Q///Q “Vanguard Youth" C40 (Strategic Tape Reserve)

While there may be a slightly detectable GeAr flavor in Q///Q’s “Vanguard Youth”, you’re far more likely to taste a parallel timeline where, back in 1990, it wasn’t England but rather Portugal, and it wasn’t electric lutes, keys, & drums but rather synthesizers & drum machines plugged into those delay(s) and reverb pedals that a certain possible Spaceperson 33 decided to take up with their hypnogogic barrage of self-battling mid-tempo arpeggios and lulling mantric riffs against our earholes. If this isn’t a what-could-have-been homage, I don’t know what is. Same fugue-like fog and serene tangle of lolling grooves, but maybe slightly looser, hazier, and would-be-nappier, were the vocals* not so ceremonially executed and interest-piquing. 

The GeAr diaspora ventures further and further, far out and farther outer!

https://strategictapereserve.bandcamp.com/album/vanguard-youth

and/or

https://germanarmymusic.bandcamp.com/album/q-q-gear-side-project

—Jacob An Kittenplan

*Chanted half in Engrish, half in Portuguese

Q///Q “Vanguard Youth” C40 (Strategic Tape Reserve)

Webster’s defines “vanguard” as “the forefront of an action or movement.” (Next to “hackneyed writer” it dispenses with words altogether and features only a picture of me with a lampshade on my head.) I think we’ve established that German Army, of which Q///Q is an offshoot brand, is at the vanguard of social resistance and change via sound art, and it’s also pretty clear that the youth are going to have to step in and take up the mantle and continue the fight as time passes. Youth with enough energy to throw each other, Superman-like, through the air. Vanguard Youth we could call them.

Q///Q did.

Yeah, we like a little rhapsody with our waxation, and Vanguard Youth delivers it within its fragile now-wave synth tunes, numbers teetering on the edge of a knife: to one side, trouble, to the other, rapture. It’s an operation that seems untenable – too much potential for disaster. But that’s the beauty of Q///Q – it balances the hazy computer pulse of a good GeAr tune, whacking itself against a shorting node, with the blissful and melancholy ambience of a good Peter Kris track, enveloping a node with its humidity until it shorts. Either way you’re effing up a perfectly good computer.

And while it’s not a traditional call to arms in the same way as the most circuit-fried GeAr releases can be, it at least sustains the unease beneath the surface. Its consistent presence is a constant reminder to go forth and do that thing, right that wrong. It’s not on the front line, but it’s nourishment for the vanguard youth behind the scenes. Real change is gonna come, you mark my words.

https://germanarmymusic.bandcamp.com/

https://strategictapereserve.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

Q///Q “NSABWA”

German minimal-pop composer offers up a collection of greatest hits. I mean I think that's what's happening, as some of the tracks have appeared on other tapes. No one's making it easy on me, let's say that much. Anyway, it's essentially an homage to early 80's coldwave enhanced/eroded by a voice that sounds like a babbling maniac pacing back and forth a bus stop. It's not really all that likeable, but I'm sure that's entirely the point. Somewhere in Europe somebody's trying their best to dance to this, and it's not going well.

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/qqsuits

-- Ken McIntyre