CLEARING “Themes” (Lillerne)

 

I knew it. You knew it too, you just weren’t ready to admit it yet. Or maybe you just couldn’t piece together the thought until you heard it from me. Either way, I knew it – I knew that this Clearing tape was going to simply wash over me in all shades of bliss and make me feel like deep mysteries of the universe were going to be made real to me, and also that everything was going to be OK. It’s funny how nostalgia works – longing manifests in the familiar, the safe, and curdles itself into a cold anticipation, a tempered excitement. I used to thrive on that kind of feeling all the time. I’m having nostalgia for my own nostalgia.
 
Joseph Volmer is Clearing, and he’s been at it for quite some time. In fact, Themes marks his fifth cassette for Lillerne. The fifteen untitled pieces – well, Themes 1 to 15, I guess – were recorded to hand-cut tape loops and layered and processed from there. Perhaps not surprisingly – I knew it – these Themes billow like clouds, vaporous, opaque, hazy, like soft-focus films of memory or faded photographs. It’s pretty safe to assume that any Clearing tape is worthy of jamming in a cassette deck any time you want the sweet swell of ambience to fill the room, and Themes continues to prove that you’ve made the right choice this time around as well.
 
https://clearing.bandcamp.com/
 
https://lillernetapes.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

BABY BIRDS DON’T DRINK MILK “Burritos” (Lillerne Tapes)

We have some flowers and a decorative watering can on a little stand outside our front door, you know, to class the joint up a little bit. One day I saw what I thought was decorative grass sticking out of the watering can, and I asked my wife if she had decided to enhance the display in some way. She said no.

The mystery deepened.

Then I solved it almost immediately: a bird had started to build a nest! It was a little chickadee-type thing (what am I, an ornithologist?), and soon enough, there were eggs, and then soon after that, baby birds. Feeling entirely too destructively helpful one day, I came outside with a human baby bottle full of warm milk, intending to nurture the baby birds. Much to my surprise, the mother bird alighted on the can’s handle, and gave me the scolding of a lifetime:

“You foolish human, baby birds don’t drink milk – they eat burritos!”

First, I was surprised the bird could talk. Second, it reminded me of a band I’d heard one time. Then it hit me – I had a tape called “Burritos” by a band called Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk, which was really coincidental, but I decided to go inside and play it. Maybe it would impart other bird lessons in much the same way my new chickadee friend had.

Turns out the trio BBDDM makes lovely, ethereal indie pop that drifts across prairies and deserts and snowfields and lakes, ingeniously folding the space into the music so that it breathes without effort. At times eschewing traditional songcraft to allow the music to expand, at others knocking out a melodic earworm hook with wonderful harmonized vocals like they could do it in their sleep, BBDDM had me hooked, gripped in the talons of “Burritos,” floating high above ground on a cloudless summer day.

It was like a whisper and a dream, but the melodies were true, and the feelings were mutual. I became a bird through magic, and it was only then that I truly understood.

Parts of this story are true. One of them is that this tape came out in 2016. So please, enjoy with me the memory of its physical passing.

Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk

Lillerne Tapes

--Ryan

BOLIDEN “Backyard” (Lillerne Tapes)

Let it go. That’s an easy sentiment to read into Boliden’s work. The Barcelona musician, going by José María Delgado Díaz in real life, fills his work with such a sense of freedom that you can close your eyes and revel in the moment. Washed-out visions of sun-dappled fields flit through your mind, and you breathe in the scent of the outdoors and nature and lose yourself in the world around you, untroubled by other people. The tracks inhale and exhale, becoming part of you, innately occurring with you, becoming intertwined with your life cycle. There’s great longing, there’s hope, there’s nostalgia, there’s sadness, there’s happiness, there’s love, there’s loss. Boliden deftly weaves the human experience into his work, drawing from the grandest and broadest emotions to appeal to a great swath of listeners. Chances are, if you’re human, you’re likely to find something to enjoy in Boliden’s work. I’m not kidding – it felt like I was listening to a new love letter to life with each passing song. The production, a bedroom-style agglomeration of tones and moods, appropriately misty and interspersed with sparse beats, perfectly fits Boliden’s idiom, the lived-in quality of the recording and worn edges of the tracks complementing the suggestion of outdoor activity and exploration. Easily relistenable, the exact thing you need for long drives or walks, BACKYARD opens the world around you in a way that’s new and inviting. Get your mitts on a copy right quick before the 50-tape run sells out.

