SKITTISH ARM “The Outside Inflation” C64 (PSI LAB)

Floridian weather is not this dour. You look up at cloudless skies, you smile. Yes, I happen to be in Florida, and although I’m far from Sarasota (Skittish Arm’s home base), I can’t imagine it being much different. We’re all on a huge peninsula, after all. (Homer Simpson calls it “America’s wang,” for whatever that’s worth.) There’s an ocean breeze on our coasts. We breathe it.

We Floridians do have a pretty dour reputation, I guess, as being America’s clown child babies, whose propensity for unconsidered acts of utter reactionary madness has inspired nation- and worldwide derision (see, for example, our old pal “Florida Man” on Twitter). Not totally undeserved, all that. Anyway, Skittish Arm perhaps internalizes that instead of the sunshine, a view of the world where it’s crumbling all around us and the interior of the singular person is all that’s left to grasp onto. And even that’s crumbling, as presented by the positively Basinski-esque disintegration of Skittish Arm’s sound sources. The press kit also mentions Eno and I also mention the Caretaker. That decay is beautiful, sad, and a complete logical next step. But the Sarasota producer isn’t content to wallow – embrace along with Skittish Arm the gentle path toward oblivion on tracks such as “Assembled Tenderness,” “Gleam of Peace,” and “Peaking Warmth.” There’s joy and freedom in letting go, in setting yourself apart, in approaching life from a vantage point where others are connection points in a vast network of life as it slowly becomes untenable on this planet.

Skittish Arm
PSI LAB

--Ryan Masteller

DIRE WOLVES “House of Triangles” (Psi Lab)

The music here is two mostly organic jam sessions with six credited instrumentalists. It’s very nice. I’m not falling in love with it, but there’s nothing unfriendly or unpleasant going on; I love music, they love music. There’s regular rock band instruments, plus violin, woodwinds (including “wooden sax”), “tapes,” and “electronics.” It has a studio feel rather than a live-recording feel, but it’s not overwhelmed with producer vibes. It’s a nice balance of light production and organic jam. The artwork is meticulous—a collaged image of monkeys swinging from indoor curtains over windows that look out into a dark sky of shooting stars. The j card is on heavy, glossy cardboard, and there’s a duplicate of the cover art on another card loose inside, like a trading card or an art print. I think the music was made by a San Francisco group, and the tape release (including the ornate art design) was done by an Oklahoma enthusiast. For me it evokes a dim room of carpets, musicians, coffee and smoke rings. I like it, thank you.

Psilabtapes.bandcamp.com

-- Kevin Oliver

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE “’97 Tracer” C50 (Psi Lab)

 

Like a bottle rocket that doesn’t really go very fast or very far, or even explode, or in fact ignite in the first place – let’s face it, this bottle rocket is a soggy leftover from some long-forgotten forest-clearing romp that’s moldering beside a tree root – National Park Service refuse to even consider the potentiality of bursting into a great big golden ball of light. Instead NPS, a single psychedelic drone wanderer, is much more content to bury himself in a hole, cover the entrance with dirt, and record his guitar and amplifier and manipulate his effects pedals and samplers in the hollow beneath the earth. Why? I don’t know. Maybe the song title “So Fucked Up on Drugs” can provide the answer.

It can, actually, as it’s ten minutes of freaky drone from the underworld, guitar weirdness blanketing the landscape and stretching its gastric saturation as far as the ear can see. It doesn’t know which way is up, and so it soaks into the clouds instead of the ground. Weird, lengthy psychedelic monuments are my bread and butter, so I’m kind of a sucker for this. Comparisons have been made to Eno and Natural Snow Buildings, but the guitar temperature of a reeled-in, slowed-down, and slushed-up Robedoor or Raccoo-oo-oon also registers. This sounds good to you, I know it, because it sounds good to me, and I know what’s best for you. Let’s all expand together with tracks like “Painted Houses,” “Floating,” and the title track.

The packaging is second to none, too – lookee here: “numbered edition of 40, pro dubbed c50, clear shell with silver liner, embossed labels, pro printed hand scored 4 panel j card on silver cardstock, vellum label insert, original artwork insert, clear norelco case.” There’s even a “Deluxe Home Dub Edition,” but it’s sold out. Actually, the regular one’s sold out too. Better get your Bandcamp on!

PSI Lab

’97 Tracer Bandcamp page

National Park Service

--Ryan Masteller