SPLIFF JACKSUN “Sanctuary" C36 & YLANGYLANG “Interplay” C38 (Crash Symbols)

These two Montreal artists differ greatly in their styles but share much passion in the way of concertedly dialing into the m-o-o-d they’re cooking up. 

Spliff Jacksun is first & foremost a beatsmith, floating dependable, jazzy keys & horns overtop stock bass drum & snare. His formulas are tried, true, & so finely tuned you almost can’t NOT hear the rhythmic ghost of someone rapping overtop it all, like each track were an instrumental versions of unreleased Common songs (off the album “Be”), which makes for an excellent office/lobby soundtrack to soothe the soul.

YlangYlang’s is very much the opposite, her minimalist avant-pop incantations flowing cosmically outward, airily, foggily tracing along no dedicated scaffold, her synth and noise accompaniments both gripping & surprising in their novel placements and effectiveness throughout the flowing compositions. Part mesmerizing orchestral ambiance, part syrupy pop spell-casting, “Interplay" reveals itself more and more with each passing run of the tape, never once getting old or wearing out its hypnotic welcome. Pretty ground-breaking stuff!

https://crashsymbols.bandcamp.com/album/interplay

https://crashsymbols.bandcamp.com/album/sanctuary

and/or

https://ylangylangylang.com/

https://spliffjacksun.bandcamp.com/music

—Jacob An Kittenplan

x

GERMAN ARMY “Animals Remember Human” (Crash Symbols/ArteTetra)

This one’s for the birds.

Animals Remember Human was recorded by German Army in 2018, which also happened to have been the year of the bird. Is it fitting, then, that Animals Remember Human is “an ode to critically endangered birds and their habitats”? Or is it just a confluence of cosmic events that GeAr happened to choose this theme in this year? Or maybe some kind of divine entity intervened to make it so? Although the latter option is tempting, I’m going with coincidence. German Army’s always making an important statement, it’s only ever a matter of time with them before themes and events start aligning on a yearly basis.

Is it also coincidence that the laptop used to create this album kicked the bucket immediately after the masters were sent off to Crash Symbols and ArteTetra? Look, who knows at this point – all I know is that the digital harbinger of the destruction of habitat was itself destroyed not long after completing its work. Say what you will about conspiracy theories – and I only buy into the ones that are true, myself – but this sounds like the work of some nefarious underground organization. One, of course, whose very existence and operation was threatened by German Army’s whistleblowing.

That’s why it’s important to give Animals Remember Human a platform big enough to reach the masses. It has a story to tell, and it tells it in the best German Army way possible: through a lengthy song cycle strung together from field recordings and samples, rigged for maximum exposure. Of course, when illuminating the plight of our avian friends, there’s a sense that expressing the quiet majesty or grandeur – or even relative modesty – of their habitats, their patterns, their cycles may be more effective than grabbing us by the nape of the neck and rubbing our faces through the gravel of the human indignities we purvey, as is usually GeAr’s wont. It’s true: ARH is more laid-back and zoney than usual GeAr fare – I’m not going to refer to it as “proto-industrial” or anything like that this time around.

Instead I’m going to refer to it as nature-doc electro, because that’s a term I’ve never used before, and I’m gonna give it a go. The music rolls around your headphones like it’s meant to be there, checking out the place, figuring out where it’s going to sleep later on. It doesn’t take long to make itself at home, and you’re left fluttering from downtempo collage to bare-bones banger like they’re branches on the same tree. What did I tell you up there? This one’s for the birds!

And the humans who like birds. Along with other humans. You can get with that.

https://germanarmymusic.bandcamp.com/

https://crashsymbols.bandcamp.com/

https://artetetra.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

ENDURANCE / PJS “S/T” C42 (Crash Symbols)

Endurance’s first track, “Outside”, sounds like absofuckinglutely nothing of the sort, but rather, a claustrophiliac colony of sleek, copper stalactites, each trembling furiously, filling some unseen cavernous space with ring and hum until a raging, white-noise/white-water rapid of trebly fog and one lone frog each washes the very ear canal clean, out past the event horizon. 

