NICHOLAS LANGLEY “Thinky Space” (Entertainment Systems)

Did you just down an entire smoothie composed of Cluster, Vangelis, and Brian Eno for breakfast? Because I just did, and I think Nicholas Langley did too, or maybe that’s what his breakfast smoothies consist of everyday, that and some bananas and soy milk and other healthy oddities. John Carpenter? Sure. Kale? Why not. Make the thing green. This cassette tape sure is.

Just because you can say those names out loud doesn’t mean you can craft the same type of music within that sci-fi ambient synth idiom. It takes a special kind of celestial soul to get on that interstellar tip. Fortunately for us, they must distill astrophysics in Brighton and distribute it en masse, or at least in heavy doses in the Langley household, because our boy Nick, perhaps perched on the edge Brighton Pier, staring out into the expanse (or toward France), has it coursing through his system. Or maybe he’s just internalized it over time – he has been making this kind of music for many years, and indeed runs a label called Entropy Music that is home to many of his releases (several of which are collaborative efforts with label cofounder David Dilliway), including Phragaonesia, Gestalt Projectection, and The Reasonable Men. I guess, in the end, this is just what he does.

Which makes Thinky Space, his first cassette release for Entertainment Systems, a completely logical outcome. The tunes burrow under your skin and head straight for your cerebral cortex, regardless of whether they’re atmospheric ambient passages (“Svalbard Gothic”) or pulsing waves of joyous melody (“Yellow, Green, Silver”). Heck, Langley’s good at both. And the variety does us good, kind of like a breakfast balanced with all sorts of nutritional goodies, perhaps whipped together in a blender of some sort. But that’s the smoothie talking again. Once those galactic swirls start swimming around your field of vision and your relation to your surroundings becomes less and less observable, it won’t matter anymore. Breakfast will cease to be important. Brighton will cease to be important. Somehow, the only important thing will be to exist in the moment and observe. That’s the feeling I get from Thinky Space, anyway.

Nicholas Langley

Entertainment Systems

--Ryan Masteller

AFRICAN GHOST VALLEY “Dark Tropicals” (Entertainment Systems)

Dark Tropicals is a dense vision from African Ghost Valley, the duo irradiating jungle landscapes with their noxious sonics, enveloping territories with complete twilit atmospherics. To remove oneself from the concept of Dark Tropicals would be wasteful – the words have meaning, whispered under breaths as totemic mantras, each syllable a powerful spell cast on listener and vicinity alike. Life creeps, burdened by poisons unleashed by humans. Life recedes, all of it, as intelligences higher than ours increase the concentration of our chemical annihilation so that we, too, succumb to the encroaching uninhabitability. I’m such a downer today.

But dang, turns out if you let all this icky-sticky-ness leak into your mainframe, the resulting output sounds pretty cool, at the very, very least. Maybe this mass eradication is the cure for what ails the ol’ planet, or at least it’s the last gasp before we turn our top-of-the-food-chain-status certificates, the ones we all have laminated and stored neatly in our home offices, over to the hyperintelligent machines doing all that eradicating. The tropics have rotted, life is on the brink. It’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day, but without the happy ending! (I forget – did T2:JD have a happy ending?)

African Ghost Valley is anticipating the end. Bass bubbles form the foundation, and synthesizers pierce them with impunity. Dark Tropicals decays and rots before our ears. Become enmeshed in the decline.

African Ghost Valley

Entertainment Systems

--Ryan Masteller

PURPOSE16 “Purpose16” (Entertainment Systems)

Subterranean vibes. Exclusive access. Mind control. Deep thrum. When encountering Purpose16’s stark and menacing micro-electronic pulses, you’re likely to be whisked to a dangerous place. You’ll either go missing or find yourself searching in vain for someone who has. Either that or you get a good, long, introspective journey through unfamiliar territory. It’s like every metaphor for your life you’ve ever imagined suddenly becoming animated within the universe conjured by this release, but with whatever luster dulled to a weird creepology. It’s sort of spooky what you find when you peel back the layers of your psyche. Well, Purpose16’s psyche, anyway.

“Flood,” “Vanishing,” and “Long Mirror” stretch the trip close to thirty minutes, and by the end of the tape you reach a desperation, or a longing, or something to bring you out of the haze. It’s anyone’s guess if you’re actually able to escape, or if you’re primed to experience Purpose16 for eternity. I’m actually not too bothered if this needs to repeat for a while.

Entertainment Systems

--Ryan Masteller

H TAKAHASHI “Sea Meditation” (Entertainment Systems)

So in case you didn’t know (and why would you?), I have a four-and-a-half-year-old son, and he’s going through an Octonauts phase right now. For those unfamiliar, Octonauts is a cartoon that takes place under the sea. There’s a polar bear, a cat, a penguin, an otter, a rabbit, an octopus, and a bunch of turnip-like creatures called vegimals that live in a high-tech scientific underwater observatory, and they go on various adventures and meet all kinds of different creatures. Kids learn a lot of good stuff. As an adult, I recommend it – it’s a surprisingly engaging kids’ show.

