NO BASEMENT IS DEEP ENOUGH Label of the Year

This is not the first time we've covered Serbio-Belgian cassette-as-art-object label No Basement is Deep Enough, and for good reason. They've already released work by some great cats and kittens, but now they've gone and done tapes for two of my favorite goo things: Egg, Eggs and Garm as well as some bands I'm just getting into.  All of the following are cassettes in special packaging.  Check out the music player at the end of the post.

BR GARM "Garmsquirm2012" - Another winner from Strange Maine proprietor Brendan Evans.  Keep 'em coming Brendan.  This is the strangest Garm yet and the third within one calendar year.  This man has never been so prolific!  This tape is free ranging, totally madcap and playful, probably the best tape I've heard in a while.  Only 50 copies!!!

EGG, EGGS "Zygotic Crack" - The most current Western Mass jam session going on is Egg, Eggs.  It's got all the members of all the other jam sessions, but most especially it's got the bird man himself, David Russell. Hare Krishna indeed, with hawk skulls flying at your face!

ASIAN WOMAN ON THE TELEPHONE - Russian band with US release on Anonymous Dog and another coming on Feeding Tube.  All sorts of No Wave with dramatic flair.  Intriguing to the maximum, hear more! Lots of sounds on their bandcamp.  Thiw NBIDE release is a split tape with KREAMY 'LECTRIC SANTA, who presents a tasteful sample buffet.

HARRY MERRY  "The Life Lived" - Recorded between 1989 and 1994. Really great Dutch home recorded lo-fi songs.  Some of it sounds like Rudimentary Peni with casio and tape hiss and other parts feel more like acid damaged pop.  One of the most "conventional" releases on the label.  A really great find.

F.L.U.T. "untitled" - Contemporary Belgian warped hippie kraut throwback with worse drugs.  That's a compliment.

MAGMA TRAKT "s/t" - Super psychedelic contemporary Serbian noise sermons.  The sound of this dudes voice is hypnotic and frightening as he talks to you over electronics performing menacing washes and patterns.  Great minimal percussion parts on this.  They're not making them quite like this in the USA yet...

FAST DEADBOY - Two tape box set in an edition of 33 copies presenting some late 80s Serbian noise.  A lot of this music is charmingly primitive feeling, but it's an interesting artifact.  The tapes are house in one of the best packages from NBIDE so far.

Folks in the US can buy NBIDE releases at Weirdo Records, Time-Lag, Lighten Up Sounds & on Discogs.  All tapes are in editions of 50, so act fast.  The label can be contacted at ignacedb@hotmail.com.

Listen to Harry Merry, Garm, Egg, Eggs and others on the player:

No Basement is Deep Enough is curated by Ignace de Bruyn, with artwork and design by Milja Radovanovic.
Check out Male Bonding, a sublabel of NBIDE. I'll do a post on them some time later.

CAVE BEARS "D.I.Y. Spells DIE" c40 (No Basement Is Deep Enough)Guest Review By S. Howe

hey one of the guest reviewers wrote up my new tape...whatever, I'm posting it. - nkw
 
CAVE BEARS "D.I.Y. Spells DIE" (No Basement Is Deep Enough) C40
Guest Review by S. Howe from Montreal, QC
There is a secondhand household appliance place in easterly Montreal that uses Elvis Presley as a promotional tool. A Last Tango in Paris remake starring Tom Green and a computer-generated Rue Mcclanahan...Enter the Cave Bears, D.I.Y. Spells DIE. A perplexing discourse atop some sickly countrified guitar buckle introduces the A side, yielding shortly thereafter to the carcinogenic wizardry we all know and love somehow. This time around there is a point, though. Our sorcering troglodytes bluntly howl and smear their dissatisfaction for a certain artist amidst sundry slimline recorder clicks and forsaken feedback; a sibilant otherworldly backdrop of esoteric aimless guitar rubbing...brazenly recording themselves in hot spasmodic bursts over the music of Steely Dan (I believe), as the archetypal insult. There is maniacal laughter and something like closely-registered dry-heaving and/or regurgitation, several apoplectic seizures and, altogether, the utterly vile negation of art as a whole. An insincere apology precedes inappropriately conjured wolf cries and saxophone as one is soothingly transported by canoe, apparently, to the B side. The second half of this tape, contrariwise, is a delightful incursion of depravity. Within a few seconds I thought there was a problem with the sonic contraption itself and actually removed it from the deck slot for verification. A moaning lag and slowed high pitch was of course solely the classical trickery of knowledgeable tape manipulation. A minute or two of determined vampirism had me laughing unrestrainedly, and as obscene sounds of gobbling and gurgling joined the exacerbated 'drink some blood' statement, I was barely able to maintain anal composure. Then the issuance of evil whispers and yelped Neanderthal asininity betwixt inconsistent musical interludes and more piercing tape drag. Outlandish grunting and animal screeching to some mock death-metal sequence preludes a most hilarious orgy loop. We hear something rather familiar as the tape trundles onward: Gluey morsels from some other Cave Bears album, civil piano segments and several mongoloid outbursts. As a fringe benefit D.I.Y. Spells DIE also addresses flatulence and bird death. Wobbly reel tripe and impassive sarcastic lecture conclude this audio examination. A bright opaque-yellow cassette seems the simple viscera of an absurdly furred purplish puppet monster "case." I am convinced that this molting mass of mendicant fabric and rough glue-work gave me an eye infection. A must for your disproportionately packaged tape item pile (or should you enjoy laughing violently).