It is in this relentless sincerity of intensity that one lover of all things Stefane/Muzan Editions will recognize why the generally bombastic & beat-centric Crash Symbols should put out such an, on the surface, reflective, calming artist’s work…&It’s a gorgeous and exhilirating 11:41 opener, a truly perfect representative mix for both labels’ overlapping essences. 

The second track, “Waystation”, finds JS back in more familiar, peaceful territory, stalwartly performing his hallucinogenic weavings of field recording, morphing static, and core-targeted drone work,  all of these just realigning the everlovingshit out of any concerted ear’s chakra’s earth-fork or whatever the hell that is that’s bound to be just purring deep down inside, once the track is through.

PJS, whose acronym might as well stand for “Pajama Jam Squad ”, is the absolute ambient bliss-out duo of Jordan Christoff* and Patrick Dique, and their side (b) long, 20+ minute odyssey, “Parallels”, synthesize(r)s the droning swells of a warm ocean sunrise along with its meandering surf-hiss and retreating shells & pebbles, a la late SotL something soporifically fierce and in the absolute very best way even possible.

The eternally good mood brought on by this tape would gift well as paired with its antidote, Crash Symbols’ release-date-mate, “Death By Misadventure”*, both releases having just come out on December 13th. Listen back to back to get ripped apart a little bit inside.

https://crashsymbols.bandcamp.com/album/endurance-pjs

and/or

https://endurance010010.bandcamp.com/

https://pjsmusicsound.bandcamp.com/

—Jacob An Kittenplan

*JC also, along with (but not like "on a split-with”) Endurance, had a tape out through Constellation Tatsu in the last year or two!

**by Mrs. Dink

MRS. DINK “Death by Misadventure” C51 (Crash Symbols)

Peaking through a relentlessly housey metronome, Mrs. Dink (aka Meagan Johnson/Degenerate Trifecta) lead-pipes in some overt-like-man-I-mean-O-M-I-N-O-U-S-for-R-E-A-L vibes that keep constantly hopscotching between a warehouse rave and a professional slaughterhouse-haunting. It’s hard not to imagine glory-days Wesley Snipes getting fucking DOWN to this while lifting weights or working on his chopper or breaking up a smoky, strobe-lit dog-fighting ring, or something equally bad-ass like that, and I’d wager to guess that Washington State’s MJ didn’t necessarily have all of this in mind, per se, but certainly had some other equally dark attitude set up, indelicately and deliberately!

This intense long-burner would pair well with an ol’ Crash Worship alum, Don Gero, and their “Wizarding" album, as both are internal-reproductive-organs-to-the-wall-intense in their sonic battery and merciless rhythmic onslaught. No shit. Listen to this well before sunset if you’re planning on winding down AT ALL*.

https://crashsymbols.bandcamp.com/album/death-by-misadventure

and/or

https://degeneratetrifecta.bandcamp.com/

—Jacob An Kittenplan

*or read tomorrow’s review for the antidote…

SEA MOSS “Bidet Dreaming” C39 (Crash Symbols)

Go on. You deserve it. Re-read and re-chuckle at that album title. Try not to be jealous of how perfect a portmanteau it is, how many levels it applies to, concerning art-rock. Try not to feel bad. This duo builds it’s own electronics, for fuck’s sake; they’re smarter than you, more ambitious than you, and, doggone it, though possibly not angrier than you, they’ve sure as shit got more energy to blow off any pent up steamage than you!

Someone at some dance party or other probably publicly surveyed, “Hey y’all… Melt Banana’s “Cell Scrape” or Guerilla Toss’s “Eraser Stargazer"?” & PDX’s Noa Ver and Zach D'Agostino probably bit their tongues and swallowed their vitriol and they went home and they built an Arduino or four and took over the goddamn synth/punk/noise world with their wayward, robotic empire...

