DIRECTIVES “Usphutorontus Deius Nissesubla” C60 (Aubjects)

Oh my god, Aubjects does it again. Aubjects is always doing it, apparently, and “Usphutorontus Deius Nissesubla” (“I know not what it means, but I'm certain it's absolutely true” – not sure if that’s a translation or a comment, actually) by Directives is a winner before you even press play on it. Hold one of the edition of 20 with handmade and -stamped covers in your paws, with “hand-painted sand paper applied to hand-cut blue paperboard. … Hand-stamped covers. Photocopied insert w/ hand-inked symbols.” You’ll get it, then. You’ll understand. Look at that image up there – mine’s second from the right on the top row. This thing is so tactile it’s ridiculous.

Haven’t even pressed play yet. Now I did, and it just keeps getting better and better. D. Petri, the identity behind Directives, experiments with guitar, etc., but comes across like a one-person prog band for the effort. These two 30-minute sides are absolutely overflowing with shimmering waves of sonic joy. Beyond inventive, Directives just keeps layering on treat after treat of effects-laden instrumentation, building an entire world you can get lost in for a long damn time. This is easily a recent favorite and will go back on the “relisten” pile – and NOT the one where I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll get back to it.” No, I’m listening to Directives again tomorrow.

Aubjects

--Ryan

AMALGAMATED “Solvé et Coagula” C60 (Aubjects)

“The world is ending!”

How many times have you heard that, in your life? In the last year? Today? Doesn’t matter. You don’t have to listen to anyone saying that anymore, because there’s only one collective voice saying that who matters, and they’re spot the frick on. That’s right gang, your old pals Amalgamated are back with sixty minutes of viciously dour power electronics, shining the ugly mirror of our own human existence back at us and rubbing our diseased faces in the horrific reflection therein. Got hopelessness? Check. Anxiety? Check. These feelings are presented in vast, bleak postindustrial landscapes, punctuated throughout with all manner of synth stabs and ebbs and flows and embellishments, and the combined result is a monolithic head rush of impossibility. It’s like the aural equivalent of the MK Ultra experiments, but with your ears pried open instead of your eyes.

Here’s the deal, though – the point is that Amalgamated does “not [accept these things] as inevitable or irreversible.” Somehow, in the gunk and grime, there’s, dare I say, hope that we as human being can reverse this shitty course on which we’ve placed ourselves. It’s going to take a lot of work – Amalgamated thinks it’s going to be quite a dirty process, I think – but even the darkest clouds can clear, if I can get all Hallmark-y on you. But who wants that – you want the synth! You want the danger, the darkness, the meat, the gristle, the rush! You got it, mate – please for the love of god listen to this.

The Latin term “solvé et coagula” is associated with Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus, a “Swiss German Renaissance physician” whose main goal was to study alchemy in order to find medicinal benefits.  He believed that “sickness and health in the body relied on the harmony of man the microcosm and Nature the macrocosm. “ Anyway, the idea is to “[analyze] a substance into its components before synthesizing the desirable elements into a new substance.” Also, it seems that the term has deep occult connotations. Who knew?

So that’s what Amalgamated’s done here – their intent is to tease out what little good is left in humanity and hang their hats on it, hoping against hope that it can overcome the other, worse stuff. I hope it can. In the meantime, we can all experience the universal struggle by listening to Solvé et Coagula, and figuring out what we can do to stop the encroaching darkness of our own selves. The world may not even end, if we can fix it. And hey, look how much I learned along the way, even if it was through Wikipedia and a black magic website!

http://4m4lg4m4ted.bandcamp.com/album/solve-et-coagula

https://aubjects.wordpress.com/

--Ryan Masteller

STRNGLV/PELKTOPIA “Noosphertilizer III” C62 (Aubjects)

“[Holland] Tunnel construction required workers to spend large amounts of time in the caisson under high pressure of up to 47.5 pounds per square inch (328 kPa), which was thought to be necessary to prevent river water from entering prior to completion of the tubes. "Sandhogs", as they were termed, entered the tunnel through a series of airlocks, and could only remain inside of the tunnel for a designated time period. On exiting the tunnel, the workers had to undergo controlled decompression to avoid the bends, a condition in which nitrogen bubbles form in the blood from rapid decompression.^[27] Fortunately, no workers died as a result of decompression sickness: the work involved "756,000 decompressions of men coming out of the compressed air workings," which resulted in 528 cases of the bends, none fatal.^[28][29] Completion of the tunnel took nearly seven years and claimed the lives of 14 workers.” ~Wikipedia J

