ANDREW WEATHERS ENSEMBLE “The Thousand Birds in the Earth, the Thousand Birds in the Sky” C40 (Full Spectrum)

If you’re going to go out, why not go out on top? Andrew Weathers, Full Spectrum label head and mastering expert extraordinaire (honestly, how many of the tapes in your collection has he gotten his paws on?) has decided to retire the “Ensemble” moniker after this release, the fascinatingly titled The Thousand Birds in the Earth, the Thousand Birds in the Sky. Why? What could possibly prompt the dissolution of such a consistently excellent project?

 

Turns out a little wanderlust is all. Andrew Weathers just wants to do something new, and, as such, he actually is going out on top with the Ensemble.

 

Wanderlust, or something adjacent to it, inspired Thousand Birds anyway, as Weathers’s frequent jaunts across the West Texas desert kicked neurons into gear within his brain, often igniting the spark of inspiration on those lonely highway drives enough that he’d have to quick run to an instrument whenever he’d get home to get everything out of his head that cropped up along the way. The result is four sprawling, flowing tracks, each one a sun-damaged psychic trip to the edge of endurance.

 

So now that you’ve looked through all your tapes and realized Weathers has worked in some capacity on 85 percent of them (give or take), you won’t be surprised that there’s a long list of collaborators on board to help him realize the Ensemble’s vision. Everybody gets equal footing, and the result truly sounds like a collective effort. Still, it never feels overstuffed – in fact, it always feels airy and lightly melodic, never dense or constricted. Thousand Birds mimics the desert itself, spreading out, endlessly, in all directions, promising visions and truths to those willing to approach it on its terms.

 

There’s road-movie aspects to it, kosmische, 1970s fusion, drifting folk, and even Autotune! Basically, anything anyone with a predilection toward any of those things could want in their Ensemble releases. (Even though most of us don’t immediately think of Autotune as such a necessary ingredient – how wrong we were …) So if this is indeed the end of the line for the Andrew Weathers Ensemble, it couldn’t have closed out on a higher note. Can’t wait to hear what Weathers himself has up his sleeve next!

 

https://andrewweathers.bandcamp.com/

 

https://fullspectrumrecords.bandcamp.com/

 

--Ryan

VARIOUS ARTISTS “Infinite Futures” 2xC60 (Full Spectrum)

If there are indeed infinite possible futures from the present on, maybe we could have figured that out a while back and not hurtled down the present/future that we’re in, the one where everything sucks and people are sick and dying? I’m just saying – seems like we made some pretty bad decisions as a human race along the way to get where we are. But here’s the good news: we don’t have to stay on this path – we can enact a future where we get past all of this and realize that long-sought-after “better tomorrow.”

Full Spectrum realized that a little over ten years ago. The erstwhile North Carolina label (now based in Littlefield, Texas) run by Andrew Weathers (who’s mastered pretty much every tape you own) started off with no plan, just the starry-eyed mission to release cassette tapes of music that they liked. Before anyone knew it, an entire decade had passed, and Weathers decided to do something to commemorate it. Enter Infinite Futures, a massive double cassette set that pits artists who have released music on the label against each other … well, more like puts them in the same room together to see if they can coexist. Turns out they can. (This is pre-COVID.)

I think we can safely say that Full Spectrum has made more correct choices than not along the way, and Infinite Futures is certainly a reflection of that. These long-form pieces all adhere to the freewheeling experimental spirit exemplified by Weathers and cohorts, those who have blazed the trail from then till now. There’s all kinds of great stuff here – from electronic excursions to ambient explorations to skyrocketing guitar crescendos to jazzy whirlwinds, Infinite Futures scratches pretty much whatever itch you happen to have at any given moment, maybe even several of them at once! Truly, the results speak to imagining the amazing possibilities inherent in fruitful collaboration. Some might say there are infinite possibilities … infinite futures …

Plus, most of these songs are in the ten-minute range – I’d be surprised if the average time of all the tracks wasn’t ten minutes. Ten minutes, ten years? Parallelism!

https://fullspectrumrecords.bandcamp.com/

PAUL HOSKIN & CODY YANTIS “Georgetown Archive” (Full Spectrum)