But hey, I’m just bullshitting here. I honestly have no clue about to what extent and how these folx engineered their own synths/drum machines/vocoders/amps/microphones/______s. Is there a flailing robot playing an actual drumkit (not impossible!), or is the drumkit just host to multiple trigger pads (more likely)? All I know is, through some undisclosed homemade devices, this DIYorDIE duo has pre-programmed a herd-able electronic bedlam that’s both danceable and outright circle-pit/moshable to. Their live performances have to be INSANE, and I wouldn’t miss one for the world. Listen to with the nob turned up to ELEVENS!

https://crashsymbols.bandcamp.com/album/bidet-dreaming

and/or

https://seeseamoss.bandcamp.com/

— Jacob An Kittenplan

FRANK HURRICANE AND HURRICANES OF LOVE “Life is Spiritual” C36 (Crash Symbols)

I honestly cannot list any more than ten words Nick Drake had ever sung. My attention was always on the guitar; just how in the hell were which of his fingers plucking which and how many strings in what succession?! 

His breath might occasionally embellish a hammer-on; a consonant hiss or glottal tip-tap might have lent a sliding twang some added weight, but I sure as shit wasn’t hearing any sort of story or sentiment. The black feeling of his soft, inner howl could be counted on to depress my spirit sufficiently, while his convo-lute-d wizardry would reliably bewilder and entertain me, forever.

Neither Frank Hurricane, nor his Hurricanes of Love, for that matter, are Nick Drake. Though “Life is Spiritual” boasts a fair equivalent to ND (and Mississippi John Hurt, more specifically)’s six-string mastery, his (FH’s) Voice (both physical and literary) is the EXACT OPPOSITE, in terms of relaxation and mental mutability. Which is to say, you will listen and you will listen hard to what Mr. Hurricane has to say!

You will learn of myriad shady Appalachian characters (and otherworldly denizens, as well!) who engage in various illicit acts. You will be exposed to an egregious glorification of unregulated Schedule One and Schedule Two substances, and their copious consumptions. You will witness the word “spiritual" transform itself into the trisyllabic “spear-a-chill” & you will become aggressively woo-woo’d. Your lexicon will expand and redefine itself markedly through some slang and appropriation that I’m fairly certain but unable to prove right now is just made the fuck up for this specific album, but, it like, just sounds really cool and fun and definitely has both Merriam and Webster doing dusty pirouettes in their graves. 

You will definitely find yourself in the company of others, hours later, with an insatiable desire to release the impassioned earworm “OOOOHH-OOOOOH, JUH-GAH-LOOOOO-OOOO-OO” with a snarky soulfulness you’ve always knew you had and had better suppress but now it hurts more to do so.

All sung & dunn, you will feel like you’ve just hung out with the crazy sumbitch that is Frank Hurricane, and you’ll wonder just how in the hell he’s lived so long without getting stabbed over rights to a Smokey Mountain still. Enjoy from the safety of your own stereo/altar.

RIYL: Old Crow Medicine Show/early Akron/Family/Robert Plant's vocal affects, MJH’s finger-style virtuosity, stories about uppers, ghost stories about uppers, & uppers in general, I guess.

https://crashsymbols.bandcamp.com/album/life-is-spiritual

and/or

https://frankhurricane.com/

— Jacob An Kittenplan

SEA MOSS & THE SOCIAL STOMACH “Ugh” (Crash Symbols)

What’s the rational approach when you think you’ve shoved everything you possibly can into the mix for a recording of the musical variety? Shove in some more! That’s how Sea Moss and The Social Stomach, the two PDX-based dork bands of slabsound electronics, operate, collaborating on “Ugh” as though no sound was too outlandish or intrusive to include. We – the audience – are all the better for this approach. We are overcome.

With each band making like a wild hybrid of Bis and the Octopus Project, “Ugh” splits right down the middle, with Sea Moss on one side and The Social Stomach on the other. (Fun fact: this is where the term “split” comes from.) Electronics and effects are splattered at us from side A, minute one, then more rhythmic madness fizzes out of B (now a soda bottle metaphor), except this time with vocals, courtesy The Social Stomach’s Diana Oropeza. OMG, I’m having such a good time.

You have absolutely waited too long to buy this cassette. Good luck on Discogs!

Sea Moss

The Social Stomach

Crash Symbols


--Ryan

VARIOUS ARTISTS “Touched by an Angle #2” (Crash Symbols)

“Do you feel it?,” Crash Symbols asks us about the second edition of their “Touched by an Angle” compilation series, a series that should be added to much more often than it currently is. At this rate, volume 3 will be out in 2022. That’s too long to wait.