Get the fingernail scissors --
Purchase here: (http://lightenupdistro.bigcartel.com/product/cave-bears-d-i-y-or-die-c44)

S. Howe

no joke

IDEA FIRE COMPANY "Postcards" (No Basement Is Deep Enough)

This tape marks the 20 year anniversary of Idea Fire Company's first release, the double LP "Explosion In A Shingle Factory." The Amherst, MA based IFCO generally operates as the duo of married couple Scoutt Foust and Karla Borecky, though they have included other members form time to time, such as Matt Krefting on their 2009 LP for Ultra Eczema, "Beauty School." IFCO is truly one of the great band's of the last few decades and they've stuck to a pretty consistent M.O., layering Foust's random noises and found sounds over Borecky's expert keyboard and piano lines. Very similarly to Cluster and other kosmische musik, IFCO makes fairly serious work that is, nevertheless, completely fun.

Though generally well received critically, IFCO small-run LPs, often released on Foust's Swill Radio (started in 1983) generally stay in print for many years, with copies of old releases being sold unopened by distros for bargain basement prices. Well, hell, who am I to complain? If you're looking to start an IFCO collection, it sure won't cost you an arm and a leg. That's something you can't say about kindred spirits The Shadow Ring, of which Foust and Borecky were sometimes members.

"Postcards" would surely be a great place to start that collection. It is a completely stunning and deserves a much larger release then this slim run of 93 copies. All but one of the pieces are from 2011, but it is as engrossing as the group's best work from any year.


For everything IFCO, Foust and Swill Radio, go here: http://www.anti-naturals.org/swill/
Foust's commentary on the items in his distro are usually good for a laugh.

For sound samples and label contact:
http://soundcloud.com/nobasementisdeepenough
You can often find NBIDE releases here:
http://www.discogs.com/label/No+Basement+Is+Deep+Enough

LENHART TAPES "Tape Music #2"REMÖRK "Symphonie Monotrone"(No Basement Is Deep Enough)

I've got four more tapes to review from the one year old Serbo-Belgian label No Basement Is Deep Enough. Besides having a really great discography, the label is taking package design to heights not seen since the last great renaissance of cassette culture in the 1980s. The label's choice of musical material is as creative as it's choice of packaging material. Being a European label, I would say it's tastes veer heavily to the aesthetics of that continent's avant-garde (weird spoken word, free improv and tape collage) but the label has also featured a number of artists from the US. NBIDE is curated by Ignace De Bruyn and the art design is by Milja R. (balkanbridesdotcom) These next two tapes are the pinnacle of the label's artistic design:

The Lenhart Tapes release comes in what is perhaps the coolest packaging I've ever seen: a makeshift crucifix housing a coil and some fake pearls in a wooden frame. The music was recorded live on Serbian radio by one Vladimir Lenhart and his four fabulous walkman tape decks. I'm not one who always takes so readily to tape collage, but this piece really astounded me. Throughout the half hour of "Tape Music #2," we are taken on a journey through middle eastern music passages (reminiscent of a Sublime Frequeincies "Radio..." release), intoning voices in various languages, goats blurting, weird electronic sounds, even a how-to instruction on the use of the E-Bow! The fact that this recording was made live in one take makes it all the more appealing. I feel that these sorts of collages can become really bogged down when they are too fussed over, and Mr. Lenhart's piece flows with the natural ease of the best music.

The tape by Remörk also has a very clever design. Housed between to slaps of wood and held together by a metal pin that goes through two wooden pegs holding the tapes reels in place. The full title of the album is "Symphonie Monotrone (Interuptions Pour Guitare Et Korg Monotrone), so If I can translate the French correctly, it's some music made by a guitar and Korg keyboard. I don't hear the guitar at all, but what I do hear sounds like the cries of a dying robot with a wrench stuck in it's head. Very simple tones that gradually become more distorted as the overtones stack up. This tape is one-sided.

