EL CHOOP “Farewell, Ringworld” C40 (Hylé Tapes)

I can’t get off this Ringworld soon enough. All this traffic …

Alright, I admit it, I was thinking of wrapping in that titular line bit from Upright Citizens Brigade (all hail Matt Walsh), but I think it’s gonna get totally blown. Probably because I don’t know anything about RINGWORLD, the book series, other than that it’s a pretty popular science fiction tome among the unwashed D&D nerd masses. I kid, I’m practically one of them, although I wash and I don’t play D&D. But I do love me some sci-fi! Just … not RINGWORLD. Haven’t got around to it. So I don’t have any in-jokes to share with you.

What I do know is that FAREWELL, RINGWORLD is spectacular. El Choop (by the way, I don’t get the name – that’s not a slight, just wondering) out of Bristol, THE UK, drops the dubnuts for the lugnuts, the SPACECRAFT lugnuts that you have to, you know, work on with tools so that you and your crew don’t instantaneously decompress or something. Meaning this: what El Choop does on FAREWELL, RINGWORLD is very synthy and not at all dubby, his usual MO, meshing oh-so-appropriately with outer space environs. Take for example the j-card visuals that serve as a starting point for your imagination – amazing, yes, bringing to mind EPCOT Center from the late1960s or early 1970s (even though the theme park opened in 1982), but every group picture of a crew always foretells disaster. El Choop predicts the disaster (whatever it is – again, RINGWORLD virgin here) in his tense synthesizer compositions, recalling the ubiquitous STRANGER THINGS score but set in space. This is the soundtrack for takeoff, docking, quick dashes from local law enforcement, secretive meetings in clandestine locations, offworld transactions, and spaceships, spaceships, spaceships. I could live in this music – it’s what I dreamed as a kid would be our reality right now.

Sadly, our reality is our reality, but it takes artists like El Choop to help us engage our imaginations and bring us back to that innocent time when we were young and the future was ours. Is that nostalgia? Yeah, maybe, but so what. You can tell a million stories with FAREWELL, RINGWORLD as the background and none of them would ever be boring, ever be anything less than gripping escapist fantasy. That’s important when you need something other than, pft, “real life.” Forget it – you might as well spin yarns about having incredibly important lines in wildly popular films if “real life” is where you’re rooted. El Choop’s giving you an opportunity to live a little bit in your mind, in your heart – take that opportunity and run with it. Or launch with it, or whatever space verb you want to apply here.

El Choop
Hylé Tapes

--Ryan Masteller

HEP!COLLECTIVE “Kitchen” C20 (Hylé Tapes)

Like all of you, as soon as I beheld Hep!Collective’s new Hylé release, I immediately began humming The Lemonheads’s “Kitchen,” because that’s not a song that’s easy to not hum once you think of it. But that’s an idiotic thing to do when you’re pulling a Hylé tape out of its mail packaging, no matter what the release is. Plus, KITCHEN, Hep!Collective’s KITCHEN, is as far from a Lemonhead release as I am from Paris right now. Or Italy. I mean, I don’t want to go overboard and say “Australia” or something, because that would be a bit too far, and besides, no one involved with the recording or releasing of this tape is from Australia. Let’s just say that KITCHEN is pretty far from “Kitchen” and get on with our lives.

But not before we take a listen to KITCHEN, of course, and hopefully enter into some meaningful discourse about it. Italian artist Lorenzo Peluffo has a couple Hep!Collective releases under his belt, and this is his first for the Paris-based label (and there’s the tie-in). Peluffo focuses quite closely on texture, and KITCHEN is no different than his other releases in that regard. The tag: ambient, of course, as sounds register as if they’re being broadcast from far away – or from your memory. The two sidelong tracks hover, there, where you can almost capture their essence, but before long they disappear, like a dream you had that doesn’t quite fully clarify. What kitchen? There you stand, in the room where everyone always congregates, as if trapped by the ghosts of their passage. Ray Lew makes it rain, and the drops whisper on the window. But you’re alone there, hovering along with the tracks, hovering along with the sounds of KITCHEN and the kitchen and Ray Lew and the Calle della Madonetta estate, communing with spirits, thinking in whispers. Is this how Hep!Collective views the world? Does Lorenzo Peluffo perceive everything as a future decaying image?

Regardless of how past and present come together for Peluffo in his mind, KITCHEN unfolds like an old photograph kept in a book, edges frayed, grains visible, imperfections embraced, just how the moment appears in our memory.

And no Lemonheads. Sorry Evan.