“Do you feel it?” 

Yes, I feel it. God, stop asking!

Before I start quoting “Hott Fuzz” at a constant clip this morning, because that’s the only thing that comes to mind when the angel/angle thing (always hilariously) makes an appearance (and God help my family, I really AM gonna quote “Hott Fuzz” all day now), I need you to all pop in this tape and take your mind off swans, slashers, and “the greater good.” For my sake.

That’s it, let the Crash Symbols-y goodness flow over you. You’re familiar at this point, aren’t you? This wonderful label knows exactly what it’s doing in the world of underground electronic music, dropping knowledge on noise and drone to dance pop and back without even batting an eye. And with “Touched by an Angle #2,” not only are we treated to some label stalwarts (the incomparable Don Gero, YlangYlang, and Ratkiller, who have released some of my favorite tapes on the label), we’re also treated to some newcomers, who have released some of my favorite tapes on other labels. Let’s do a quick roundup of those, shall we?

I’ve loved Me, Claudius’s “Reasons for Balloons” on Dinzu Artefacts, and I wrote about it here.

I’ve written about Új Bála too, twice in fact, once for “Butcher’s Tears Dry Slower than the Average One’s” and once for “Breatharian High Society.” Do not sleep on Új Bála anymore!

Have I written about former_airline? I sure have.

There’s even been a Frank Hurricane sighting!

So yeah, those are just a handful of artists on this massive 26-tune tracklist that make the purchase of this tape absolutely ESSENTIAL for your Crash Symbols collection. Somebody from something called “Ruix Zine” even referred to it “equal parts label sampler and eclectic mixtape.” That person is not wrong. Buy in to what Crash Symbols is doing, and buy in soon, before it’s too late.

Crash Symbols


--Ryan

I AM JUST A PUPIL“The White Album” (Crash Symbols)

My colleague at Tabs Out, Scott Scholz, was quoted as saying about I am just a pupil that it’s “freaking my shit right out.” And look, Scott’s OK – he’s a little demented, but we let that slide. And actually, he’s not even that crazy when it comes to “The White Album,” as I’m having an equally hard time figuring out where the hell I even am while I’m listening to this. I am so jolted out of any sort of normality that it feels like I’m fighting an intense uphill battle to even get my footing. Solid ground eludes me. So I slip and I slide down the endless stream of samples and plunderphonics, an endless and frictionless transparent tube through a madhouse of other people’s opinions. It’s freaking my shit right out.

Oh! Scott was right! He was so right!

But this freakout is a wake-up call, a magic whistle to the dome where you’re transported to other people’s lives and are allowed to peek in through the drawn shades. But still, NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS, whether it’s the political weirdness of Bush accusing Gorbechev of aggression against the automobile on “Patriot” or the platitudes of a prospective lover to her beau on “ASMR,” with promises of removing duct tape. I’ve found myself laughing out loud through the gritted teeth that I’m grinding to bloody nerve stumps as I’m tied to a chair MK Ultra style with my eyes pried open as I’m listening to “The White Album,” and it’s a virtual certainty that I’m undergoing some severe psychological upheaval. But probably subliminally!

I’m laughing a lot, but there’s a lot of icky stuff to get through here too. Still, it’s all pretty hilarious – I’m absolutely gonna have to come back to this and try to parse out my feelings. I have an inkling that I’m going to discover things about myself that are better left buried under the surface. Like – “Black Ops”? Scary. But “Hillary” is just too funny, with its cherry-picked quotes slathered against a backdrop of generic R&B for maximum madness. Oh, who’s to say what the proper response is, or if there even is a “proper” one. “The White Album” is endlessly relistenable, and you’ll be able to find kernels of truth among the absolute outrageousness of the project. It’s one of the best things I’ve listened to in a while.

One last question: why does Obama sound like Norm MacDonald on “Obama”? Really, that one’s nagging at me.

Still – hilarious. 

I am just a pupil 

Crash Symbols

--Ryan

DON GERO "Wizarding” C40 (Crash Symbols)

This album is pretty much the audio equivalent of a strobe-lit inner-city high-speed car-chase. For-serious. Oughta come with a warning for possibly inducing seizures. It’s basically camping porn. Fuggin’ InTENTS!