I’m pretty sure that STRNGLV’s side of this split, a half hour’s worth of layered, ever fluctuating textural synth loops, a la Alessandro Cortini, could give anyone who worked on this project an immediate flashback. Whenever I listened to this tape (a good full ten times before writing this review), I kept imagining myself several stories below a major metropolitan cityscape, exploring tunnel after tunnel of hissing, gurgling pipes, scurrying fauna and the faint tribal echoes of vehicles passing over distant, loose storm drains. Somehow, the passages were all well lit, never feeling overtly ominious, nor commercially polished. This is an excellent soundtrack for dreaming big time weird shit.

A great pairing for this split, the Pelktopia side feels somehow not quite fully out in the open, but definitely in open air, communing with the great elements. Imagine taking a long stroll along a busy pier, but, defying gravity, you get the whole underside to yourself, gentle waves lapping just inches above your head. Pelktopia trades synths for heavily processed electric guitar effects that stretch patiently plucked single notes into infinity.

The mental space provided by each sound artist alone is its own worthwhile journey, but doing so while looking through the beautifully curated 16-page color art booklet provided by Aubjects, the fostering DIY label, is thrilling. Busily squirming pictures of organic chaos are juxtaposed with the spirit of cold-hearted order, unrealized blueprints of ambition. I’m pretty excited to look more into this progressive label.

http://strnglv.bandcamp.com/

www.pelktopia.blogspot.com

and/or

https://aubjects.wordpress.com/

- - Jacob An Kittenplan

DOG HALLUCINATION “Mitzi” C60 (Aubjects)

There’s a band – they’re probably huge by now, their record’s out on Jade Tree – called Dogs on Acid, and they’re from Philly and they play, like, punky emo pop or something. It’s not my bag. The question, though, is what do Dogs on Acid (or dogs on acid, in general) experience while on said acid. I’m here to tell you, definitively, that they experience Dog Hallucination – not dog hallucination, in general – but specifically, unquestionably, Dog Hallucination. And probably Mitzi, most likely.

The two dudes in DH, D. Petri and “Doggy P. Lips” (who always somehow appears in quotes, as if he is in some way embarrassed by the fact that his parents named him Doggy P. Lips and the quotation marks serve to throw the questioning listener off the trail of what’s real and what’s not, sort of like this parenthetical) have been plugging away at their masterwork since 2004, when they began recording. They pressed stop in 2007. They pressed record again a couple times between 2007 and 2011. They pressed stop again. Then they edited this stuff together. It’s 2015 now, and this tape is out in a limited edition of 25, and it comes in a modified DVD case with a cool booklet featuring all kinds of crazy art. It looks really important.

Mitzi, presumably named after the dog that graces the front cover, is a study in bedroom psychedelic minimalism. Both members are multi-instrumentalists, and the tone is all over the place, sometimes veering into instrumental Brian Jonestown Massacre jam territory (“Parallel to Sunrise”) to noise experiments (“Mome Throes”) to raga passages (“Synch”) to euphoric ambient (“Oddview Porcelain Evap”). Mostly it just trips me out, man. In a good way. Leading me down passages of unparalleled fantasy, and eschewing caution like it was never there to begin with. I’m probably going to float away if I don’t put some rocks in my pockets.

These artists, this statement –  I don’t know why Dog Hallucination is what it is, and I don’t know why Mitzi is its crowning achievement, taking eleven years to complete. It’s clearly a loving document to something by these guys, and it’s worth paying attention to. It certainly feels like something that could be conjured up during the enlightened hours of a wild trip (maybe that’s what Dogs on Acid really needs, a bit of soul searching down a different path). Maybe it’s still missing its ultimate piece, a feature film, after the creation of which Dog Hallucination will “culma-terminate.” Or just maybe the pup on the cover, pupils dilated and head cocked in curious metaphysical stasis, is a spirit animal, and it made this music with its mind, and we’re all figments of its consciousness, and within that stare we can be unimagined or exalted at its whim. Who am I to say that this isn’t how it all really is?

https://aubjects.wordpress.com/

https://doghallucination.bandcamp.com/

http://www.intangiblecat.com/doghallucination

--Ryan Masteller