Hep!Collective

Hylé Tapes

--Ryan Masteller

ADRIEN KANTER “Infinites Réflexions” C40 (Hylé Tapes)

As has come to be the norm for a Hylé Tapes release, we as an audience are treated to a new and exciting direction in experimental electronic music, this time from Paris-based musician Adrien Kanter. Not weird at all. This is to be expected. The high standard of quality demanded by Richard Frances and his Hylé crew is not one to lose sight of, as each and every cassette release from the label is an exercise in supreme enjoyment. Kanter follows in the footsteps of his labelmates, and as such is a fantastic addition to them. That’s not to say one must or even should define Kanter’s output in contrast to his peers, but it certainly is worth knowing that he belongs among them, at least at this point in time. There was Adrien Kanter before, and there will be Adrien Kanter after. With Infinites Réflexions, we have Adrien Kanter now.

The title of the cassette easily translates as “infinite reflections,” and each track on the album plays like the soundtrack to a self-assessment. One day you’re feeling good about yourself, another day you’ve just about had it up to here with your lot in life. Each day, each second is a new moment to consider, a philosophical crossroads where the choice you make about your inner being points you on a specific path and strips any other possibility from existence within this universe. Think of each moment as an internal Schrödinger’s cat – you’re both satisfied and dissatisfied with an outcome until you choose one.

The music tends to straddle that line, and as such it offers myriad interpretations, each one dependent, again, upon the choice you impose on the music. How are you listening? Does the strange guitar and sampling of “Iceberg Dolores” make you feel tense, or does it instill in you a sense of wonder? Does “Bagarre de Lions” upset you by recalling elements of your past better left alone, or is it a nostalgia trip to lovely places? Is “Fleur de nuit” a reminder of love or loss? Now can you see? There are … infinite possibilities.

All this is quite heady, and it’s important to remember that Adrien Kanter’s music is, on a purely responsive level, excellent. It hits all the right spots for the experimentalist and the electronic aficionado alike. It even manages to invoke astral synth drone and kraut at times. It’s a lovely concoction, meant to be listened to from start to finish. Infinites Réflexions belongs in its place as another in a long line of superb releases from Hylé. Hop to it, music consumers!

Adrien Kanter

Hylé Tapes

--Ryan Masteller

JEFFERSON AIRCRASH “Large Hadron Collider” C50 (Hylé Tapes)

It’s all about the Large Hadron Collider. That’s at CERN, son! The Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire! Or, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, if you’re confined to the English language. (Boring. Moving on.) You saw Particle Fever, right? They pretty much made a movie about the Large Hadron Collider so I don’t have to explain that to you. I don’t even have to link to Wikipedia or anything, you can just go watch it, it’s on Netflix. It’s a fantastic documentary. I promise immense levels of geeking out over science-y things.

It pretty much comes down to the fact that scientists smash the crap out of atoms in the LHC. There’s a twenty-seven-kilometer loop through which they accelerate particles, and then they smash them together and analyze the data. They’re pretty much recreating the Big Bang on a miniature scale and studying it to better understand our universe. I’m in awe of them – I mean, for how many of you is it your main ambition to get out of bed before noon? These guys not only do that, they destroy the building blocks of existence with the playfulness of a five-year-old Godzilla-smashing through a LEGO structure.

It’s almost irrelevant to talk about a cassette tape called Large Hadron Collider when all of that is happening underground in Switzerland, but here I am at my computer, serving you, the reader, like I always do. Jefferson Aircrash (cute) is the nom du jour of Italian artist Rodolfo Valenti, bka V/Plasm, and while listening to his tape, I get the feeling that he may have spent some time wandering the halls of CERN after hours, just kind of casing the place, getting the feel of it to inspire his music. Or maybe he just watched Particle Fever. (Seriously, Netflix.) At any rate, Valenti captures the vast, weird idea of subatomic particles crashing into each other and applies it to his clinical brand of dark techno. He’s like a scientist himself behind the boards, an expert in his chosen field, seemingly able to tease out the secrets of the past and reconstitute them into new and exciting forms. Who knows what this Jefferson Aircrash pseudonym will unveil next! Clearly the next evolutionary step, where the molecules of Orbital, Autechre, Underworld, and Aphex Twin are blasted at near-light speeds at each other. Maybe the LHC truthers were right – the result of this collision sounds like a black hole in the making, one that will swallow Earth and then make for the rest of the solar system!

Haha, who am I kidding. Truthers are hilarious.