&In a word, “Wizarding” is relentless. With equal parts focus on hypnotic-tribal beats and unabashed minimalist synth arpeggios that vary slightly with each passing measure, this non-stop aural assault is living proof that you don’t need breakneck speed to get the heart rate pumping overtime.

If you’re suggestible to such visions, consider this the perfect soundtrack to watch a bunch of metalheads thrashing about in a circle pit whilst the elders (read gen X’rs) surround them, lost in lotus meditation.

https://crashsymbols.bandcamp.com/album/wizarding
and/or
https://dongero.bandcamp.com/

-- Jacob An Kittenplan

JESSE FLEMING & ELECTRIC SOUND BATH "Heart & Insight Meditations” C61 (Crash Symbols)

Jesse Fleming & Electric Sound Bath have teamed up here to provide two ambient-soundscape enhanced, guided meditations, each half hour long side focusing on either forgiveness or perspective. ESB’s prosaic guitar drones lend a soft but solid anchor for your thoughts to hold onto while Jesse Fleming’s posits sink into your mind.

https://crashsymbols.bandcamp.com/album/heart-insight-meditations
http://jessefleming.com/
and/or
https://www.electricsoundbath.com/

-- Jacob An Kittenplan

LUUREL VARAS “Leisure Time” (Crash Symbols)

The term “odyssey” gets thrown around a lot these days, or at least I throw it around a lot when I’m talking about driving to soccer practice or soccer games or basically anything soccer related. Let me start over. The term “odyssey” gets thrown around a lot in my house these days, regardless of how far I have to go, because isn’t just wandering out of your house every once in a while an adventure? If he’s anything like me (and who’s to say he is?), Luurel Varas of Estonia sure thinks so, probably, because he chops up a bunch of stuff he finds all across his everyday life and turns it into an odyssey for the ears, a broken-beat odyssey, a sampledelic instro-hip hop affair that just invites itself over, makes itself comfortable on your couch (or in your cassette player), and plows right into that odyssey everybody keeps talking about and promising and writing incessantly about on Cassette Gods. Luurel Varas delivers. “Leisure Time” is a blast of spring breeze (which of course I’m just getting around to on the cusp of winter), refreshing and invigorating, a vaporous entity that envelopes you with its warm rhythms and it’s lush melodies and whisks you away on the odyssey of its choosing, a magic voyage to some unknown land where the only outcome is good and the only treasure you find is marshmallows. These are the exploits of pure whimsy, and joy is in the air and in the water and in the food and in your blood. And now that same joy is in my house, and in my car, and I’m off to soccer practice full of joy and whimsy, and the odyssey of my life is before me, soundtracked by Luural Varas. “Leisure Time” is welcome here any time, doesn’t matter if I’m chilled out or ready for action. The odyssey always awaits.

Luurel Varas

Crash Symbols

--Ryan Masteller

JULIA BLOOP "Roland Throop" C60 (Crash Symbols)

Julia Bloop is from Brookyln they/she/he makes what I guess is a mix of chillwave an experimental loops. I wouldn't call it vaporwave but I get a similar feel from it.

My favorite song from the album is the title opener 'I Gotta Get Outta This Place'.

Features a double sided full color J-card and tasteful ASCII art pad printed onto clear cassette shell.

https://crashsymbols.bandcamp.com/album/roland-throop

https://juliabloop.bandcamp.com/

-- Chuck Wolfe

LUUREL VARAS "Leisure Time" C57 (Crash Symbols)

Estonian synth-psych beatmaker, genre-blender, and all-around goodtimes-provider Luurel Varas finally serves up nearly an hour’s worth of even-keeled neck-waving soundtrackage for the bad-ass Crash Symbols label, and it’s pretty much perfect for zoning out, computer work, and/or barbequing. While listening (on repeat), whenever I’ve let the music fade to the backburner of my mind (doing something besides focusing on the various, rich layers) I’ve consistently ended up feeling transported back to A Tribe Called Quest’s hey-day, feeling those grooving, jazzy themes all over again, but this time with a more subtle, texture-driven bent (via synthesizer manipulation) that gives this release a quality not yet explored (exploited?) just yet. At other times, I’ve felt Bill Leeb’s remote presence, recalling ethereal atmospheres reminiscent of turn of the century Delerium (think “Karma” or “Poem”), and all of these things are not only good, but pretty great, especially since one genre’s flavor doesn’t get the spotlight for too long.  Tape is nearly sold out already (and rightly so), so keep an eye out at your local shop.