The latest in Full Spectrum’s Editions Littlefield series, Georgetown Archive finds freewheeling instrumentalists Paul Hoskin (RIP – though, fortunately, he exited this world blissfully ignorant of “COVID-19” and its attendant effects) and Cody Yantis rollicking through Seattle’s cold months in the only way they know how: like sculptors tripping over themselves in a Scrooge McDuck–like vault of LEGO pieces and willing structures into being. Maybe it’s the deliberate plucking of Yantis’s guitar or the subtle blurts of Hoskin’s sax or clarinet (not to mention the undulating shift of the foundational electronics) that conjures these wild fancies. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m ONLY BUILDING LEGOS AND WATCHING DUCKTALES IN SELF-ISOLATION … sorry for the shouting – everything’s getting to me. Still, at times like these, patience can be rewarded. We all have plenty of patience at the moment.

Let’s not even bother with the fact that these recordings are eight to ten years old, they work, right here, right now. Like shamans impelling followers to obey, the duo concocts soundwaves upon structural soundwaves as a base and conjures those LEGO pieces into weird alien shapes, and the colors are weird and alien. Everything’s sticking out at odd angles, and parts of it aren’t connected well and buckle under weight of other things. It’s all a conceptual mess, but that’s what makes it fun for the free-form visionary. By the end, the 2012 track, seismic rumbles cause everything to collapse until it’s just a big mess on the floor again, and everybody has to walk through the room in bare feet. But it’s OK! You have new patterns on your soles. Souls? Who cares.

https://fullspectrumrecords.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

BLAINE TODD “Every Road is a Good Road" C50 (Full Spectrum/Debacle Records)

If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, “Every Road is a Good Road” holds weight. There’s plenty of paths/resemblances pointing to Sun City Girls noodle-work & irreverence, some trippy pedalwork and entrancing finger-picking a-la Espers, but also, it's looser, spacier, & jammier (again, SCGesque, but maybe more Animal Collective-like) in its use of synthesizers/sequencers.  

All this referencing aside, Blaine Todd is neither copycat, nor one-trick pony, but rather a Frankensteinian super-monster of psychy alt/folk goodness that proves hell-bent on guiding us through a cavernous, mesmerizing underworld of awesome. Hail hail!

https://fullspectrumrecords.bandcamp.com/album/every-road-is-a-good-road

http://www.debaclerecords.com/

and/or

https://blaine-todd.bandcamp.com/

—Jacob An Kittenplan

RADERE “The Blood” (Full Spectrum)

The process, the process. It’s easy to discuss it, to get inside someone’s head and figure out where they’re coming from, where they’re going, what their intentions are. Here, Radere, aka Carl Ritger, found himself moving back east from Denver. Since his stuff was all packed up, all he had on hand was a small modular synthesizer and digital recorder. A good artist is always able to use whatever’s around to realize their vision, and Radere is no exception. He was able to get creative under the circumstances, and The Blood is the result.

The Blood refers to his family. His folks live outside of Philly, and that’s where most of this was recorded. And as we all know, family can be crazy, can be unpredictable, can be challenging, in both good and bad ways. The Blood reflects that instability, its tactile sonics telling a story stretching over generations, at times intense and in-your-face, at others calmly observing itself, as if the machines of its making were trapped in a cycle of self-reflection. And isn’t it all self-reflection anyway, regardless of which end of the spectrum you happen to be occupying? The Blood comes off as Radere’s own worldview at a specific period of time, and he captures the uncertainty and the curiosity of his experiences quite remarkably.

https://radere.bandcamp.com/

https://fullspectrumrecords.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

AARON OPPENHEIM “Cumberland County” (Full Spectrum)

This is sort of a surprise coming from a Real Life Rock & Roll Band member, but maybe we shouldn’t be surprised by anything anymore, I dunno. Cumberland County is three longform experimental pieces that Aaron Oppenheim recorded and then ran through software that turned the source material into a mosaic of pixilated sounds, fragments upon fragments of data input and then spit back out into an unrecognizable and fascinating whole. According to Oppenheim, Cumberland County stands as “a tribute of sorts to … Windham Hill … and their particular strain of New Age music.” It’s certainly a head trip through esoteric landscapes.

The three pieces each have a distinct flavor to them. “September Seas” runs piano compositions through software until its unrecognizable in its original form, but over the course of its ten minutes becomes a new, hybrid entity that wouldn’t sound out of place in the Orange Milk catalog. “Many More” starts along as a high-pitched, cut-up digital blitz, until it coalesces into a surprising ambient drone. “Brick by Brick” is a twenty-minute evolution of acoustic guitar work mulched by a “Sanyo TRC 9010 cassette transcriber,” which loops and layers and distorts the guitar into strange, alien alignments that nevertheless whirl in enchantment until they, again surprisingly, sputter out at the end.

