SPOOKY TAVI “Tetragrammaton” (Doom Trip Records)

 

HOTT MT’s Spooky Tavi has a new tape coming out in 2021 on Doom Trip Records, but before that happens, DTR has somehow managed to wrangle 2016’s Tetragrammaton from Tavi’s hard drive and dub it to cassette tape, thereby releasing into the world a chunk of chillaxed electro pop so contagious that I wish it was Tetragrammaton that everyone was infected getting instead of the Covid. Not only would the world be in a much happier state, it would also be less sick in general. Maybe we could remedy that with a little Tetragrammaton, using it as a substitute for most medications in a general way, applying it liberally to the ear canals, and sitting back and watching in satisfaction as all our ills are cured. I say this as a hypothetical of course – don’t do anything without consulting your doctor or the CDC first, because the chances are that I don’t know what I’m talking about.
 
What I do know about is music. HOTT MT are a deliriously psych-drenched dream pop duo, and their name is actually an initialism that stands for Hour of the Time Majesty Twelve, as lysergic a concept as you’re likely to find among their Los Angeles contemporaries. Spooky Tavi branches off in a direction to showcase his pop chops and production skills, warping earworm after earworm through heavily reverbed programs. But he’s still working the leftfield angle, dripping trippiness as his melodies sweeten into syrup. Think Washed Out or Panda Bear or Beach House or my friend Josh’s Freak Owls project. (I like me some Freak Owls.) And to top it all off, Tetragrammaton, which is the four-letter transliteration of the Hebrew name for God (YHWH, JHVH), has a spiritual dimension – you just gotta hear it to feel it, let it tingle all up in your spinal column, get those chemicals bubbling in the supernatural part of your brain. Spooky Tavi is easy to love, and I easily succumb to catchy weirdos. This one’s a keeper.
 
https://spookytavi.bandcamp.com/
 
https://doomtrip.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

PALE SPRING “Dusk” (Doom Trip)

 

Dusk brings the night. Dusk is the night.

 

Emily Harper Scott emerges fully formed on the new Pale Spring tape, shaking Cygnus and jolting into the future. She poses among rocks on the tape’s cover, evoking power and action, a goddess in the true classical sense, ready to shape reality or mete justice as the situation demands. One listen to Dusk and you get the sensation that Harper Scott is commanding the molecules of her surroundings in such a way that they swirl around her still form, obeying her gravity, ready at a moment’s notice to form whatever she wants them to or rush like projectiles at enemies. You just never really know.

 

The gloomy, airy production that Harper Scott and her husband Drew Scott bring to Dusk sets us in a twilit environment – the light’s fading, and we’re ready for it. Coming off like an R&B/trip-hop incarnation of Julee Cruise or Liz Fraser, Harper Scott croons smoky hymns into the atmosphere, dense with possibility, dreams, desire. The songs weave in and out of each other like reveries, the enchantment unbroken as Pale Spring commands your complete attention. Charmed, you wander into the dark, ready to act at a moment’s notice on Harper Scott’s behalf. Dusk is in your ears and nostrils, and it subtly overpowers you until you’re fully under its spell.

 

You’re happy for it.

 

https://palespring.bandcamp.com/

 

https://doomtrip.bandcamp.com/

 

--Ryan

SANGAM “The Night After” (Doom Trip Records)

Sangam is all environment. The veteran artist pops up again on Doom Trip, and it’s a nocturnal affair – this release is called The Night After, after all. Sure, you’re bound to get gloomy when you’re in the business of soundtracking late-night contemplations and ruminations and regrets. But in the midst of all that self-reflection, all that soul-searching, the odds that you’ll find a little glimmer of hope in there, a little flicker of inspiration, are firmly stacked in your favor. How can you not extract some inner peace from this? Once you’ve got that light at the end of the tunnel, all that’s left is for you to create the environment.

Sangam is all environment.

Like Badalamenti in the rain, Sangam knows how manage a synthesizer for maximum emotional impact. And yeah, while The Night After is certainly quite sad, the somber approach to worldbuilding yields some tremendously honest and insightful results. All this meditating on one’s life – be it as a whole or specific pieces, like something that happened, oh I don’t know, the night before maybe – allows us to fix our gaze inward in a search for tranquility that may not be outwardly evident. Sangam gets in the head of anyone who feels that the only way forward in their life is to revel in the chaos and use it to propel them onward into the unknown. It’s exhilarating, sure, but it’s also scary as hell – The Night After acts as a centering agent, as an eye in the storm.

With the clouds overhead and the steady drumbeat of raindrops on your umbrella, you can turn your collar up against the wind, against anything, really – and Sangam in your headphones gives you a resolve to keep pushing forward. It’s all about your environment.

https://sangam.bandcamp.com/

https://doomtrip.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

RANGERS “Late Electrics” (Doom Trip)

This is the guy I was telling you about. Joe Knight.

“Late Electrics” is his newest tape on the ever-fascinating Doom Trip. But don’t mistake this connection. Don’t for a second think that Joe Knight has anything up his sleeve – no tricks, no illusions. His cards are on the table, and his chips are down. He’s calling you out, you and your whole crew. He doesn’t know the meaning of the term “poker face.”

Somehow this turned into an extended metaphor, and I didn’t mean to do that.

I was telling you about Joe Knight because, in the tradition of weed-haze indie rock like Wooden Shjips and The Donkeys, it’s easy to vibe out to Rangers’ style. Texas guitar jammage hasn’t sounded this triptastic in a while, not since Rangers’ own “Texas Rock Bottom” for sure. And Knight knows what he’s up to – he didn’t release music on LA’s Not Not Fun for nothing. That’s certainly credible!