https://crashsymbols.bandcamp.com/album/leisure-time
and/or
https://luurelvaras.bandcamp.com/

-- Jacob An Kittenplan

SAINTES "Melancholia" (Crash Symbols)

       
Straight outta France, crazy synth-wave named Saintes.
Sophmore album, lo-fi dark winter Anne paints.
Sorry, I don't rap well. Melancholia is Saintes second album, released May 12th of 2017.
It's pretty straight up lo-fi bedroom pop, lots of synth action going on.
Similair to bands like Rainbow Edition or Purgatory, Saintes carves out their sound by doing things their own way.

https://crashsymbols.bandcamp.com/album/melancholia

-- Chuck Wolfe

ELECTRIC SOUND BATH & JESSE FLEMING “Ataraxia Series No. 1: Heart and Insight Meditations” C61 (Crash Symbols)

Crash Symbols has unleashed upon us a new series of recordings, a maelstrom of cassette’d sounds that is bound to rend the very fabric of your being. The first entry in the series promises to shake you to your very core. Indeed, the Ataraxia Series, primed to blast through the cassette community with a vengeance … wait, it’s called the “Ataraxia Series”? I, uh… I think I might be headed down the wrong path here with this opening – I was under the impression that “Ataraxia” was something heavy, you know, with cool black metal fonts? Ataraxia. Yeah. But no, “ataraxia” is defined as “calmness untroubled by mental or emotional disquiet,” so basically the total opposite of what I was going for there. It happens – I am fallible.

Looks instead like I should have looked beyond the cover and realized that the series is actually called the Ataraxia Mediation Series, a “collection of guided and experimental meditation releases” that Crash Symbols is curating. Like those old tapes you find at Goodwill with the dated covers featuring inviting guides or smooth, stacked rocks or water drops or pan flutes – you know what I’m talking about – Ataraxia cassettes will serve as peaceful escorts through the inner workings of your being, acting as an escape from the everyday stresses while simultaneously serving as self-actualizers. Jesse Fleming, an artist from Los Angeles, and tone duo Electric Sound Bath combine their mutual interest in bettering oneself through relaxation techniques, with Fleming reading prepared meditative statements while ESB crafts the atmosphere. The result fills the spaces of your consciousness that have been overwhelmed by modern inconvenience and a fast-paced mentality, all while manipulating your outlook to guide – there’s that word yet again – you toward a sense of inner alignment. How is this not on the lovely Inner Islands label, which specializes in this kind of thing?

Anyway, Fleming’s words over the sound bath are exactly what you would expect from this kind of experiment, and I don’t know if I’ve heard the word “forgiveness” so many times in one sitting – forgiveness of others, forgiveness of self, etc. It’s refreshing in these turbulent times to consider that forgiveness is still an option. What does forgiveness look like again? Well, hey, I know what it sounds like – it sounds like Ataraxia Series No. 1, like coming to terms with yourself, like being a better person after hearing what it’s doing to the deepest parts of your being. It heals while it transforms, and you transcend while you hear, and time stretches out like a flat circle so that you encompass the forgiveness and the forgiving, living and understanding at the very same moment. You won’t even come out the other side an “enlightened jerk face” (ha, Jesse, good one), but a human being ready to interact with other human beings. Isn’t that the point anyway? You may even bond with someone over a good metal record – if you’re willing to forgive yourself first.

