DIAMOND LEMONADE "Transmissions From the Past" (JK Tapes)

(Disclaimer: Being an idiot, I wrote the review below totally oblivious to the fact that it had already been written about. Sorry Brian! Well, it's Mr. Schütte's lucky day, apparently.)

Ulf Schütte is a German artist who runs the Tape Tektoniks label and has recorded numerous albums as Shivers (solo) and Aosuke (duo with Tobert Knopp). This Diamond Lemonade thing is pretty confounding; it reminded me of the scene in "Akira" when the stuffed animals came to life in gigantic proportion and destroyed Tetsuo's hospital room. "Transmissions From the Past" consists of two tracks which repeat on the opposite side. The first is a disorienting loop collage of backwards bells, swirls of toy sounds and minimal synth refrains. Track two is an acid-soaked nightmare of whirling bleeps and what might as well be the Teletubbies theme played with microphone feedback. Each composition lasts only a few minutes, which works to its advantage. Both take full use of stereo effects, so headphone listening is essential. Imagine Hans Grusel's jarring early work and you're not far off. The packaging is classic JK Tapes style with some of the best artwork seen yet, depicting a totem pole figure in a Gary Panter-meets-Mat Brinkman mythological dream field and washed over with watercolor. The cassette itself is a sweet sea foam green and goops of grey paint line the inside of the case. Lovely.

http://www.tapetektoniks.de
http://www.jktapes.com/

DIAMOND LEMONADE "Transmissions From The Past" (JK Tapes)

Without hearing the actual sounds on this c-20, the 70's Sci-Fi styled title may seem a little gauche. Fortunately, Diamond Lemonade are running the entire race with this music-from-the-future cliché and end up with completely enjoyable results. Too many noise tapes seem desperate in their attempts at having a theme solely through their use of a "meaningful" name. But Transmissions From The Past is an apt title for Diamond Lemonade's sounds that invoke the early-electronic/synth aesthetic that is associated with not the actual future, but the future as a dandified, fashionable utopia. That of course makes these sounds inescapably retro, but by being presented here in rough gem form of spray painted cassette, one has to wonder if this is the 70's sci-fi fantasy come to actualization. More likely made with a computer or some other DIY thrift store gear than an actual fancy modular synth, this is noodley oscillations and bell-manipulations being made from the layman's world rather than about it. Long before the Wright Brothers people dreamed of flying machines. Dreams that became real, but looked much different than the airliners of today. Well, the once dream of music's sci-fi future may have become real on this cassette. It may not be as fashionable as a Buchla dream, but we all love watching the National Geographic channel. Don't we?