartel.com/product/utica-c-60

--Jacob An Kittenplan

LLARKS “Metallic Summer Sea” (self-released)



The ocean is made of heavy metals, dense with molecules, shifting in tides and currents, washing on shores blasted with solar radiation. Crystals twinkle in daylight, casting alien prisms as far as the eye can see. An unending bombardment of energy from the nearest star constantly makes and remakes the genetic code here, the physics hurtle and change at near unimaginable rates. Yet summer is still summer, technically, even though from a human perspective it resembles nothing of the sort – in fact, nothing even remotely like anything a human has encountered before. 

Llarks bristles with unearthly static and emanates melody imbued with friction. It is a calming presence as well as a mysterious one. It is constantly in motion yet deceptively still. It envelops and infiltrates yet is observable from a distance. Encounter its hallucinatory state and focus your full attention on becoming overwhelmed. You will not be disappointed.

Llarks


--Ryan


SALMARI “Agnosia” C28
(Black Ring Rituals Records)




Side A of the tape, a single track called “Revenge Bidding,” starts as a confluence of recorded voices and drones that rises from a hectic crucible of sound and gradually stretches out, becoming a chant-like pulse. Colorful and contrasting patterns follow, from synthesized tones to tangles of noise to peaceful sustain. This track is restless but never in a hurry, though it covers much space.

Side B, “Chasm / Fuck Whole Foods,” includes distorted vocals alongside industrial clanks and ringing. The side begins with a Gregorian chant-y reciting of the line “I will always be alone,” that repeats and builds in trancelike progression. The piece develops gradually and elongates as it continues, becoming ethereal and drifting, a sonic mist covering the metallic clanging below. The vocals on this side really bring the various other elements together (and the other elements are various, from prepared piano to metallic churnings). There are portions of warped and twisting vocal samples, sung and spoken lyrics, and consolatory whispers. Overall, this music is very enjoyable and diverse, an interesting ride throughout.

https://blackringrituals.bandcamp.com/album/agnosia


--P. Karras     

ANDY BIRTWISTLE "Chewed" C40 (Start Here)




“Chewed” is to be experienced as an academic artifact documenting the mortality of fidelity as lived by a descending and ascending sine wave trapped in magnetized tape, from 10Khz to 40hz, and vice-versa. Read the bandcamp bio for the manifesto.

My neighbors (and their pets) fucking hate me for playing this on the livingroom stereo.


https://andybirtwistle.bandcamp.com/album/chewed
and/or
http://www.andybirtwistle.com/


--Jacob An Kittenplan

HC CLIFFORD
“Moments Without People in Them”
(Dormant Tapes)




Moments Without People in Them, aptly dedicated to the late dog Bill, takes us on a journey through the atmospheres of a dog’s happy brain. Pulses of sweet peaceful ambience carry simple melodies into the wind and the wind takes these sounds to places unknown, undiscovered, where people have not yet trespassed, but trespass they will as soon as these sounds are heard! The album is a dream, reminiscent of brain waves. It must be these are the sounds that are heard when no sound can be heard. The gentle humming of our nervous and circulatory systems. The swift invisible current that exists only in the deepest depths of the ocean. Bubbles coming up from the core of the earth, from the core of the dog’s brain. Bill was an old dog, at least this music seems to capture his later, more sedentary years. We watch feathers and leaves float through the air’s calming breeze. They captivate us but that captivation is subtle and easy on the eyes, a sunset without the sun—as the cover [of this album] portrays. Get it and listen to the somniferous waves carry you away deep into your own consciousness where endless discoveries of new nostalgias bless your thoughtless thoughts.


dormanttapes.bandcamp.com/album/moments-without-people-in-them


-Ricky Lemonseed

CORSICA ANNEX
"Fluid Electric" C40
(Ingrown Records)




Ambient-Electronica sound-collagist Andrew Dickey’s newest endeavor (as Corsica Annex) picks up where his former projects, Lent and Eigenface (and a whole host of others, really), left off, but this time, with a finely-honed focus on subtle transitions and mixing, eschewing all rhythmic energies for more minute, atonal texture metamorphosii and sleight-of-hand mood shifts. Which is to say, AD has upped the ambient stream-of-conscious editing game Big Time here. The hallucinatory result plays like a repetition-less Chad VanGaalen animation, where a simple walk in the woods incrementally involves daydreamy vignettes of visiting all our neighboring planets’ equivalents of tree-lined bogs. Perfect zone-out soundtrack on the stereo, but truly mesmerizing when played loud, through good headphones! More please!

https://ingrown.bandcamp.com/album/fluid-electric
and/or
https://lent.bandcamp.com/

--Jacob An Kittenplan

CONSCIOUS SUMMARY “Exhaustions” C32 (Skin Trade)




Samur Khouja left Los Angeles for India one day, spending a month on the road there before returning home and recording “Exhaustions,” which he conceived on his journey. I, on the other hand, went to California for a wedding for six days and returned home and did basically nothing. I guess I listened to Conscious Summary. Wrote about it a bit.

Having clearly proven that Khouja has a more drive one single pinkie finger than I do in my whole body, I now turn to “Exhaustions” itself, three tracks composed for synthesizer and voice that overtake your attention. The tracks hover there, like landscape covered in fog, and move in slow motion, punctuated here and there by bursts of noise and shrouded in a sort of orchestral ambience. It’s a bit creepy, I’ll give it that, and it sounds perfect right about now in the days leading up to Halloween.

But “Exhaustions” isn’t a “Halloween” record – it’s much more of a mood piece, and connecting it to Khouja’s Indian jaunt is important. In it you can hear the weariness of experience and interaction, as well as the intrigue of traveling through and discovering new places. Eyes widen and dim in the ebbs and flows of an endless voyage. It’s all here – the full experience. (Re)live it with Conscious Summary.

Skin Trade


--Ryan

WHETTMAN CHELMETS
“Annihilate Your Masters”
(WEATNU Records)




I used to LOVE netlabels, especially the ones that trafficked exclusively in ambient, electronic, and post rock. The best ones combined all three. Ten years has now passed since I so eagerly dug into that stuff. Ten long years… But hey! Here’s Whettman Chelmets to bring the whole thing back around, full circle, and rekindle my love for that heady brew of the one-person-that-sounds-like-a-full-band recording project. “Annihilate Your Masters” is a sensory treat.

Not content to simply bludgeon or drift, Chelmets deftly combines elements of rock and electronics (and even musique concrète – check out “Preparation [Thesis]”) into an instrumental package layered with nuance. The distorted guitars are leavened by drum machines, and starry passages (like “Inevitable Synthesis”) offer intriguing counterpoint. Chelmets sometimes even comes off like early Godspeed, especially on “Resignation (New Thesis. Seeds of Preparation),” where disembodied voices speak over heavily treated solo guitar. In fact, with the Hegel quote that adorns the tape and the themes of “servitude, inevitability, and resignation” peppering the recording (not to mention the image on the cover of the person sleeping in the urban daytime), it’s no wonder I’ve pinned that comparison on here.

“Annihilate Your Masters” is a great reintroduction to all that bleak, apocalyptic stuff I never thought would hit me this hard again. But don’t worry, it’s not all bleak – come for some bombast, stay for the glowing, dreamlike passages!


Whettman Chelmets


WEATNU Records



--Ryan