TWO YEARS ON WELFARE “Talus” C60 (Endangered Species Tapes)


Over two loooong tracks, a thirty-minute jawn per side, Two Years on Welfare, aka Glenn Nelson (who also records as Cloud Dweller, among other things), builds heavy drones a fraction of a second at a time, so that by the time you’re listening to a full second, one of the 3,600 total on “Talus,” it feels like the most important, most weighty second you’ve ever experienced in your life. And again, there are thirty-six hundred of these to go, so you better get used to sitting there and getting bulldozed by the weight of Nelson’s guitar, synths, and other electronics and goodies.

“Recorded during the gloom of 2018 at the Cavernlands in Allentown, Pa.” (hey, I grew up right over the mountain!), “Talus” mimics that gloom and “Cavernland-y” feel for a postapocalyptic sojourn deep underground, where you as a human live with the other eyeless creatures in the unending darkness, unable or unwilling to come out and see what’s happened to the rest of the planet. Look, if you’ve gone eyeless in a cave, something out there ain’t good. Might as well just stay in the cave.

Well, until the earth shifts beneath your feet with a massive blast of feedback and noise and forces you to the cave’s mouth back out into whatever it is that happened and bombards you with religious shortwave radio signals. I don’t need this, man! I’m putting my glasses back on.




--Ryan