Jefferson Aircrash

Hylé Tapes

--Ryan Masteller

ANDERS BRØRBY “Mulholland Drive, 1984” C50 (Hylé Tapes)

I mean of course the first thing you’re going to think of is David Lynch. His masterful mind-scrambler Mulholland Drive launched (probably) a thousand cinematically inclined nightmarish dark ambient records. Lynch himself dabbles in music, and it sounds as otherworldly as you would expect. If there’s one thing you can pin on a David Lynch film is that it’s going to be saturated in mood. Where does the story go, where does it take us? Doesn’t matter. Serve the mood.

Norwegian artist Anders Brørby is a student of the mood. He’s a slatherer of synths, a maestro of mise en scène, taking cues not only from Lynch but also from Argento, Wenders, and Pasolini. He crafts atmospheric homages to place, and you can’t help but be enveloped by them. In musical circles he’s clearly influenced by (*promo copy check*) Fennesz, Tim Hecker, and William Basinski, as his compositions crackle, hiss, and pulse with tactile sonics. He succeeds by removing you as a listener from your surroundings and creating an entire new, weird world in which to place you. It just so happens that the new world is actually one that has already existed, a repurposed moonlit night among the Hollywood Hills.

Mulholland Drive, 1984 is steeped in magic and mystery, as is likely obvious from the descriptive text you’ve already written. But it’s impossible for me to do it justice – the amount of words I would have to type to remotely connect to the album’s dense aura would fill a novel, and if I were writing novels, I wouldn’t be slaving over music. But hey, I like slaving over music, so we’re all in the same boat – it’s not a yacht or anything, but it’ll do. People like Anders Brørby make the review game worthwhile. And back to his tape, unpacking each track is an overwhelmingly enjoyable task, one that’s as satisfactory at minute one as it is at minute fifty.

Is Mulholland Drive, 1984 an homage, then, to Lynch’s film? Not directly, but certainly in spirit. It could easily serve as an alternate soundtrack to the surreal creepings that the film is famous for. And it doesn’t stay in one place, either, as horns are introduced in “A Sudden Sense of Loss” and otherworldly waveforms flit through “Deconstruction of Mirages.” Like Lynch, Brørby manages to surprise, injecting the unexpected into his work as it progresses. It’s the mark of an artist in complete control of his medium.

Anders Brørby

Hylé Tapes

--Ryan Masteller

BENITO & BIRDY EARNS “Reality Check” C45 (Hylé Tapes)

When I was younger, we didn’t have social media, we had pen pals. (Guess how old I am? Guess!) In my third-grade class, we wrote letters to students at a nearby elementary school as part of our curriculum, and by the end of the year we all got together to meet one another. Even now I remember how surreal that was – I had only corresponded with this person via the written word, and suddenly there he was, right in front of me. As third graders are wont to do, we got over it pretty quickly and just played outside for a while on the playground. (My pen pal grew up to be a jerk in high school, so there you go.)

Benito and Birdy Earns – San Francisco’s Brian McNally and Berlin’s Arne Vogel, respectively – did the modern equivalent of pen-palling; then, each decided the other wasn’t a jerk (lucky sods) and met up in Berlin IRL. Fortunately for us – the populace including everyone other than McNally and Vogel – the two dudes just so happen to be electronic musicians, so what could just have been two transatlantic bros chilling for a couple of pints turned into a glossy experimental techno collaboration. How surreal was their meeting? Surreal enough, apparently, to dedicate the entire project to questioning what exists and what doesn’t.

That’s because Reality Check is chock full of hallucinogenic electronic noodlings, and the track titles themselves signify a disassociation with corporeal reality, a dislocation in time and space where it’s difficult to understand the physics of one’s environment. Even the album title itself – Reality Check – calls everything that’s perceivable into question. That’s OK – listening to this collab is like being submerged in a sensory deprivation tank, except you get to hang on to the glow sticks you brought with you to the alternative healer’s yurt.

Indeed, “Re.Surreal,” “Cellular_Vortex,” “Anti-Matter,” “Sifted+Blended,” and “#CAVELIFE” all come with clues that something extra-ordinary is being channeled through the music. And the intensity of the dopamine hits pulsing through your circulatory system is much more direct given the short duration of each track, allowing McNally and Vogel to crank out bunch of related ideas and move from one to the next with palpable ease. It’s a joy listening to the work these two long-distance friends have been able to produce, and regardless of how weird or unnatural actual human interaction is these days, you have to admit it worked out OK in this case.

Benito

Birdy Earns

Hylé Tapes

--Ryan Masteller