Free-spirited,
wild-sounding. Good voice, clever
recording. It’s got a multi-tracked,
one-man-band vibe, but doesn’t sound solitary—this could be performed in a big
ensemble. The production is homemade
& astute, deliberately done, tricky usage of strange sounds but always to
the effect of sounding good. In the
realm of what you might call “experimental music,” this is more likely just good
songs recorded well with gusto. The song
called “automatic” is great, you should listen to it. The package is inviting, a cozy lone-wolf DIY
fly-by-night operation. Some strangeness
with the long-playing tape, the b-side is called “Is This Okay?” which I first
took as an irreverent solution to not having a custom tape to dub your album
onto: first an over-long silence (“Is This Okay?” Haha.), then a feedback drone (“Is This
Okay?” Haha.), then some raw jams, then a lot more silence. I figured, “he’s just tossing a tape package
together, doing what he can with what he’s got, cool, yeah, definitely okay.” The bandcamp archive has “Is This Okay?” as
an actual album, the raw jams identified as “some of my songs re-recorded with
gong-kebyar instrumentation.” Oh. I see.
The artwork is great, black & white on shitty paper, hand folded
& scissored with a gatefold lyric sheet.
The lyrics are good and I’m glad they’re printed; it really brought me
into the listening. From the tapes that
Nick has sent me, this is one of the best yet.
--Kevin
Oliver
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