Check out audio samples or contact Ignace here:
http://soundcloud.com/nobasementisdeepenough
You can usually find tapes here:
http://www.discogs.com/label/No+Basement+Is+Deep+Enough

HIDEOUS UNO / BANK OF CHRIST splitTHE BAD TRIPS / VESTRON CANNON split(No Basement Is Deep Enough)

This split tape from Serbo-Belgian label No Basement Is Deep Enough offers up two slices of Bay Area music in one hand-sewn pouch. The Hideous Uno side was recorded in the late 90s and sounds like a cold wind whipping over the bodies of dead mountaineers, rending the flesh from their bones. A very sparse and beautiful vocal piece with delays and loops very much in a Henri Chopin vibe. My research tells me that Hideous Uno is none other than Grady Runyon, former lead guitarist and vocalist of the squalling mid 90s dose of bad acid, Monoshock (!!!) and also of Liquorball. While this sounds nothing like those groups, it's nice to know that Runyon had other things up his sleeve. If you haven't heard Chopin or Runyon's other work, run don't walk...

The Bank Of Christ side is a really apt choice of pairing, accomplishing the same sort of effect, but this time using more traditional instruments: violin, synth, tumpet, bass, percussion. The music here was recorded in the last few years and and is mostly very eerie and atmospheric, until it picks up for the last few minutes with an upbeat drum figure. The recording quality is really cool, sort of like old wire-spool technology.

Well, maybe I don't get a whole tape, but No Basement Is Deep Enough offers up another split with a more contemporary Grady Runyon project. The A side here is by The Bad Trips, a trio of Runyon (guitar/sound), Jeff Grimes (guitar/sound) and Gordon Roberts (keys/bass) recorded in 2007. This is about as different from Monoshock as Hideous Uno is, though I find it slightly less compelling. Basically a lot of eerie sounds and echo that sort of hang in stasis for awhile and then vanish. Doesn't so much sound like a bad trip as it does a pleasant one in some nice spooky old woods. The natural sound of the guitar becomes more apparent during the last third and I really like that part a lot.

The B side of this tape is by Vestron Cannon, a trio of Damon Sturdivant (guitar), Dusty James Hill (bass, keys, sax) and PK Maunz (drums). Listening to this side made me actually appreciate the Bad Trips side a lot more. While Runyon and co. are very methodical in their sound creation and the whole A side has a nice arc to it, Vestron Cannon's music has much more of a "let's just jam" feeling to it. The results features plenty of screechy saxophone, Les Rallizes Denudes-esque guitar rifferey and propulsive drumming, but the group never really seems to develop any of its musical ideas and I'm left wanting more. The most interesting thing about this side is the recording quality, which has a half-submerged feeling to it.

The packaging of this tape another extraordinary balkanbridesdotcom creation: an embroidered piece of fake leather that wraps around the cassette and is clasped together by an overcoat button.

To hear tracks from all NBIDE releases or make contact, go here:
http://soundcloud.com/nobasementisdeepenough
You can also find most of their uniformly great releases here:
http://www.discogs.com/label/No%20Basement%20Is%20Deep%20Enough

Tapes I Like

Here are some newish tapes that I like:

Zaimph "Coast to Coast" C40 (Gift Tapes) - Marcia Bassett of Double Leopards newest...great stuff

Angels in America "Allergic To Latex" (self released) though i think it's now on Digitalis, but probably sold out...try epichotness@hellokitty.com , though that doesn't seem real, does it? Super great out of left field, twentyearolds from Western Mass and Baltimore play it like it ain't been played before, and maybe it's true...

Anthro Rex - all of the recent self-releases have been great, and there are a few, including a split with Id M Theft Able...this from the "front man" of Neanderthal "rockers" Grey Skull. Really deconstructed shit. brings a winsome smile....drop Dan Cashman a line: porkatron88@hotmail.com

Preggy Peggy & the Lazy Babymakers/Hjuler und Frau ++ Colorguard/Ashley Paul splits - both from a Serbian (?) label that I believe is called Male Bonding (actually it's called No Basement Is Deep Enough - ed.), but don't quote me on that. One of them is in a hand sown "pussy pouch" with public hair, blood and girl-come... contact xtabaywatch@hotmail.com or http://www.myspace.com/xtabaywatch

Mirror Tapes - located in Malaysia (again, ?) is putting our some cool looking reissues of noise and electronic music: Conrad Schnitzler, M.B., etc...http://www.mirrortapes.blogspot.com/

also gotta give it up again for Night People and Goaty Tapes whose releases are always little gems in the packaging and audio continuity department. Nice when one artist defines the look of a label. Most of their releases sound great, and they for damn sure look good on your shelf.

last, but not least, Sounds Of The Indian Snake Charmer, Vol. 2 a follow-up to the out of print first LP. Recorded by Aaron Dilloway in India...it is, as advertised, that wonderful music that snakes like to jam to so dearly - - http://www.hansonrecords.net