Crash Symbols

--Ryan Masteller

JULIA BLOOP “Roland Throop” (Crash Symbols)

Sometimes I type these reviews up after some wine – I find that with the proper social lubricant, I can communicate to you, the masses, much more easily. I’m not so shy when I face you – and music filters just a little more exquisitely through the ear canals, pinging past blood vessels thinned by alcohol’s dreamy passage. I mention this because Julia Bloop has a similar process sometimes – maybe not the same intention, but the results appear to be comparable: “I drank wine, watched movies, listened to the radio, and was never quite sure what sounds I’d find on my 4-track when I woke up in the morning.” That’s how ideas are born, how Roland Throop began life and gestated to completion. I, on the other hand, require an editor after an evening of tipsy typing. Sadly, I’m usually the only editor in the vicinity at any time.

Just to be clear, here, I’m drinking coffee and eating breakfast for this one. It’s morning. I’m warming up.

Whatever Julia Bloop found on that 4-track certainly was worth the time it took to drunkenly capture it. Layers upon layers of loops and samples course through Roland Throop, taking on lives of their own, blooming into imaginary worlds vaguely familiar from half-remembered dreams. Indeed, the Bloop Bandcamp page notes “mysterious sounds from the bottom of the ocean” as the humeur actuelle, and there is definitely a sense that this tape envelops you as it unfolds. “I Gotta Get Outta This Place” is a trick to begin, an instrumental hip hop track in the vein of DJ Wally (The Stoned Ranger Rides Again was genius), the title of the song the only words spoken periodically. From there we are submerged, the music piping from a faraway place as the water in our ears carries the sound, yet it seems to be all around us. It’s not ambient, it’s not exotica, it’s ambi-exo-tronica, a thing I came up with when I combined some words together to form a terrible new one.

Without mincing (or combining) any more words, Roland Throop is at least exotic, an excursion to recesses of your mind usually reached only in a state of less-than-full consciousness. And that’s where the fun begins, where your imagination takes over, like it does on the hypnogogic “When You Get to Me,” a far-out surreal trip where voices whisper through the haze. It transitions into the almost fourteen-minute (!) “May These 2 Spirits Meet,” the central piece and the most flagrantly and unusually tropical and vibrant. It’s a joy to get lost in, and lasts, dare I say, not long enough. Its transition into “Diver on the Rocks” though sort of keeps the spirit alive. That goes for the rest of the tape – Julia Bloop’s mastered the spirit of playful discovery and execution of happy accidents. May we all drink wine in Julia Bloop’s honor.

Julia Bloop
Crash Symbols

-- Ryan Masteller

YLANGYLANG “Life Without Structure” (Crash Symbols)

Structure is an overrated concept if you ask me. Heck, ask anyone – including Catherine Debard, mastermind behind the YlangYlang moniker. Why would you listen to her instead of just me? Is there something less than credible about my opinion that you’d look to somebody else for confirmation? Oh wait – is it because Debard has just released a shiny new cassette tape on that very subject? Ah, I see – that’s it. I don’t have to feel so bad when there’s someone better suited at conveying that message, especially with such intense nuance through the potentially abstract conduits of sound and vision. I’ve just got these words. They’re wicked clumsy.

You take the abstract with the concrete, though: one informs the other, everyone’s happy in the end. Debard’s attention to melody, while setting it adrift in a sea of at-times formless mood, is the key grounding point to Life Without Structure, an anchor holding the listener in place as the sea of tone shifts around them. The cover of the tape itself grapples with this dichotomy – an unroofed bathroom, disconnected from any permanent house structure, seemingly sits on a table with clouds and geometric, mineral-like shapes. Three 3-inch floppy disks rest next to it. A telephone cord attached to the receiver is plugged (unseen) into the bathroom. A hand holds the telephone against a purple and white patterned backdrop. Examining these things on their own doesn’t mean anything. Combine them and a strange sense develops, a feeling, a personal response that differs from viewer to viewer.

And listener to listener. “Uncertain Landscapes” drops us right in to YlangYlang’s lavender world (“Lavender Wow” is two tracks later), buoying us along on pulsing rhythms and twinkling production while Debard’s voice floats ethereal through the mist. It’s as “structured” as Life Without Structure gets, as it and follow-up “And Do I Feel Ajar Somehow” (great title) embrace the crispness of pop and combine it with the encroaching “dream” state that “Lavender Wow” and the eleven-minute “The Way Shadows Play” delve into without abandon. You get engulfed in those two, for a long time, until you start to lose sense of your being and even your body itself, its structural connections disengaging from one another at a molecular level.

