Everything’s a dirge to Control Point. Dreamer’s Disease finds Philadelphian Lindsay Gambone in
slow-motion darkwave mode, each track a lurching funeral procession over
synthesizers and drum machines. Proceeding at a crawl, Gambone clearly feels an
existential weight bearing down on her, like gravity’s kicked up a notch – or
exponentially. Her deep, chanting vocals take on a goth sheen, the ritualism
invoked in each excruciating moment a demented prayer of deliverance to
whatever monster deity lives out in those woods. I honestly don’t want to get
too close to it, that’s for dang sure! Regardless, the Control Point MO spreads
across this EP’s six tracks, never wavering from the seeming goal of rendering
everything in sight and in life nothing more than a sacrifice to some midnight
whim. God help us all.
Every time I look at this tape, I’m like, “Let’s throw another baby on the
bardo!” You know, like my go-to phrase whenever I affect an Australian accent –
let’s throw another shrimp on the barbie? You knew that’s what I say, right?
So forgetting the general awfulness of babies and barbies and whatnot,
Babies in the Bardo isn’t just a fun thing to try and untrip your tongue over.
It’s actually the solo minimal darkwave/post-punk (so easy) of Early Day Miners
bassist Jonathan Richardson. You may remember Early Day Miners from their tours
with and/or their comparisons to Grandaddy (which may only exist in my mind – I
connected those two bands somehow, and I may be making this all up, because the
internet is NOT confirming my suspicions); you may remember reading about them
in blogs at some point back in the day. Either way, at least one of them is
back – in tape form!
So “bardo” is the Tibetan Buddhist idea of being in the state between
death and rebirth. And that makes sense here, as Richardson uses synth and
chugging bass and percussion to get at that and other states of uncertainty,
injecting emotional throughlines we can connect to and prop ourselves up
against. And no vocals! Or guitars (besides the bass). But mostly vocals,
because if anything will annoy me about anything, it’s vocals. But only the
annoying ones. Annoying vocals annoy me. Richardson wisely eschews them, and we
can thus project our own thoughts onto the music.
Babies in the Bardo is lean, its spartan approach a boon to its
listenability. Richardson connects nicely to the universal aspects of his chosen
genre.
https://babiesinthebardo.bandcamp.com/album/babies-in-the-bardo-2
https://sistercylinder.bandcamp.com/
Presumably the cover is an illustration depicting the back of Towner
the four-piece band onstage playing to a crowd of five outraged or indifferent
people. It took me a while though – normally the back of the band isn’t used in
press photos (or, in this case, images). Towner, which I’m guessing is short
for “out-of-towner” (because, you know, the life of a touring band), play it
fairly straight, copping mid-1990s indie/college rock that’s easy on the ears
and just fine for any dorm room situation. The singer has a sort of
speaky-version Black-Francis-meets-Peter-Garrett-from-Midnight-Oil voice. Not
hard to enjoy. Dunno why that dude in the tie is angrily covering his ears or
that one girl is yawning – there’s nothing really offensively loud, obnoxious,
or boring. The texty girl gets a pass – everybody texts at shows.
Self-Assembly, Dexter Dine’s
2019 self-released tape, does a nice job mixing sound collage and disparate
source material with melody. Utilizing every electroacoustic trick in the book
(probably) (what book?) Dexter works with an intriguing palette that teeters on
the edge of found ambience and Orange Milk-y start/stop experimentation. If Self-Assembly is intended as the story
of a mechanical entity gaining sentience and putting itself together, I certainly
wouldn’t be surprised. There’s some Short
Circuit–meets–E.T. thing going on here, and
a deep dive into Dexter’s work reveals an imagination at work that dreams way beyond the human experience. In fact,
I wouldn’t put it out of the realm of possibility that Dexter himself is some
kind of sentient machine. He certainly is able to tap in to the nuances and
details of mechanical science. Self-Assembly
simply serves as an outlet for all that innovation.
It’s creepy, I get it. And I live on a retention pond, so I get to see actual duck sex more often than I’d
like. But thinking about a duck on the phone quacking away all sexy like while
another duck on the other end of the line rubs one out with a wing or whatever
gets the ick up in me. It’s just not something I want to think about. The
obvious pre-doing-it ducks on the cartoon-strip cover don’t help.
