BÖHM “Transients” (OTA)

They’re still out there looking for us, but we’ve moved on. There was so little left for us here, and so much more out there to discover. This place has stagnated – we were stagnating along with it.

Daniel K. Böhm will not let us stagnate along with the place where we were, the places we’ve been, not with “Transients,” not while we’re moving. We wander, and Böhm wanders with us.

“Transients” gathers like a thundercloud in the enormous sky over this wilderness, this wonderful, mysterious landscape. In our relentless pursuit of a place to end this wandering, a place to rest, we are beset with turbulence. The road will end, and we will wearily, gratefully accept its termination.

Until, of course, it’s time to move again.

Electricity is in the air. Do you feel it? Is it real?

Böhm
OTA

--Ryan

LACE BOWS “Earth Tunnels” C31 (OTA)

EARTH TUNNELS begins with a sample of a song from the 1950s or 1960s, a song I don’t recognize and neither does Shazam (god knows I tried). The effect is similar to the vibe in Terry Gilliam’s TWELVE MONKEYS when Bruce Willis’s Cole catches snippets of old songs on a car radio, or when he returns to Earth’s present (our future) to be woken by “Blueberry Hill.” It’s sweet, it’s nostalgic, but it’s also harrowing, especially when, on “I Saw Earth Leaving through This Tunnel,” the song decays, slowing down before transitioning into a field recording of what sounds like the Rossio train station in Lisbon (the announcements and conversational snippets are not in English, that’s for sure, and Lace Bows is from Portugal, so, 2+2=4!). That transitions too, and it’s as if Lace Bows is wandering from location to location, recording the music playing in the outdoor spaces, looping it, fidgeting with it until it unfurls, trancelike, and becomes part of our own background. The music fades and crowd noise continues, until it, too, is overtaken by the next phase of the track, a pensive drone that approximates cosmic travel.

And it’s here that we have to consider what is meant by EARTH TUNNELS, and “I Saw Earth Leaving through This Tunnel,” because the evolution of the sounds suggests a passage of time and perspective. The past fades quickly, the modern – our present – also fades, although it takes a bit longer, until the evolution is complete, and there’s no more earthly sounds, just the drone of the universe. But that’s just side A – side B, simply titled “-,” emerges from the drone, as if from, ahem, a tunnel, and traverses similar paths as side A (field recordings of outdoor musicians, crowds, stations), but this time, instead of allowing the field recordings to simply exist on their own, Lace Bows traces a musical undercurrent beneath the samples, creating a different experience. By the end of “-,” Lace Bows’s music and a song fragment meld together perfectly, as if they were meant for each other. Does this mean that Lace Bows is outlining through sound a blueprint for human evolution? Or is it meant as a document to be studied by a far-distant iteration of humanity, somewhat like “Blueberry Hill” in TWELVE MONKEYS, or even an unknown civilization? Or is it something completely different?

Something to think about. Whatever it is, EARTH TUNNELS is fascinating to listen to.

Lace Bows

OTA

--Ryan Masteller

KONAKON “Ousia” C33 (OTA)

Oh heavens, this is the second OTA release in my batch, and I’m deep. First it was Patrick R. Pärk, now Konakon? (And I see you there, Lace Bows tape – you’re next.) Konakon, aka Parma artist La Blancheur des Cygnes (which is NOT a real name, unless your parents named you “The Swan Whiteness – blame Google Translate for any miscommunication there), has been jamming experimental nigh on twenty years, even playing in an Italian noise rock group called Brother James and peddling wares through Second Family Records Netlabel. As Konakon, he drops all that noisy horsecrap and steers down the straight and narrow, playing wonderfully expressive electronic tunes using digital tools that he developed. (Not that the noisy horsecrap is a bad thing – goddang I love noise rock.) It’s pretty great stuff, and it’s pretty all over the place too, which is just how I like these kinds of releases: you never really know what direction it’s going to head in next. From stuttering hardvapor to chillwave to IDM to industrial to ambient, Konakon knows when to hang back and when to jam the pedal to the floor, only letting up when he feels like he’s shredded the tires of this metaphorical jalopy and you’re just coasting on the rims. Then he just rides the rims. Oh, what’s that? The tape’s stuck in the tape deck and it just keeps skipping and disintegrating on itself? OUSIA has a little bit of that too. But mostly it’s a noir electro free-for-all, a brooding party for night owls SO OVER the club scene. I don’t know where OTA keeps digging up these releases, but they can keep ’em coming for all I care. Never stop never stopping, friends. Also, as is the label’s wont, each tape in the edition of thirty comes with “unique handmade covers done with wax crayons on architect sketch paper. That’s a terrible photograph of mine up there – doesn’t do it justice. Beautiful stuff in real life, Catarino Gorgulho. Beautiful tape Konakon. Keep on keeping on, OTA.

Konakon

OTA

--Ryan Masteller