UNCANNY DANDELIONS “Gravel Scavenger” (Orb Tapes)

 

I am a victim of mesmerism. Uncanny Dandelions (naturally) invade my senses; sometimes I inhale their seed pods by accident when I’m gearing up to blow them. Sometimes I absorb the sounds from their cassette tape into my ears. It’s a situation; in this one or any other, I’m fully zoned.
 
Uncanny Dandelions is K. Trujillo, who fits broken pieces together and glues or tapes them (or whatever) and plays them back to see what happens. Gravel Scavengers is an SOS on the wind, a false-color negative masquerading as a mixtape. Trujillo bends emotional response to their whims, luring in the unsuspecting, catching them in their uncanny, dandelion-y trap. Squirm all you want, it’s in your bloodstream.
 
Uncanny is right, nothing eases itself, mostly lemon-sour tendrils. You can eat dandelion salad with lemon poppyseed dressing anyway, so do the right thing. Take a big honkin’ bite and shiver with the overwhelming tang before it curdles into something tangier. Get low, all the way low, feel the pulse as it shudders. You can feel it pounding in your ears, your ear’s to the ground, you can feel it pounding from miles away.
 
Whatever you do, don’t break this spell.
 
https://uncannydandelions.bandcamp.com/
 
https://orbtapes.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

SERRATER / BUTOH SONICS “Split” C80 (Orb Tapes)

 

Hearing Michael Potter do the next obvious thing in his repertoire – a noise/no wave sludge-coction under his “Serrater” guise – is music to my ears. No wait, actually, it’s more like damaging waves of tone and feedback to my ears, which causes the eardrums within them to vibrate uncontrollably and cause blood to leak and seep out and get everywhere. Two tracks he does on this split, TWO! “America the Grave” and “Shed Dead Flesh” are noise in intent and execution, but this isn’t a dude who’s just creating hellish feedback loops. He’s obviously got guitars and even drums in here, but sure, I guess he is also feeding everything back like crazy. He’s awesome at somehow corralling this craziness, sculpting these vicious frequencies, whether low or high, into sonic weapons. No, not music to my ears – more like missiles to them. I’m probably hearing the aftermath of that inside my head.
 
The Butoh Sonics collective recorded “Spinning Fiend Who Feeds Off Vertigo” live two years ago at Operation Noise Toaster 17 in Phoenix. It’s an electroacoustic/electronic nightmare, layered with traditional instruments and nontraditional, like guitar, but also propane tanks. Also someone is doing Butoh, the form of Japanese dance theater from which the quartet takes its name. “Spinning Fiend” sounds like antigravity crinkling space-time, causing tension in the proto-building blocks of existence. They do this for forty mesmerizing minutes, every one of them filled with feedback and icky loops, plucks and synth pings, desperate for equilibrium but never quite managing it. It’s dense and off kilter, and riveting when it gets itself under your skin. Which it does quickly.
 
https://michaelpotter.bandcamp.com/
 
https://butohsonics.bandcamp.com/
 
https://orbtapes.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

AAVD TRIO “Anti Glow” (Orb Tapes)

 

We exist in the deadening smog. AAVD Trio – Alexander Adams (drums & cymbals), Danny Andrade (tenor saxophone), and Daniel Van Duerm (electric piano, organ, and electronics), for those of you who like your acronyms defined – exists in the deadening smog, at times burdened by its claustrophobia, at others maddeningly trying to escape. See the j-card cover? The light is either trying to peek through or the sun is sucking the light back into itself because it doesn’t see the point anymore. AAVD Trio needs you to let them reach you, and they also have a tendency to allow their personal gravitation to suck the notes they play back into themselves. They do this simultaneously: ennui-cracking and point-not-seeing.
 
None of this dimestore philosophizing has any impact or bearing on the music itself. The instruments communicate with one another as if they’ve always been meant to. Van Duerm lays remarkable sonic foundations for Andrade to skip through and play around with, but it’s not until he’s bending circuits and effing with synths that you realize you’re not just listening to fusion-era-Miles Chick Corea aping. The meeting of jazz and experimental electronics can often be exhilarating, and Van Duerm, Adams, and Andrade prove as adept at breaking new ground as a dude with a shovel at a groundbreaking ceremony. Anti Glow is a rush regardless of whether it’s hurtling full throttle or pinging around on the inside of itself. Even when it’s lurching like a hungry Frankenstein’s monster, it’s got that edge of cuttingness, that wobbly connection like barely failing and then unfailing magnets are holding everything together. It’s unusual, and it’s vital. It hits a lot of pleasure centers.
 