J.G.D. Azzopardi doesn’t give a shit what I think. The Shack in the
Barley honcho has decided that no matter what the taboo is, he’s going to break
it, and damn my aversion to anatine coitus! On Phone Sex for Ducks, Azzopardi ratchets up the atmosphere, shoving
dense noise collage after dense noise collage (four of them!) through my tape
deck until I’m squirming on the floor in anguish. On the title track itself,
telephone rings smoosh up against audible tension in a Twin Peaks–esque
nightmare of wondering if and when the duck will actually answer. The phone
continues to ring!
And Phone Sex for Ducks plows
down its tense path until resolving itself somewhat with “Cemetery Improv –
Sarah’s Grave,” which features some of what I can only refer to as “playful
noise” – whatever that even means. It’s an odd, fitting end to this tape,
leaving you skipping off into whatever it is you skip off into after whatever
it is Phone Sex for Ducks is ends. That is
until the skies darken and the aliens come and steal you away. Honestly, talk
about a buzz-harsher.
Despite my feelings on the whole subject, this is riveting stuff.
https://shackinthebarleyproductions.bandcamp.com/
https://moonmystmusic.bandcamp.com/
German Army’s Peter Kris has been known to carefully compose and/or
improvise a heady guitar tune here and there (or maybe more like six hundred
friggin thousand of them), so it’s no surprise that Kris and Tavi is full of heady guitar tunes. Likewise, Tara Tavi,
solo artist and erstwhile performer in Amps for Christ and Auto Da Fe, has been
known to lend her “Siouxsie Sioux” (if we’re naming instruments, that can be a
good one for her voice – Tavi and Siouxsie approach a similar range and timbre)
to musical endeavors here and there, so it’s no surprise that Kris and Tavi is full of righteous
paeans. Together, Kris and Tavi send off minimal devotionals into the night
sky, hoping for nothing and achieving everything.
These dusty meditations resist the light, opting for evening rituals by
firelight, the guitars snaking around the voices and fluctuating together, like
they’re breathing fireflies or something. As the hour grows later and the darkness
continues to encroach, Kris and Tavi’s enchantments grow heavier, deeper,
lifting power from the soil and weaving it through fingers and tongues till
melancholy spirits appear and supplicate the gods on our behalf. In the end,
the duo is actually doing us a great service – what other kind of pagan
experience is going to get you in with supernatural beings? I wanna be on their
good side, that’s for sure.
https://www.discogs.com/artist/590679-Tara-Tavi
https://germanarmymusic.bandcamp.com/
https://misophoniarecs.bandcamp.com/
Delightful and quirky indie rock from Brooklyn, Yairms delivers the skittery
and jittery charm as he weaves an album-length tale about a horsey and its barn.
At least that’s what the j-card will have us believe! At any rate, don’t you
want to know what said horsey, named Hope, wants to do with her life as she
canters out under the stars? I know that I do. Meeting at the halfway point
between the Figurines and of Montreal, Yairms and band wrap their arms around the
night and dream delicate melodies supported by lo-fi lattices. The allure of
the tunes’ unearthly sweetness is overpowering to the point where it’s all but irresistible.
Hop on that horsey and ride!
Supreme blackened noise from Saratoga, New York. Sounds like Ylayali
uses melted guitars and hellish feedback to cloak hellishly distorted
hellspeak. All light is crushed out. You are only Here, you are only in the midst of the storm. Eleven minutes in the
grip of the merciless. It slowly crushes you, then smears your corpse over the
gravel. Eerie, evil, and enervating – that’s the Ylayali way. Tape’s sold out,
but get massacred anyway below!
Ambient music is a shield against the world. I often refer to it in
terms of things like warm blankets or amniotic fluids (actually, that’s a new
one, but it fits) or some sort of covering protecting me emotionally from
external forces. It’s a centering tool, a formal way to align my mind and my
outlook so that I can face each new day, and each new awful experience (this is
the year 2020 after all), with a demeanor that promotes not only my own mental
health but that of others – I can project this Zen outward and hopefully
brighten someone else’s day beyond my own.