Boliden

Lillerne Tapes

--Ryan Masteller

ZACH PHILLIPS "Personalizer" (Lillerne Tapes)

Hey...I don't have time to write reviews myself anymore but you should know this tape exists and it is very good. Buy or listen to the hell out of this thing here: https://lillernetapes.bandcamp.com

Zach just dropped a ton of new LPs, cassettes and CDs on his label OSR. You'll probably want to check those out here: http://osr-tapes.com/

-- Nick Williams, editor.

Potions - "Cosmic Relief"/Dolphin Tears - "Spa World" (Lillerne Tapes)

very cool chicago label with a great artistic aesthetic and killer tapes!

dolphin tears - "Spa World"

spa world by dolphin tears brings the listener into a relaxing, sweaty, beautiful, and calm world.. of spas… yes - spas.. hence spa world i'd assume. cool. figured that out. 25ish minutes of pure lofi ambient/easy listening stoner glory with moments of groovy smoothness. it perhaps reminds me of some earlier NNA type releases. very beautiful indeed and i dig it for sure. there are only 50 of these made so get them quick or you will .. uh.. cry dolphin tears, duh.

potions - "cosmic relief"

potions! yes - i like potions a lot. i've heard a slew of his tapes and i always tend to enjoy the hell out of them. im pretty sure that potions is made up of a dude i sorta know named tom (he plays in the band distractions from chicago). his newest release, cosmic relief, is perhaps my favorite potions tape i've heard thus far. the beats are lovely, exciting, mellow, totally groovy, and very well composed/orchestrated. perhaps some of my favorite "digital" synth jamz around right now. great work tom! potions will be on tour soon with a wonderful band called TOUPEE (from chicago as well, with a new LP out on ROTTED TOOTH records).. scope the tour here and go see potions!!!

http://www.lillernetapes.com/

Free Weed - "Free" (Lillerne Tapes)

Free Weed's twelve tune tape on Lillerne Tapes is about making some throw down fun guitar rock/pop in the company of (maybe) a couple friends, or (maybe) just one's self singing and playing stoned songs of boredom & joy. This is a simple pleasure cruise of a listen, nothing spectacular, but nothing terrible either. All the happiness of a distorted guitar, some looped beats, and melodies coming out of one soul, true lo-fi bedroom noise/pop...all the connotations of ALL those words are exactly defined by the music on this album. "Pimp Reaper" is one of my favorite songs this week. Even if I never listen to this tape again, I'll carry, in my brain, the title "Pimp Reaper." So, THANKS for that!

Buy and Listen HERE.

follow me on twitter: @teflonbeast

Scammers - "Magic Carpet Ride" c27, Baby Birds Don't Drink Milk - "Soda" c32 (Lillerne Tapes)

Readers, is there a better city for cassettes than Chicago these days? I want to know...write me and let's take a poll. 

Bowie had Aladdin Sane. Disney had Robin Williams. Chicago label Lillerne Tapes has Scammers' Phil Diamond. Diamond is a one man show and, according to the label's website, he's a goddamn great performer. Magic Carpet Ride is a concept album about Aladdin, but don't go screaming, running in the opposite direction from the word "concept" because it doesn't bloat this album one bit. In fact the tape is a scant twenty seven minutes! Hardly Quadrophenia people...On my first listens I didn't even bother with the lyrics. I'm not that kind of listener anyway. What I noticed what how much I liked the sounds coming from my stereo. The first cut, "Blue Satin," is very Bowie/Eno "Berlin" mixed with a heavy helping of Ian Curtis vocals. It is a slow developer, but I couldn't turn it off. One element I really liked was the drum programming. On several tunes big thuddy tom-tom fills roll in and I smiled and kept on dancing. The up tempo numbers are the most immediately enjoyable and again, I don't give a fuck about a lamp and three wishes, I have to shake da rump! Scammers' tape is a good one. I eagerly wait for his next offerings...take that Jafar!