https://orbtapes.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

THE UNKNOWN SOUND COLLECTIVE “The Light within Hauntings” (Orb Tapes)

 

It gets under your skin right away. Elena Botts’s, erm, haunting voice drifts over sound sources like chimes or gongs, hit every four bars or so (emphasis on the “or so”), on the opening track “Stillborn,” till they’re processed and accompanied by field recordings played as textured noise. Botts masters the space in which her voice appears, clearly favoring the vastness of what’s outside of her in contrast to the still, small voice that occupies the corners, acting as a running commentary to everything else beyond it that does not notice it. Maybe her voice is the “light” within the “hauntings” of the tactile world, the focal point for wayfarers in need of guidance through the gloom. Then again, maybe it’s just a siren song, luring us in further until what haunts us is upon us, and we merge in cold corruption in an anti-flare of terror and gloom. How shocking!
 
As the Unknown Sound Collective, Botts and company take elusive approaches to composition, but it’s all rooted in Botts’s vocal performance. Sometimes traditional percussion cuts through the gloom, and piano isn’t an unwelcome guest itself. But it’s mostly the field recordings and other samples that really lend a sense of mood and tone, whether they’re anachronistic (traffic sound meets pagan chant?) or logically aligned (struck ceramic orb meets pagan chant?). But the content isn’t as important as the atmosphere, and The Light within the Hauntings, despite sounding exactly the way that title sounds, is a rich nocturnal world in which a single point of focus exists, and you’re drawn to it, whether directly or gradually. Either way, the Unknown Sound Collective has you right where it wants you.
 
https://theunknownsoundcollective.bandcamp.com/
 
https://orbtapes.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

SHAME “White Man” (Orb Tapes)

 

Shame is Abdul-Hakim Bilal, and I’ve had my eye on their band and their work before. (In fact, Samuel Goff, Bilal’s Among the Rocks and Roots cohort, is putting this out on CD [of all formats!] on his Cacophonous Recordings label.) White Man is an uncomfortable release, especially for someone like me who represents the titular demographic. Bilal is black, and “the struggle black people face daily is present in this harrowing and experimental album.” Bilal utilizes vocals to great effect to supplement the noise churning like a distant storm or like the crackle of enflamed dry wood. Anger and fear permeate the release with a harrowing intensity. I succumb to the tape’s intent of discomfort. It makes me squirm, and it makes me hurt. I can only let it crush me with its weight. Who gets to impose their will on others; who is worthy of that? Nobody. White Man is a seething answer.
 
https://orbtapes.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

FED ASH “Diurnal Traumas” (Orb Tapes)

Knowing that “all proceeds from this release are being donated to Last Chance for Change, an organization dedicated to fighting police brutality and racial injustices in Syracuse, NY,” kind of puts it in perspective. We’re angry. We’re ready for change. And we make loud and brutal music to punctuate our stance. That’s what Fed Ash is saying anyway. Fed Ash is confronting traumas, diurnal and other, head on.

 

Holding a mirror to reflect those traumas inflicted upon the powerless by those with power, Fed Ash whips together a seething mass of rage and launches its power out into the world. Drawing from crust, grindcore, and death metal, and sprinkled with just enough noise and samples to allow me to add the word “experimental” to this review, the quartet gears itself up and to full-on molten efficiency and blisters speakers and eardrums along the way. If only protesters could blast Diurnal Traumas on repeat at a high decibel level and aim it at oppressors!

 

And we see everything on screen, every day, right in front of us. We feel helpless. That’s why a band like Fed Ash, destructively vicious and unflinchingly feral, can swoop in and provide catharsis. Knowing that they stand with those most in need of assistance is an added bonus. There’s safety in likemindedness, and there’s inspiration and fortification too. And heavy, heavy music.

 

https://fedash.bandcamp.com/

 

https://orbtapes.bandcamp.com/

 

--Ryan

PATRICK SHIROISHI AND DYLAN FUJIOKA “Neba Neba” C60 (Orb Tapes)

Jazz nerds Patrick Shiroishi and Dylan Fujioka sure have been hanging out together for a long time, ever since they met at band camp (the activity, not the juggernaut music marketplace) in junior high or whatever. Maybe not that long ago. At least as long ago as that 2013 Chelsea Wolfe record. Chelsea Wolfe, people! That’s not jazz.