That’s all because of ambient music, which I’ll admit to listening to a
lot, especially with this important job of writing for Cassette Gods. (I get quite
a few ambient tapes sent my way to listen to and write about – I love it.) And
that’s why Protection by Anthéne is such a “duh” kind of tape –
it makes perfect sense that someone made the connection that I was
subconsciously making and put together an entire album cycle in its honor. Protection acts a “protective” bubble, causing the outer stimulus
to dull and smear into a haze so that it no longer acts as an acute stimulator
of the stress centers of your brain. It follows a narcotizing pattern, smoothing
as it does the brittle sharpness of the edges and lulling you into a sense of
security. Is it false? Doesn’t matter – the outlook changes, and therefore you’re
a force for good.
Protection is like walking barefoot
through the lawn on a summer’s eve, the j-card following my whim here as breeze
interacts with skin. Or is it the other way around – am I swayed by imagery? Either
way, there it is again – that Zen follows and flows, interacting with me and
others. I could close my eyes as I wander, but I don’t think that’s wise out
here in the yard. There are, indeed, trees I could walk into. I guess I’ll just
keep my peepers peeled and incorporate everything into my experience. Protected
from pain and suffering …
Anthéne is Brad
Deschamps.
https://distantbloom.bandcamp.com/
The Social Stomach is like a death-jazz version of Soul Coughing, with
Diana Oropeza’s poetics recited over TJ Thompson’s drums-and-electronics
onslaught. You need to be an octopus to understand the coordination, because I’m
pretty damned impressed as a biped. The Portland, Oregon, band shares a tape
with Body Shame, an industrial/breakbeat monolith that merges with noise-rock
for powerful, intense blasts of soul-crushing sonics. So sure, #soulcrushingsoulcoughing
is the hashtag you’re looking for, even though that’s reductive and stupid.
(Seriously, don’t use it.) Instead, bask in the warm ozone of fritzed wiring
and spilled blood as the bands jig and jag all over and around you with
metallic objects, sending you probably to the hospital before the tape ends. I am
shivering in fear right now of having to get stitches. I don’t like needles!
(Or COVID.)
https://bodyshame.bandcamp.com/
https://thesocialstomach.bandcamp.com/
https://bentorecords.bandcamp.com/
I wonder how much use there is for back-porch psychedelia these days,
the Appalachian improvisational style that stares up into the crisp and clear
night sky way out in the middle of nowhere. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not
wondering that because I don’t think it’s viable style or a valid way to
express oneself artistically, I just wonder, as a collection of entities tied
together because we all belong to the human race, have we positioned ourselves
to ignore the devotional in favor of the quick and convenient? I sure hope not.
We’d miss out on stuff like Trance Music.
Michael Potter, Garden Portal curator and Almanac-er, gets his Electric Nature buddies Michael Pierce and
Thom Strickland together every once and a while to perform live in front of
Athens, Georgia, audiences, amplified and strangled acoustic guitars clutched
tightly in their mitts. The three of them run melodies and tones and arpeggios
off each other, the notes combining in heavenly clouds, until an actual,
honest-to-god “trance” comes over the players and audience (and listeners at
home with cassette tape in hand). They get in the zone, and we get in it with
them.
It’s hard to put into words what it feels like to be in the center of
that trance, but you have 75 minutes to get yourself acclimated and hopefully
on the same vibe. But know this – once the embers of your campfire drift into
and overlap your view of the stars, it’s all over. You can keep your eyes open
or closed, but the results will be the same: Trance Music will become part of your body and the infinite will
open itself up to you. You’ll never encounter acoustic guitar music in the same
way again, not after this shakes the foundations of everything you believe in.
Was that too much?
Remember to believe in something, don't just get stuck in whatever life normally chucks at you. There's a hugeness out there that's beyond even anything you can imagine. Embrace it. Take experiences like Trance Music and use them to make yourself amazing.
https://michaelpotter.bandcamp.com/
https://theelectricnature.bandcamp.com/
https://gardenportal.bandcamp.com/
Nate Wagner is no stranger to the contemplative. Over scores (scores, I say! Well, several, anyway) of
releases, Wagner as Leaaves has dived headfirst into many an ambient deep end,
whether using synthesizers or guitars or samples, and he has always emerged
from his immersive excursions with enough material to drag us along with him, back
into it all. He’s even made an off-the-wall Terry Crews–sampling left turn! That one was wild.
