Guest Review III: Dave Smolen and hair_loss

Here's the second review. Hope it works and let me know if you need/want more help with reviews in the future.

-Tucker

METASPLICE "MS I/II" (Injections ltd.)

Alrighty so what we have here is a new collaboration between Dave Smolen and hair_loss. The cassette starts out with some slower moving drones and deep beats as other worldly noises come out through the tape hiss. Then it starts getting faster and noisier as more waves of noise come in. There is a lot going on on this tape; I've listened to it 3 times now in order to get a good feel of it and every time I put it on I notice something new happening in every track. Lots of really cool beats swirling around each other all of the time while new sounds come through and create a really nice grooves and shit that you can sort of nod along to before you become enraptured by the mass amount of sound that are vibrating into your ear drums. Sometimes it sounds like I am listening to a really fast-paced sci-fi movie full of aliens that are in a dance club somewhere on another planet. Some of the sounds these guys are making have a mysterious feel to them like the waters of the deep or outer space or the twilite zone type thing. It's like if David Lynch's twin peaks was more like SKINS this could be the soundtrack.

The packaging on this baby also holds some mystery, a blue tape and blue j-card with nothing but a 35mm splice of film glued to the inside flap. Very simple packaging for an anything but simple collection of tunes.

BUY

-------

FYI, I've got self penned reviews coming out every day for a week or so, but I hope to put up some more guest reviews as they come in- nick

Dave Smolen "S/t" c1 (Breathmint)

Yep, you read it right, a 1 minute tape. Jeez! I just saw this guy play at INC and he was one of my favorites, really percussive electronics, so you can imagine how disheartened i was to discover this tape was the only thing of his available that night, though i still picked it up thinking, 'i wonder how anyone could approach the task of making two 30 second sides worth all that trouble.' Of course, it gets better, it's not even the full side and both sound really really similar, like someone waking up in the middle of a gamelan riot, uh, for like 15 seconds, twice...

Luckily I picked up a bunch of other stuff from him that night because this would definitely not suffice when i was in a Smolen mood. Still, gotta give props to Breathmint for once again doing something that most people would not let sneak beyond the conception phase. Plus i've heard his request to the artists is "Gimme your best minute!" which i'm pretty fond of.

Comes in black and white cover on red paper.
Looks like Breathmint is in the process of getting the newest batch up so i'm not sure of the edition but check:
www.breathmint.net for more info.
Picture of Dave Smolen pulled from the site of the label he runs:
www.malleablerecs.com