 

This is jazz. And it’s on Orb Tapes, which means that, since Orb knows its shit, the jazz iz good jazz. Both Shiroishi and Fujioka have popped up on Astral Spirits before, so they know what kind of company to keep. (To clarify: that’s good company.) Both players are in fine form here, Shiroishi on sax, Fujioka on the kit, and both have incredible chemistry as they cook up two long-form improvisations (and one short one). Shiroishi’s playing is positively Coltrane-esque, and Fujioka splits time between modern exploratory patterns and straight-up Art Blakey worship. Look, when I start saying “Coltrane” and “Blakey,” you know you’ve got something cooking here (or that I’m full of crap).

 

Since I’m not full of crap, you can be sure that an utter wonderland awaits your exploration – a Neba Neba land, maybe? OK, that may have gone too far, but adventure surely will follow every time you pop in this tape. Adventure has followed me to this review, which … is it exciting? Doesn’t matter, listen yonder, order below.

 

https://orbtapes.bandcamp.com/

 

--Ryan

 

FRAGMENT OF JOY “Cosmic Nosebleed” / “Volcanic Brain” (Orb Tapes)

“Cosmic Nosebleed” is exactly the kind of post-hardcore I wanted to play in bands back in college, but I think we were too hamstrung by the allure of psychedelic-length songs to really pare ourselves down. I was right on the verge, right on that edge – but I pulled back into the embrace of odd indie, like Modest Mouse’s first two records. I shrug, whatever, that’s who I was, man. I had a scream that could flay your face – I hid it.

 

“Volcanic Brain” reminds me what can happen when something like June of 44 blows up in your face – it becomes something along the lines of Planes Mistaken for Stars. This takes me back – I wish I still was that weird aggro/anti-aggro guitar hugger sometimes, one who slink an off-kilter melody from the neck and then stomp the fuzz box when the time came. Dynamics. It was all about dynamics. Fragment of Joy has it down.

 

https://fragmentofjoy.bandcamp.com/

 

https://orbtapes.bandcamp.com/

 

--Ryan

 

THE IDE OF EARTH “I Dream Seldom That You Emerged on Altered Craft with My Shining” (Orb Tapes)

 

And here I thought it was me who was bad at Google Translate, but it turns out that The Ide of Earth, aka Parker Weston (PKWST, Butoh Sonics, Smogma, Barrett/Weston Duo, Claustronaut, Sugar Pills Bone, etc.), has no idea what the heck he’s translating. Unless of course I Dream Seldom That You Emerged on Altered Craft with My Shining is an intentional title and not a word frappe expelled out the back end of an internet program. Come to think of it, it could very well be both – who am I to judge?

 

Awesome title aside, Weston ostensibly goes HNW on us here as The Ide of Earth, but this isn’t your standard blackened blast furnace of sonic hell. Flashing his MO by referring to these tracks as “mantras of pollution for the future of our end,” Weston chucks all manner of junk and chemicals into his media blender and shoots out riotously weird signal after riotously weird signal in our direction. Is he hastening our end with this toxic nastiness, filling our rivers and aquifers and reservoirs with pulsing sludge? Is that what the shining is, this radioactive goo that’s filling our ears until we suffocate or become fully poisoned, whichever comes first?

 

No, there’s too much experimental fun going on here for that. First, Weston doesn’t hang around one idea too long, preferring shorter pieces so that he jump from one thing to the next. Second, again, this ain’t the most blackened death noise there is. Third, the variety is such that it keeps you on your toes, keeps you upbeat, keeps your energy cooking. That’s what makes this such an active, engaging listen. Now, I wonder what this review would sound like if I translate it into German? Hmmm …

 

https://pkwst.bandcamp.com/

 

https://orbtapes.bandcamp.com/

 

--Ryan

ALEX MAERBACH “Will the Low E Still Be There Once You’ve Come Down?” C60 (Orb Tapes)

Alex Maerbach drafted the Low E Ensemble to help out with this thing, and it’s a doozy. As a “rumination on the IV humors, medieval pseudoscience, alchemy, and gnosticism,” Maerbach and Low E fully lean into the forms and functions inherent in medieval performance, all while injecting it with a healthy dose of twenty-first-century technology and rumbly noise. Ostensibly beginning as drone pieces, each of the three long-form compositions shortly incorporate all the players into a more traditional “band” performance. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of room for experimentation (because there is!). Acoustic passages appear, as do static and feedback clouds, all making for an exhilarating and astounding experience.

