TIM PILCHER & MONICA LORD “s/t” (Dismal Niche)

I am a man of constant sorrow. I’ve seen trouble all my day. Well, now that you mention it, I have not seen trouble all my day, and I’m not really in a state of constant sorrow. But you’ll have to excuse me that the old Soggy Bottom Boys song gets lodged in the ol’ thinker from time to time, especially when I’m faced with a full-on deluge of Americana in the form of rootsy folk from the Midwest. And to be fair, Tim Pilcher and Monica Lord do not recall the Soggy Bottom Boys (maybe a bit on “The Hermit”), but they ply the trade of a-pickin’ and a-bowin’ they’s instruments till the sweet heavenly angels come to rest on the roofs of the lucky homes from which their celestial emanations emerge. Pilcher with his acoustic guitar sends the prayers of the downtrodden aloft, notes gently sparkling off into the night sky like embers from a campfire. Lord draws the angels to earth and tethers them here with her plaintive cello, beseeching them with supplications for increased attention. This self-titled tape is pure nighttime meditativeness, beyond the back porch but never backwoods – the aw-shucks dreamer and romantic in me is fully sated after its too-brief encroachment into my consciousness. So what do I do now, now that I’ve melted into the background, into the shadows, become adrift on the night? Can I speak in a different language, from a different pulpit, with a different message? No more sorrow, no more trouble. I will not be run out of this town. I will be redeemed! Forgiven – but maybe not by the great state of Mississippi? Ah well. I guess I should never have knocked over that Piggly Wiggly in Yazoo City. But hey – at least I know what redemption SOUNDS like. Sounds like this tape.

Dismal Niche

--Ryan Masteller

CHRISTENSEN & CHLAPEK “Unknown Pressures” C40 (Dismal Niche)

Don’t sleep on the ambient stuff. Do not become narcotized by the ever-evolving haze. Christensen & Chlapek, of Zelienople and Neatly Knotted / Nevada Greene, respectively, build brick by brick, level by level an ziggurat of guitar and synthesizer, sound made physically dense by its heavy vibe. The two sides, one passage per each, take on actual mass, and from atop it you can glimpse the cosmos. Rhythm guides the players, chattering, vibrant through the first half of side A, changing to a shuffling backmask before blowing itself out by the end of the improvisation. Side B glows from the light of the Milky Way visible in the night sky, becoming an Evening Star itself in through the magic of synthesizer transfiguration. So down some peyote and hop into your van, drive deep into the desert, and truly become. Or ingest the merciless peppers of Quetzlzacatenango, grown deep in the jungle primeval by the inmates of a Guatemalan insane asylum, find your spirit animal, and be guided on a vision quest. Either way, your choice – but do choose to have Unknown Pressures playing on some kind of device throughout the night.

Dismal Niche

--Ryan Masteller

BLANK THOMAS “405 Skies” (Dismal Niche)

2016 is turning out to be a really weird year. It feels like I’ve said that somewhere before … but where? Oh yeah – in my Critical Masses review of Blank Thomas’s 405 Skies. It happens sometimes – I get doubled up there and here. So what? It gives me the chance to get back into a release I totally dug, even though it sort of freaked me out considering the direction it pointed me toward back in January. Still, I’ll give you a second to read that review, because it was an awesome review, and that’s where you’ll find the details.

Linky poo to the Critical Masses’s review of 405 Skies

So here’s where we stand: 2016 is still really weird, and Blank Thomas has still offered the best soundtrack to that weirdness. Heavy oscillating synth action with beats. Sometimes. Sometimes not. Filling in this year’s cracks like grout in my bathroom tile and holding it all together. This is an election year, too (maybe you’re aware?), so Blank Thomas filters the 24-hour news cycle through a poorly tracked VHS spectrum. Grout gets moldy, cracks, bathroom becomes unusable, atomic bomb nullifies everything. Or Ebola.

Dismal Niche

--Ryan Masteller

SOLID WASTE “Long Slow Dream” C25 (Dismal Niche)

 Everything winds down – that’s what I gather from the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and that’s what I present here in paraphrase. Everything moves toward disorder, or death, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. I’m reminded of this while listening to Long Slow Dream, the newest cassette release on Dismal Niche, where three scamps named Mario, Josh, and Nate play synthesizers and allow the listener to drift on a path all the way to destruction. Because that’s where we all end up.

Let me backtrack a minute. Those of you who see the name “Solid Waste” and think, “Oh, they’re a poop band” are absolutely wrong. The idea of “Solid Waste” is an indictment of excess and disposability. It’s an indictment that we’re hastening our own demise by paving the way with garbage and ignoring the true issues. It’s an indictment of a world gradually winding down, into chaos.

So “The Journey Is the Pleasure, Pts. 1-3” comprises side A, and that’s a meaningful title, because Long Slow Dream is proof that no matter what the end result will be, we have these celestial tones to guide us. And thankfully, they’re long, slow, and tranquil, the perfect analgesic for outer stimuli. “The Journey” allows eyes to close and dreams to rise. Where it ends, “Being Generous with Yourself, Long Slow Dream” begins, providing the permission to tune it all out when it gets to be too much. Right? It’s like a spa treatment for your ears – you gotta be good to yourself somehow, I say.

So drift above the turmoil in a healthy bath of peaceful synthesizer washes and let it all go. It’s going to all be over soon enough. Don’t even worry about it.

Dismal Niche Bandcamp page

--Ryan Masteller

TYLER POWELL “Outgoing Messages” (Dismal Niche)

Residential landlines have already reached relic status. Even most older people have cell phones these days. This has led to home phones and their accessories laying to waste. Well instead of letting his answer machine rot Tyler Powell used it to record loops of guitar compositions designed to be background noise.

“Outgoing Messages” is essentially a compilation album of his weird hobby.  The tracks are bits and pieces of some of the loops he created that he deemed good enough to be reproduced. Powell has created calm atmospheric music that is mundane enough to do other things while listening to but pleasant enough not to turn off. I think that was the balance he was going for when he made these; so job well done.

Stream + Buy: https://dismalnichetapes.bandcamp.com/album/outgoing-messages-2

-- Roy Blumenfeld

HUSH ARBORS “Gualala Blues” C32 (Dismal Niche Tapes)

You can judge this tape by the cover and name. It is exactly as it looks. Warm. Simple. Pleasant.

Recorded in one take in an empty room, save a camping chair, sleepy-eyed Pomeranian, and maybe some faint dust specks whirling through the sunbeams that warmed the hardwood cedar floor. Simple. Pleasant. Warm.

File under: Slower/minimal, Takoma Records and/or Tompkins Square, steel string, guitar soli, pleasant, warm, simple.

https://hush-arbors.bandcamp.com/album/gualala-blues

and/or

http://cargocollective.com/dismalniche

- - Jacob An Kittenplan