Sometimes I'm just not in the mood for slow build textural drone works. Hell, I'm only human! Baby Birds Don't Drink Milk (Crazy ass band name, but cool right?) wallow in the lush life of methodically constructed music. Their sculpted tones did nothing for me when I first listened. I was kinda distracted to be honest. The night was calling my name, but I wanted to sit down with this tape and stare it down. So I listened, yet heard only the muttering crank in my head. I don't recommend forming an opinion of some band's musical efforts while in a foul mood, but that's what I did...I'm guilty of not paying attention to BBDDM. I've since listened again and the patience of the musicians to record this work must have been great because I  don't think I could've accomplished the slow motion performances. Now, I might be a faster bpm dude who likes songs, but BBDDM is recommended to the listener who can focus on minutia. I have this suspicion that I'll go back to this tape and suddenly find new things to like about it. Such is life.

Listen and Buy HERE.

GELATIN KIDS c10SKY STADIUM / POTIONS split c40(Lillerne Tapes)

A really good, but dangerously short keyboard based downer pop tape by Gelatin Kids. Sometimes this kind of music works and sometimes it leaves me bored, but in this case it really works. I like the two songs with vocals on the A-side. They take a kind of Thurston-esque songwriting approach (misty, nostalgic, deadpan) but substitute the howling open tuned guitars for very "of the moment" Casio tones and beats. The instrumental on the B-side doesn't interest me as much, but based on the strength of the other two tracks, I would say this is definitely a winner. Please make more of these gelatinous children for me to consume.

This is the second time I've reviewed Sky Stadium's music and I just have to say, I'm not terribly moved by it. Same goes for the B-side of this split, which features music by another solo artist who goes by the name Potions. There are so many people making ambient synthesizer drone these days that I find it really hard to gush over one tape or another. There are some clear standout artists who perk up my ears for one reason or another (for the most recent example, check out the review right below this one), but I just can't find anything here to differentiate this from so many other tapes I receive. Maybe the problem is that I have to listen to too much of this kind of stuff? What we have here is very mellow, sometimes rhythmic and completely unoffensive, but to me it lacks any particularly unique aspects that would make me proclaim, "ah, the Sky Stadium sound" or "this must be Potions." I don't feel like I'm asking too much of an artist to show me at least just one little something new, and until that starts happening on a more regular basis, I'm probably not going to get behind about half of the keyboard based music I hear.

Just my $.02. You, on the other hand, might feel entirely different, and that my friends is why we are each separate humanoid entities.

Buy tapes and listen on the Lillerne website.

BABY BIRDS DON'T DRINK MILK "Ekk Ekk" (Lillerne Tape Club)

Factoid: the motto of Lawrence, Kansas is "From Ashes to Immortality." How badass is that? Having about as much experience with the Midwest as with contemporary indie pop- that is to say, little to nothing- I imagined this tape (sent in from the charming Lillerne label) sprouting inexplicably from fields of inedible bioengineered soybeans. Probably not the case, but one has to dream.
More likely, Baby Birds Don't Drink Milk is a phoenix of rad, unabashedly jangly pop juggernauticity ascending from the fetid mediocrity that is the American liberal college town music scene. They're probably popular enough by now in local circles to be releasing more widely accessible CD albums, but damn if a tape release or two doesn't build character. The eight tracks on "Ekk Ekk" swing back and forth without pause between straightforward psych tinged pop ballads and effects-and-loops-laden abstract improv. Maybe it's the format, the hiss, slight tape distortion and warbling that makes "Ekk Ekk" easy to appreciate. It might be the full orchestral sound created by a fairly large band simply playing in unison. There are other groups who do the whole lush acoustic/electric guitar, vocal harmonizing, everything drenched in reverb thing well, but this tape captures a certain feeling that's just...right. Or feels right. Like nostalgia, or even fake nostalgia. Like Family Underground covering a bunch of Sarah Records tunes, or something. Definitely one of the best tapes I've heard this year. Awesome full-color doodled artwork seals the deal. RECOMMENDED!

http://www.myspace.com/lillerne
http://www.myspace.com/babybirdsdontdrinkmilk