 

If we were going to dilute the utter complexities of this release into a hamfisted comparison, we’d probably come up with something like “Seaven Teares meets Do Make Say Think at a freak-folk convention (or maybe Voice of the Valley).” But that wouldn’t even scratch the surface of tape closer “Choleric + Phlegmatic,” thirty minutes of heaving exploration and interplay, the roiling tensions and seamless transitions from maddening buildups and oscillations to cathartic bursts of frantic playing. Of course it ends on acoustic guitar and lonely brass and reeds, all atop apocalyptic spoken samples and feedback. If the apocalypse was going to come, and, if my theology is up to par, those medieval folks sure probably thought it would, I’d want it to sound like this: utter uninhibited id ready to go down with the ship.

 

Plus that artwork … *chef’s kiss*

 

https://xiii13.bandcamp.com/

 

https://orbtapes.bandcamp.com/

 

--Ryan

SHAME “I Don’t Like You” (Orb Tapes)

“Shame is not here to make friends.” Well duh, not with a name like “Shame”! And, well, also not with a tape titled I Don’t Like You – I probably should have flagged that first. Indeed, Shame, the solo moniker of Abdul Hakim Bilal of Among the Rocks and Roots – whose Raga tape, also on Orb, floored the bejeezus out of me when I first heard it – is as antisocial* a project as it gets, opting for harsh, gristly noise at all costs in order to repel you from Bilal’s presence. And honestly, why would Bilal want any of you in their presence? You’re all a bunch of freeloading, whiny babies. Bilal is right to not want to have anything to do with you.

 

But then there are the select few who get what Bilal's got going on, who hear the outré sonic mayhem and are pulled in, gravitating toward the center of the hellish concoction. People like me. OK, listen up, gather round – you hear that oscillating static? You hear those sampled shrieks? You withstanding that piercing feedback? You resisting the demonic temptations of that buried whisper? You churning like that pulverized cement? You becoming one with that barely tolerable pitch? You frying on that flat-top stove?

 

GOOD!

 

I don’t like you either.

 

You can hang out though and listen to this. You’ve proven worthy of remaining in Bilal’s presence, and that’s good enough for me.

 

*Well, I Don’t Like You isn’t totally antisocial – the awesome Orb alum Samuel Goff makes an appearance on “Transmission Dreams.”

 

https://orbtapes.bandcamp.com/

 

--Ryan

CONCRETE COLORED PAINT “Through a Lens” (Orb Tapes)

Peter Kris looks through lots of lenses. The German Army conspirator has released under various monikers so many tapes and records and CDs about so many people, places, and things that the question “What lens is Peter Kris [and collaborator, if applicable] looking at the world through this time?” The answer on his recent Orb Tapes release is, “… a Lens.” Just, Through a Lens. We have to figure the type of lens out for ourselves, then, don’t we?

Fortunately we have Orb Tapes’s descriptive copy, and through it we find that Kris recorded the majority of the audio in Taiwan. So with the origin of the field recordings determined, we can picture at least where on the map we are, even if we haven’t ever been to Taiwan itself. Weirdly, Taiwanese daily life, including the rain, the wind in trees, and birdsong, etc., sounds awfully like what we’re used to here in the United States. Different language, sure, but oddly enough, people on the other side of the world are remarkably human, living remarkably similar lives to ours. Let that be a lesson to us, one that Depeche Mode once tried to hammer home: people are people; let’s treat each other nicely.

Kris grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, so Taiwan was always just a plane ride across the ocean for him, and he finally got a chance to get there. As Concrete Colored Paint, the moniker he uses for his more ambient releases, he takes us along with him as he wanders around the country, processing the sounds and incorporating synthesizer washes as accompaniment. It holds an even keel throughout, and even branches off into kosmische tangents at points. In the end, though, it’s another fascinating travelogue from the master of them.

https://www.discogs.com/artist/6254415-Concrete-Colored-Paint

https://www.discogs.com/artist/4042696-Peter-Kris

https://germanarmymusic.bandcamp.com/

https://orbtapes.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

SAMUEL GOFF “Transmissions” (Orb Tapes)

Among the Rocks and Roots released one of my favorite 2019 surprises, Raga, which I wrote about immediately after hearing it (it came in the mail; I popped it in within five minutes, not knowing what to expect; I was blown away). It remains a go-to tape when I want a faceful of blistering weirdness – on that front it fully delivers. Samuel Goff comprises half of Among the Rocks and Roots (he’s also a founding member of RAIC), and here he steps out on his own with Transmissions, his first-ever solo release. How does it stack up against the utter onslaught of Raga? Well, it’s still an unmistakable assault on the senses; and while it may not be as traditionally “heavy,” with pummeled instruments and breakneck pacing, it absolutely delivers on the madness and intensity of Goff’s other project.