On 12 Worlds, though, Wagner
is back to the ambient stuff, drawing on field recordings that came to him from
some of his cohorts, and with them in hand, he spins hypnagogic dreamscapes
that swirl and dissipate. There’s always a sense of place within the Leaaves
oeuvre, and here it’s where you are, your present, yet overlaid with secret realities
that aren’t often observed. Fortunately, via delicate playing that intertwines
with the found sound, Wagner helps to remove the veil from these secret worlds
and allows them to interact with the one you’re used to. It’s a neat trick.
So you can let it all fade into your headphones (you’ll need
headphones) as the overlapped worlds of your particular place encroach and intermingle.
The sounds flow like inhalations, exhalations, processes of connecting with the
molecules around you. I bet you just never knew so many things were there at
once, such incredible invisible oddities.
https://strategictapereserve.bandcamp.com/
Disco-punk math-rock band from Philly (represent) hopefully has shared
a stage with the inimitable Thinking Machines, because those guys rule. Anyway,
Heatmap twitches and herky-jerks its way through the most hooky dance rock this
side of DFA1979 or Dismemberment Plan or something in those arenas. Clean
compositions, tight musicianship, dark matter energy. Chuck a tape in a deck
for a late-night party or an afternoon good time. Or maybe you know the band
and can hang out at their practice space. God, this is bringing back so many
college memories…
Ride your motorcycle from Istanbul to West Germany. The call of the
road, the charm of the scenery as it whips by. The pressure, the danger. Do you
have to do it? What’s there for you? The freedom of motion, of impermanence.
The unknown.
The sadness.
The music tells stories about stories about images. Thirdhand accounts
from Chorchill’s father passed down to Chorchill. The gleam of remembrance, the
twinkle of regret in the man’s eye. Apel Okuyan had to do it, made the journey
in the 1960s, felt the deep longing for deliverance beyond … something.
Injustice? General unfairness? Who knows – he was a “prominent figure in a
powerful trade union … before his unexplained disappearance in 1995.” Maybe he
was into some deep shit. Maybe he was the man behind the curtain.
Chorchill takes a wistful approach. Delicate synth pads, restrained
melodies. He longs to understand a life he never brushed against, the
Turkish-German underworld, and how his father knew such stories, such people. Nachtfisch, Okuyan’s nickname, serves as
a meditation on the secret histories and fantastic adventures of people in
extreme circumstances, imagining in its naïveté a cinematic romanticism of the
daily interactions that can never be fully comprehended. And it’s this
open-ended exploration of the mundane and innocuous that sets the idea of
“underworld activity” in relief. In short, let’s get fascinated about
mysteries!
https://chorchill.bandcamp.com/
https://strategictapereserve.bandcamp.com/
Knowing that “all proceeds from this release are being donated to Last
Chance for Change, an organization dedicated to fighting police brutality and
racial injustices in Syracuse, NY,” kind of puts it in perspective. We’re
angry. We’re ready for change. And we make loud and brutal music to punctuate
our stance. That’s what Fed Ash is saying anyway. Fed Ash is confronting
traumas, diurnal and other, head on.
Holding a mirror to reflect those traumas inflicted upon the powerless
by those with power, Fed Ash whips together a seething mass of rage and
launches its power out into the world. Drawing from crust, grindcore, and death
metal, and sprinkled with just enough
noise and samples to allow me to add the word “experimental” to this review,
the quartet gears itself up and to full-on molten efficiency and blisters
speakers and eardrums along the way. If only protesters could blast Diurnal Traumas on repeat at a high decibel
level and aim it at oppressors!
And we see everything on screen, every day, right in front of us. We
feel helpless. That’s why a band like Fed Ash, destructively vicious and
unflinchingly feral, can swoop in and provide catharsis. Knowing that they
stand with those most in need of assistance is an added bonus. There’s safety
in likemindedness, and there’s inspiration and fortification too. And heavy,
heavy music.
https://orbtapes.bandcamp.com/
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