No rock, no roll here. Just a fantastic entry into the Full Spectrum catalog, and one that’ll have me coming back to Aaron Oppenheim’s work in the future.

https://aaronoppenheim.bandcamp.com/

https://fullspectrumrecords.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

LAVATONE “Lavatone" C39 (Full Spectrum Records)

Lavatone’s eponymous release for Full Spectrum Sounds might recall some space cult sharing a watery cave with actual aliens working on their busted-up spaceships. Lotsa flanging decay, natural echo, tribal pulses, & warpy warpage for days. Organic recording process. Pretty cool thunderstorm & wet window jam sesh at one point. Steel drum, jaw harp, gamelan-ish elements come & go. 

This release was originally recorded a quarter century ago, and makes me think of all the people who must have come down from a serious trip while listening to June of ’44 seven-inches played at 18rpm on a dying Fisher Price player. Semi-relaxing, in a fairly unnerving way.

https://fullspectrumrecords.bandcamp.com/album/lavatone

and/or

https://lavatone.bandcamp.com/

--Jacob An Kittenplan

SHANNA SORDAHL “Radiate Don’t Fear the Quietus" C46 (Full Spectrum Records)

With so many skull-rattlingly brilliant electro-acoustic/avant-garde/minimalist composers rolling down the hill from Mills College over the decades, a Venn diagraming of influences and accomplices is miiiiighty tempting. For example, a cursory sweep of search engines shows that Shanna Sordahl was one of the cellists who played on Sarah Davachi’s overtone-worshipping “Baron’s Court” album. I’d have to dig a bit deeper to verify whether or not SS ever saw (or jammed with, for that matter) the sorely missed super-duo, Date Palms, but I’d swear it was Marielle Jakobsons’ own mournful melodies being bowed (though maybe with Arthur Russell’s more somber side in mind) during the more active, riffy portions of RDFtQ.

This is not to say that this album is in ANY WAY derivative; it just so happens to champion the qualities of the more adventurous electronic sound-sculptors that I happen to love from the SF Bay Area. Listen to this turned up loud and get lost!

Also, check the FS bio on bandcamp for Sordahl’s specs/gear-nerdery, if you’re into that sort of thing. There’s some rad stuff going on, behind the scenes, on her personal website, too, so go explore!

https://fullspectrumrecords.bandcamp.com/album/radiate-dont-fear-the-quietus

and/or

https://www.shannasordahl.net/

--Jacob An Kittenplan

REAL LIFE ROCK & ROLL BAND“Let Me Sleep / Death Is a Narrow Sea” C12 (Full Spectrum)

Andrew Weathers, the man behind Full Spectrum, has a band band that he sometimes plays in, the wink-and-noddy and 100 percent accurately titled Real Life Rock & Roll Band. In this modern time of vast oversharing, there’s nothing weird about the band’s name, nothing at all. In fact, the tongue-in-cheekness is somewhat fitting, as, although this band is indeed a “rock” band by definition, its take on “rock” is breezy and somewhat unassuming, a Sea and Cakey tributary of clean action but with sometimes Autotuned vocals, a device that works surprisingly well here. Like the best of the self-aware indie set of the late 1990s and early 2000s, RLR&RB wear their influences on the fronts of their ironic t-shirts, turning in their take on “original hippie cowboy” Mickey Newbury’s “Let Me Sleep” on the A-side of the cassingle (why not?) while knocking out their own concoction, “Death Is a Narrow Sea” on the flip. Each track is an endlessly relistenable slice of mopey post-pop joy, and the band even veers into Juno territory by the end of “Death Is a Narrow Sea” with its dissonant guitars and melancholy chords. Turns out Weathers is a bit of a mid-oughts emo fan, and clearly he’s spun a little Sunny Day and Juno in his time. He’s certainly got the non-dickish emo stuff down (as opposed to what I consider the “dickish” emo, like the stuff that my brother listened to in middle school). Don’t listen to dickish emo. Listen to the Real Life Rock & Roll Band. With a name like that, they’ve got to be legit.

Full Spectrum

--Ryan Masteller