H Takahashi’s Sea Meditation is obviously meant as a paean to the ocean, and it’s carefully crafted as a simulation of the solitude one would feel if immersed in the briny deep. No adventure here – unless you consider the activity of your mind while alone adventurous. In a sense it is, actually – I keep wanting to use the noun meditation in this review as if Takahashi hasn’t already made it clear in the release’s title that he’s going for ruminative qualities, but the deeper inside your mind you get and the more you visualize the amazing and mysterious landscape of the sea, the better you’re able to discover new and exciting things. About yourself, about our planet, whatever – Takahashi’s music takes you there. Sea Meditation is a cassette-length submersion experience, and it will make you appreciate life – not just ocean life, but life everywhere – just a little bit more.

Imagine if Mark Mothersbaugh’s Life Aquatic score was ambient instead of quirky, and instead of a jaguar shark, ol’ Steve Zissou and Esteban quietly observed the vast array of organisms around them as they hovered tranquilly and drifted with the currents. Or imagine if the Octonauts themselves had a day off, and they didn’t have to rescue a crab or a sea cucumber or something from some sort of peril – perhaps they enter a cave filled with wildly bioluminescent creatures and just look at it for a while. Sea Meditation is these things, and oh so much more. For naturalists and dreamers alike.

Entertainment Systems

H Takahashi Soundcloud

--Ryan Masteller

TAKAHIRO MUKAI “Telly, Washer and Fridge” (Entertainment Systems)

“A collection of 6 signature TAKAHIRO MUKAI musings.” Because that’s what TAKAHIRO MUKAI does, everybody, he muses over his synthesizer. He doesn’t compose, he doesn’t jam, he muses. Meaning, he considers carefully and introspectively how his miniature synthesizer movements will move and flow, penetrate the ears, infiltrate the mind.

The tracks are titled by numbers, because TM has absolutely no interest or time for such trivial matters as actually naming songs. And he doesn’t need to. Tracks like “#176” and “#174” bounce along like a stone skipping on a still pond, its ripple effects the digital EQ readout of each track, because we’re eating our own tail here, ouroboros style. Realities are overlapping, superimposed like ancient Rome over modern-day life, just like in VALIS, and if you haven’t read VALIS, do it. Then listen to Takahiro Mukai. Or vice versa. One does not inform the other.

If there exists a discotheque where TM DJ’s, it would be the weirdest, herky-jerky dancefloor ever. Instead of huge, four-on-the-floor beats, everybody would stumble-bumble to the sickly, warbling, static-heavy bong rips Telly, Washer and Fridge constantly serves. But still, if you’re listening to this – and I know you are, everybody is right now, and I mean everybody – you can totally picture the club, right? The lightshow, the vibe – the music’s just a little off. And that’s why TM’s perfect for being in my head. Because there’s no way in FUCK that I’m ever going to a club.

http://www.entertainment-systems.net/

http://soundcloud.com/takahiro-5

--Ryan Masteller

CRYPTOSYSTEM I – “Mortalscapes” DAGIR DU – “Gloom Fortress” (Entertainment Systems)

Entertainment Systems has announced its presence as a viable cassette label with its inaugural 3-tape batch early this year. I’ve already covered the exciting (and possibly last!) release by Rome’s Babexo, Last Days of Youth, over yonder at Critical Masses – hey, look, a link to it!

http://criticalmassesmedia.com/2015/03/crate-digging-babexo-last-days-of-youth/

Sorry, sorry, I’m not here to shill for my other ventures, but Babexo’s release was just right up my alley, and the perfect intro to Entertainment Systems. But there are two equally compelling releases that I haven’t had a chance to fawn over yet, and now seemed like the perfect time to do that. How’s it for you, OK? You got a moment? Excellent, let’s hash it out.

Cryptosystem I (Joseph Morris, aka Druid Cloak) shoots the vastnesses of altered realities and abstract planes in a sand skiff of his own devising, rendering in 3D what only has been briefly glimpsed in the mind. Sound lysergic? Mushroomy? Eh, maybe – but it’s a little dark and cyber-weird for the average drug trip. You might lose a synapse if you’re on something. Instead, these are Mortalscapes, like the title suggests, deep dives into the human mind. The results are extractions of the psyche, so there’s a bit of a dark tinge to this bad boy. It’s a little bit ambient, a little bit electronic, and a little bit darkwave-y – and it’s a whole lotta awesome.

The Entertainment Systems bandcamp page simply suggests that Gloom Fortress, the superbly titled tape from Dagir Du, is “open world journey music” and “passages for foggy travels.” I’m not going to argue with anything right there, because that’s just where this cassette takes you. Imagine remote mountain passages and a hidden stronghold that’s barely accessible by air, let alone ground. That’s exactly where “Bockibocki” opens the album, with shimmering synth and Final Fantasy snow-world soundtrack brilliance. And that’s also exactly where the album goes, experimenting with the vibe on the also excellently named “Tomb Drifter,” although Dagir Du allows fragmented beats and noise to invade tracks like “Fragd Beyond” and “Vile Boy VII.”  Also – who or what is Dagir Du?

So yeah, that’s Entertainment Systems for you – three months and three releases in, and I’m already in for the next round. Can you still get your grubby paws on these hot tapes? Don’t waste time, they’re running out… (as all good cassette labels do, of course).

http://www.entertainment-systems.net/

https://entertainment-systems.bandcamp.com/music

--Ryan Masteller