THE KENDAL MINTCAKE "All-Star Erotic Hypnosis" C30 (Big Sleep Records)

Last year, I had the good fortune to review TKM’s split with Patrick Cosmos, also put out by TKM’s own Big Sleep Records, and I was fucking floored. The hallucinatory layers of ever-tweeked drone had me seeing worlds within enchanted worlds as I sat on the floor, eyes closed, with headphones. This release, however, mmnnotsomuch.

Printing on the inside of the J-Card:

“DO YOU CARE ABOUT PROCESSES? YES? READ THIS:
These tracks were built by taking well-loved songs, flattening them
down to mono and feeding them into an outboard monophonic MIDI
convertor. Two discrete passes of these conversions were then fed
into two synths each and the results are presented here.”

The effect is akin to a robot coming to life, seeing two meatbags performing a “free-jazz” concert, and saying to itself, “Shee-yit…I can do that all on my own, using internal synthesizers.” Despite having concrete source material, the end result is somehow still themelessly masturbabory, noise-for-noise-sake. Only track 6, “The Lover Speaks About the Monsters” hints at the command of space and mood TKM are capable of. Yeah, I’d probably appreciate this release more, had I not such high expectations from the precedent they’d already set. At least they’re exploring? Hrm…

https://bigsleeprecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-kendal-mintcake-presents-all-star-erotic-hypnosis

-- Jacob An Kittenplan

PATRICK COSMOS/ THE KENDAL MINTCAKE “Finally My Friends/Your Credit Card Has Already Been Charged” C38 (Big Sleep Records)

So, it’s Halloween-Twenty-Fifteen here and I’ve just now finished listening to two soul-disturbingly great tape submissions… and godDAMN if it isn’t great to be back in the realm of not subconsciously worrying if maybe the consonant shift of those last choral frequencies wasn’t just an allusion to self-termination…

Patrick Cosmos usually has his hands in more dance-y electro-pies, but this split release finds him beat-less and euphorically meditative, with tons of timbre-waving phased-out synthesizer drones, e-bowed electric guitar amblings (kinda like a slow Eno/Fripp tripp kinda a lot), heroically slow, cascading melodica arpeggios, and some deep, warbly major key low end. This lone 18.5 minute star-gazer is so nostalgic and sugary, it could make your cheeks hurt, and it’s exactly what I needed after those aforementioned soul-bummer (great! But still melancholy at their most manic) tapes.  Great for a positive, recharging zone-out!

The Kendal Mintcake has me nearly hallucinating!

Track one evokes images of speed-demon faeries tearing ass through an enchanted woods teeming with life, the lightning dust falling in their wake giving birth to myriad magical flowers who in turn yield further and further delights. The busy soundworlds created dance delicately around each other, never stepping on the others’ toes, but further egging them on.

Track two feels like if you took the first track’s business and slowed it down one thousand percent and transmitted to the asteroid belt. The effect is amazing. Electro-acoustic glimmerings, glacial swells & recessions, & the perfect balance of consonant/dissonant interplay of Hertz. Towards the end, I began to wonder if an Irish comet might dance a jig, given the right radio waves were to somehow simultaneously resonate it.

Track 3 the missing link betwixt 1 & 2! Jonathan Livingston Seagull breaks through the fifth wall and soars into eternity.

Track 4 embodies the loneliness of abandoned satellites and all those secrets that refuse to die. The mortality of the etic truths passed back and forth unwittingly and unknowingly.

I really hope that Big Sleep Records keeps ‘em coming!

http://veryimportant.lawyer/

http://thekendalmintcake.bandcamp.com/

and/or

http://bigsleeprecords.bandcamp.com/releases           

- - Jacob An Kittenplan