But oh, YlangYlang reels it back in – gives it “structure”? no – with “How Thin Is the Skin of Your Soul,” a comedown jam from the comedown tape, a last injection of philosophy, of esoteric liminality before incorporation, of oneself with oneself. A fitting end, then, to a cycle replete with the joys of the uncarnate, where structure dissolves into abstraction, although dimly discernible in the haze. Take yourself there, and see how you feel about it on the other side. Where will your mind and body go?

YlangYlang
Crash Symbols

--Ryan Masteller

AL LOVER “Interference Patterns” (Crash Symbols)

This tape took me by surprise, for more than one reason, but mainly because I initially read the artist’s name as Ed Lover, not Al Lover, and I was expecting a Dr. Dré (this one, not that one) remix of “The 900 Number” and some witty Yo! MTV Raps banter. But this is Cassette Gods, and Crash Symbols knows better, even if I don’t, so forget all that – but hear the drummer get wicked anyway.

Now that you’re all smiling with wonderful memories of the Ed Lover Dance (if you’re my age, at least), you can sit back and strap in for some in-your-face tuneage of a completely different stripe. You’ll smile still, sure, but it’s more of a holy-crap-I-hope-this-roller-coaster-doesn’t-fly-off-the-track kind of smile. See, Al Lover’s not in a great mood on Interference Patterns, nor does he really have any reason to be what with all the hell-in-a-handbasket talk and blatant garbage attitudes so pervasive among us modern folks. Well, heck, Al Lover has had it, everybody – had it right up to here. Gone is the fun-loving hooligan who thought “All Over” looked cooler as “Al Lover”; gone is the scamp who decided to smash together Neu! and Suicide for a release called Neuicide!; and gone is the SF psych-hippie who thought so much that Woodsist was the bee’s knees that he dedicated an entire remix album to the label. So what does his thought process consist of these days? Turns out the answer’s right in the title of this tape: Interference.

Indeed, each instrumental track is titled according to something that just halts life right in its tracks and forces you to deal with it: the title track, “Dualism Disrupted,” “Frenzy Zone,” “Gravity Is a Problem,” etc., not least of which, of course, is the unwieldy mouthful “Existential Crisis in Paris France on the Earth Planet September 2015 AD.” It’s not a stretch, either, to remind you that the Neuicide! sound still holds sway over the entire thing – imagine that: tense, inadvertently dosed, totally paranoid, and loving every minute of the noir state of rapid collapse going on around you. Al Lover knows that this is exactly what’s happening to you as you listen to Interference Patterns, and his gleeful mirror of total despair is an entire paradox that’s impossible to force yourself away from, not least because he kind of follows you around with it so that you’re an acute-angled turn from facing your horrible self and the horrible world at almost every second. And by closer “Hellucinations,” he’s pretty much just smacking you in the head with it – the mirror will smash eventually (it has to), along with your sanity.

Al Lover
Crash Symbols

-- Ryan Masteller

FISHERS “Under The Sheepherder Bridge” (Crash Symbols)

After seeing YVETTE live in concert, the last thing I’d expect from their drummer Dale Eisinger is what I heard on “Under The Sheepherder Bridge”. When I learned that the weird, acoustic music on the cassette was made by the same guy I saw bashing the drum set last September I was surprised.  Eisinger’s work under the moniker Fishers is a departure from the gritty industrial/noise rock he plays with YVETTE and ventures into lighter variations of those genres, then combines them with elements of acoustic and folk. The original songs, with titles including “Email From Mom” and “Jim Morrison Was A Cactus Full of Bees”, showcase Eisinger’s sonic creativity. He dabbles in a lot of sounds and organizes his compositions in a way that makes it work. The tape also includes covers of songs by The Appleseed Cast and Kurt Vile; although Eisinger certainly puts his own twist on both tracks to make them fit. Listeners are guaranteed not to be bored for the duration of the tape.

Stream + Buy: https://crashsymbols.bandcamp.com/album/under-the-sheepherder-bridge

-- Roy Blumenfeld