Joe Knight’s put together a nice little run of successful rock and roll here, a winning streak of about nine songs that fit perfectly onto two sides of a cassette tape. This continues the winning streak he’s had across multiple albums. And, given his winning streaks with things such as parking tickets and heads-up pennies found (none, and thousands!), I wouldn’t want to go up against him, not by a long shot. Especially not in a game of Texas Hold’em.

So it’s cool – it’s fine. Prop your feet up on your Fender practice amp, pop on some headphones, and jam along to your favorite track on “Late Electrics.” I like ’em all, but I’m going to do “Nile Rodgers” right now.

Rangers

Doom Trip


--Ryan

SOLO1 “Peninsula Strays” (Doom Trip Records)

Not unlike Leyland Kirby’s work, Solo1’s Peninsula Strays sounds like it’s taking place under water, a subaqueous song cycle that’s as level as it is engaging. Moving from samples to guitar to “various boxes” and back, all often within the same track, Andy Billington, of the YOU KAY, crafts woozy, languid soundscapes, sometimes gently rhythmic, as if Ant’lrd and Doom Trip alum Parallax ’48 collaborated on the experimental drone hit of the summer. And it is summer after all, and it’s really hot here where I live, so the cool waves of Peninsula Strays is a welcome distraction form the unending mercurial torture, each of the twelve tracks a refreshing balm. In fact, I just returned from vacation, and listening to Solo1 gives me the same feelings I had while stretched out on a raft in a pool. But don’t mistake Solo1 for a nostalgia-beach act or a mai tai-drunk relaxomundo purveyor of the tropical sort. Complete opposite. The walls of the backs of your eyelids shimmer in electric blue, nighttime light sources filtered through liquid, and you drift through a dream state to surreal landscapes that only you are able to understand. As reality bends, the music bends with it, bubbling and bursting till it reconstitutes itself as something a little different, not much, but enough to continue unfettered in a new direction, exclusive to your own imagination. That’s the fun of Peninsula Strays – no matter how you approach it, it works with you. It’s very cooperative that way. And who doesn’t like music that’s cooperative?

Solo1
Doom Trip Records

--Ryan Masteller

VARIOUS ARTISTS “Doom Mix Vol. 1” (Doom Trip Records)

I thought Doom Trip was pretty cool to begin with. The Cali label has an R. Stevie Moore and a Rangers release under its belt, and their Skyjelly and Parallax ’48 tapes were pretty swell. But the list of talent on their inaugural label comp is just stupid, stupid I tells ya. Besides all the artists I’ve just mentioned, you get appearances from Good Willsmith alums TALsounds and Mukqs, Wooden Wand, Jeremy Bible, Tristan Bath’s Missing Organs, and Heejin Jang, among a buttload of others. Embarrassment of riches? I’m certainly embarrassed. (By the riches, not by something stupid I’ve done.)

As is the case with most compilations, you come for the star power and you stay for the exciting new artists you’ve never heard before. Doom Mix Vol. 1 is no different, and based upon said star power (well, it’s in my head anyway), I’m demanding the artists I’m unfamiliar with blow my mind with their heady, brilliant, outsider rock, psych, experimental, and electronic work. Good start, then, for HOTT MT, tape opener, because “At Night in Chinatown” is just dream pop gold. Also dream pop gold? Vinyl Williams’s “Ode to Eternal.” Lest you think this comp is heavy on the dream pop, look no further than Tarkamt’s “Outer Gateways,” a gut-churning synth noir that’s as creepy as it is catchy. Traps PS ends side A with “Press Gangs,” one minute of squirrely post punk. Side B stars SCRTS and wrtch go back to back with ambient head trips “Tails Tied Together” and “WEALTH,” respectively.

Those are just the discoveries. I love them. I love this mix. It ends with a new Mukqs track, and Mukqs is the best. Listen, if you want a variety of weird stuff that you won’t be able to pin down but all sounds just right next to each other, look no further than Doom Mix Vol. 1. I can’t wait for whatever Doom Trip puts out next. Everybody has star power now.

Doom Trip Records

-- Ryan Masteller

PARALLAX ’48 “Garden of Mind” (Doom Trip)

What’s your perception, right this second? I guarantee you it will change as soon as you enter the Garden of Mind, a realm conjured by Parallax ’48, a mysterious duo of abbreviated first names and last names, separated by a slash: A. Boyd / M. Bailey. Spooky! Spooky nothing, though, when you press play and longform tones stretch and refract like light made audible. Those are the “Cracks in the Crystal,” the result kaleidoscopic tessellations of sound, and the geometry of the track is its main draw. It’s easy to imagine yourself on a physical plane even as ethereality threatens to overwhelm. The prism is reversed (or is it), then time moves forward, then all collapses to nostalgia and “Leaves” appears, a moment carved in time and observed from a fixed point of great distance. “Leaves” builds and crests, a meteoric high point in existence, a summary of innocence and a fleeting notion. “Cloud,” “Window,” all are fixed points as well, abrupt waystations on the cosmic path, each filtering human experience through waveforms. “Phonetics” might be the key to the whole thing, as two separate ideas emerge and bleed into each other, found sound and astral drift colliding in a heavenly realm where dreams are strengthened and maintained, processed into reality. Both “Disappear” and “For” are piano-based excursions, both acting as fitting denouement as you materialize on the other side, light filled, fully whole after spending your time within the Garden of Mind. What made you this way, why was there such an intense connection? Objects, images, perceived once, take on new meaning on the other side of an encounter with Parallax ’48. It’s like the picture you were taking, scene fully realized, is now taking you instead of the other way around. Seems like tending that garden is the most important thing you may ever do.

Parallax ’48
Doom Trip

--Ryan Masteller