MORAST "Drawing Figures into Negative Space" (Baba Vanga)

The Baba Vanga label based in the Czech Republic is one of many offshoots that traces itself back to Easterndaze-a project dedicated to highlighting eclectic, electronic music from Eastern Europe to a western audience while simultaneously fostering artist cooperation. Releases off of Baba Vanga are slow yet steady, releasing only when they have found something “that catches its fancy”. Earlier this year, something did indeed catch their fancy, Moritz Morast’s glitchy techno noise frenzy, “Drawing Figures into Negative Spaces”.

Morast has a terrific approach to improvisational techno creation: take a pro data patch for jamming with, observe the irregularities the patch offers, and then deconstruct techno until it is rendered meaningless (it’s quite simple really)! The result is a demented crunchfest, with any strand of a traditional techno sound pushed to the periphery. Opener “Kathrinchen” is a splatter fest of industrial sounds, opening on the verge of a data collapse, before inkling ever close to the red. When you catch a techno drum beat or synth bloop in the track (turn the mega bass button on your tape deck of choice!), it is akin to unearthing a ghost in a machine, forever haunting these vicious noise flashes.

Always on the verge of spiraling out of control, but never quite doing so, Morast’s five compositions are building to something before completely rendering the sound obsolete. None of the tracks make an attempt to sugarcoat their intensity. “Drying up the marshes of self-exploitation” is mostly composed of a simple bass beat and synth beeps that build up before being completely kicked back down by unforgiving, vaporous drums. The title track contains a pervasive ticking rhythm that seems completely detached from the airy, gaseous noises and sirens of the rest of the track. Even when the closer “dancing upon ashes of previous visions” finally forces you to the dancefloor, it only takes a few minutes before any semblance of tribalesque techno drums becomes obsolete in the face of pulsing data collapse. The nature of these improvisations (even down to the cover art!) can only be best described as abstract, constructivist impulses.

“Drawing Figures…” is a strict lie-down album that reveals itself best in those midnight hours, when your body is on the verge of collapse and dissociation. Might it guide those peaceful dreams!


https://babavanga.bandcamp.com/


--Matty McPherson

BUDOKAN BOYS “Dad Is Bad” (Baba Vanga)

Budokan Boys, the long-distance love child of Vienna-based musician Jeff T Byrd and New Orleans–bound writer Michael Jeffrey Lee, is the future of music. Not pop, not electronic, not rock, not new or no wave, but music. Listen here: when you’ve perfected a Nick Cave-by-way-of-Ween vibe (or vice versa, it’s hard to tell which came first), you’ve been in my wheelhouse loooong before the word “perfected” has even entered the conversation. Sometimes Budokan Boys sounds like an electronic version of Shudder to Think. Still, “perfected” remains the go-to word of choice here.

Dad Is Bad on Baba Vanga follows their 2018’s That’s How You Become a Clown on Tymbal Tapes, which I referred to as containing a healthy dose of “cockeyed playfulness,” even going so far as to comment, “Budokon Boys put the ‘fun’ back in ‘What in the fuck am I listening to?’ (trust me, those letters are all in there).” Dad Is Bad continues down the path of bizarro storytelling, with Lee’s just-off-enough narratives (and vocals) veering the whole shebang into an uncomfortable ditch where you may have hit a road sign or something. But Bird’s unrelentingly good-natured electro-on-quaaludes (even when he reaches for his guitar) leavens Lee’s oddities, especially when Lee’s getting really weird like relating a story of a prisoner’s dead body being sent around from city to city and worshiped as a hero’s would be (I’ll let you dig into “The Prisoner” on your own to get the whole story).

Budokan Boys make some of the most off-kilter, dare I say alternative (woops, I wasn’t going to dare to say it) music, even if it’s as experimental as it gets. It has me yearning for the greatest throwbacks of the genre even as it pushes forward with incredible tenacity. There’s not another duo like Bird and Lee out there, I’m just going to say it – they’ve cornered the market on making “weird” as listenable as possible, not to mention making “listenable” as weird and far-out as they can. It’s a pleasure to follow them down whatever twisted path they’re blazing. Just don’t lag too far behind – you never know what’s in the shadows waiting for you.

https://soundcloud.com/budokanboys

https://babavanga.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

SOMNOROASE PASARELE "CO" C46 (Baba Vanga)

Hell yes! Stumbling upon innovative, mind-fucking compositions like this always gives me hope for the future of music/soundsculpture. Both Somnoroase Pasarele (a duet from Romania) and Baba Vanga (label from Czech Republic) are such outsider/groundbreaking pioneers in electronic music that I’m fairly certain I’d have never heard about them, were I not given the chance to review this tape. I am so grateful for the privilege! So disorienting! So unexpected! So dynamic!

Industrial/Noise junkies, woefully rejoice, for this album is one long collection of controlled panic-attacks and migraine-flirtings, set inside the skull of every industrial factory worker ever who couldn’t quite get the fifth floor window open in time before a slew of coworkers dragged them back to their post.

Frantic industrial beats trebly convulse out of mortal fear while predominantly atonal, textural drones that only hint at a brighter chordal future beyond their suffocating command of atmosphere come crashing in, wave after unforgiving wave. Sounds miserable? It is, but blissfully so. I’d imagine this is what Alessandro Cortini and Merzbow’s collaboration set to come out on Important Records will sound like, but who the hell knows? Check this madness out with headphones and a security blanket.

Side note: SP also released a rrrrad tape on USA’s own Tymbal Tapes, both of which, label and specific album, are fanfuckingtastic!

https://babavanga.bandcamp.com/album/somnoroase-p-s-rele-co
and/or
https://soundcloud.com/somnoroase-pasarele

-- Jacob An Kittenplan