What’s most noticeable about Transmissions is the variety it displays from track to track, and this makes sense given the fact that it contains field recordings collected over the course of a year; these are sourced from Goff’s travels to Santa Cruz and Cochabamba, Bolivia, while the rest was recorded at the University of Richmond in Virginia. While “Pikeville” mixes free jazz and backporch Kentucky folk, “Transmissions, Part One” blends together scrambled, er, transmissions until they resolve into a cauldron of boiling static. These things juxtaposed against each other serve to heighten their individual characteristics – and this is even before we get to the rhythmic stuff! That’s right, both “Snakebite” and “Cochabamba” hit you with more traditional rhythms, with the field recordings of “Cochabamba” doing some incredible heavy lifting as they inject the thirteen-minute track with surprise movement. (Not to mention the choir – really nice touch.)

At this point you’re only halfway through, and the second side of Transmissions bears out the contrast between noise and rhythm and local sounds/music as sound art in infinitely intriguing ways. Goff transcends genre with ease, swirling everything together until each element fits perfectly in its own place, no matter how much it contrasts with something else. This is the logical next step following Raga, a half-turn to the interior workings of how one participant processes the world around him.

https://orbtapes.bandcamp.com/

https://amongtherocksandroots.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

CRANK STURGEON / MATT LUCZAK “Crank Sturgeon / Matt Luczak Split” C23 (Orb Tapes)

That misfit Crank Sturgeon is at it again, this time bringing his mangled performance noise to Orb Tapes, where he totally belongs. Crank Sturgeon’s on side A. The B-side is offered up (like a ritual sacrifice) to Matt Luczak, who has “saved pretty much every loop [he’s] ever made.” That’s impressive! And lucky for us, we get them ALL here, “spliced together in a non-looping, linear track.” Yes, Matt, we WILL enjoy!

Crank-master S bloodies our noses with “A Stevening Teethe (Eating Leaves),” a frequency blast of industrial hum and agitation mixed with smeared-into-the-pavement voices that pulsates in vibrational patterns that leave you feeling like you were hearing them from the inside of an old-timey diving helmet. But here’s guessing that you’re not wearing one of those; still, imagine sentient static hollowing out the trunk of an oak tree that’s grown straight through the middle of your head, and maybe you get the idea. You’ve been chewing on the leaves for sustenance anyway, haven’t you? That’s all there is, crunching dumbly in your ever-moving goat-mouth. I’m not real pleased with you right now, you know. That’s why Crank Sturgeon’s doing this. He owes me a favor.

Matt Luczak might owe us all a favor, that’s all I can come up with for this weirdly generous and generously weird compilation of freakish loops. I mean, “Salvaged Loops” (cute!) is all over the place – I can’t even begin to describe them or document the building blocks really, although that does seem to be my job at the moment as music writer guy. There’s a lot of noisy blurts and shredded rhythms (in fact, dropping in at a random point on the track usually seems to suggest sculpted mic feedback), but there’s also a lot of surprise moments, like vocal tics, techno asides, blinking computer functionality, smudged ballroom dancing lessons, and random radio spins. It’s a wild ride from start to finish, because there’s really no way to predict any of the madness. You go, Matt!

https://www.cranksturgeon.com/

https://mattluczak.bandcamp.com/

https://orbtapes.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

AMONG THE ROCKS AND ROOTS “Raga” C90 (Orb Tapes)

Oh, no, please, don’t even try to peg Richmond, Virginia, duo Among the Rocks and Roots. There’s so much shift here that pinning down the band would be a fool’s errand. Ostensibly metal, ATRAR mix in so many other different styles and elements that you’re guessing almost as constantly as you’re reaching for the rewind button, ready to relive one weird and incredible passage after another. And you’re dealing with passages, not tracks. The four compositions on Raga stretch for a total of 90 minutes. That’s … a lot of music per track.

Death metal and crust collide with hardcore and noise rock, plus a heavy dose of atmosphere that would sound out of place on a hidden Melvins track (those drums can get so airy!). You gotta fill twenty-minute-long tracks with something other than massive riffs and galloping beats, right? We can’t all be Olympic athletes. So ATRAR get positively shamanic between bouts of chaos, floating meditatively over liquid bass and introducing positively sing-song vocals (see “War Song”) or an ethereal guest spot (Laura Merina on “Salvation”). It all feels like an enormous pagan ritual celebrating the decay of the world or the reversion to simpler means. At any rate, Raga is a triumph of musicianship, and the untraceable pathways blazed through it reveal delightful surprises at every turn.

https://amongtherocksandroots.bandcamp.com/

https://orbtapes.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan