VARIOUS ARTISTS Banana Pill, Morbid Rainbow, Ratkiller, Sky Sacrifice 4-way split C90 (Shack in the Barley Productions)

This sort-of mysterious clusterbomb of a four-way split is ninety minutes of sheer drone catastrophe, sonic meltdowns on a geological scale. Tectonic plates shudder and crack and then just dematerialize, leaving us unfortunate surface dwellers the choice of either evolving quick enough that we can traverse magma (spoiler: we can’t) or dematerializing ourselves into the horrifying new surface of our once-hospitable planet (spoiler: that’s what happens). Damn you, four-way split, for doing this to us!

The culprits:

Banana Pill

Personnel: Sasha Kretova and Dmitri Zherbin. Banana Pill contributes one 22-minute track. It’s called “Sand.” It feels like a constant blast of sand to the face, obliterating skin, muscle, and bone over its runtime.

Morbid Rainbow

Personnel: Mike Hertz. Ol’ Mike rounds out side A with two mortifying slabs of sleaze dipped in asphalt and cockroaches. Whatever that means is something you’ll have to figure out for yourself. “Luxurious Anxiety” and “Rotten Handwash” indeed! I’ll never get my hands clean this way…

Ratkiller

Personnel: Mihkel Kleis. Ratkiller is positively radiant, opening side B with angelic synth work and continuing on through his half of the side with more of the same Three tracks for our man Mihkel! You can absolutely hear the radiance of the compositions in his titles, “Mermaid Elegy,” “Framed and United,” and “Underwater Dancer.” The music hardly befits Mihkel’s recording moniker, but it’s probably my favorite stretch of this tape.

Sky Sacrifice

Personnel: Jamie Azzopardi. Jamie runs Shack in the Barley Productions, and his work here as Sky Sacrifice is tense and weird, then playful as he changes things up to a bizarre 8-bit section halfway through “Slider Between Worlds,” his only track here. Fun fact: Jamie was a member of The Shitty Beatles, made popular by their appearance in a passing mention in the original Wayne’s World film. Actual fact: Jamie was not a member of The Shitty Beatles, I just wanted to remind you of the existence of a thing called The Shitty Beatles, which maybe sounded like Sky Sacrifice. You never know.

Shack in the Barley Productions Bandcamp

--Ryan Masteller

+DOG+ “Creature Comforts” (Brise-Cul Records)

Looking for bios on noise artists is hard since many don’t care about the concept of a web presence. They know their audience will find them and that’s if they even care about being found at all. After a quick google search, I couldn’t find much background info on +DOG+. However, I did divulge that Brise-Cul Records, who put “Creature Comforts” out, are a label based out of Canada. That doesn’t give much context outside of the fact Brise-Cul is a noise label. If you like that sort of thing dig around their bandcamp.

Each side of the tape is one composition long. Side A’s “Food” would have been better if it were named “Robots Having an Orgy” to give listeners an idea of what they were in for. I’ve never been to a robot orgy or even heard one but thanks to my overactive imagination I think I have a good idea what it’d sound like. +DOG+ has created that perfectly.  Stream for yourself then consider buying from the link below:

Stream + Buy: https://brisecul.bandcamp.com/album/creature-comforts

-- Roy Blumenfeld  

RIGEL MAGELLAN “Succulent Sounds” C44 (OJC Recordings)

Much like his namesakes Dominar Rygel XVI and Ferdinand Magellan, from whom he surely copped his moniker, Rigel Magellan is interested in charting undiscovered territories on his synthesizers and then colonizing them through sheer force. (And yes, I know Rygel from Farscape spells his name differently, shut up!) Succulent Sounds, on LA-based, garage-inhabiting label OJC Recordings, is filled with straight-up succulent (hence the title) tones, warm and inviting, but not like those astral projectionists whose sole purpose is to transport you to other states of being. Naw, Rigel Magellan, has too much of a pop sensibility to him, and his smeared songs are underscored by – gasp! – beats. Yeah, they’re pretty sparse, many times no more than click tracks, but it positions Rigel in the same musical hemisphere as early Black Moth Super Rainbow, for example, instead of near someone like, say, Emeralds.

Opener “Grits” is pretty krauty, though, and “Drowning” is seasick manipulation at its best, both recalling some of the 1980s-damaged work of “Maestro” Yves Malone, who’s just been knocking them out of the park recently. “Cadaver” makes with the space alien bleeps and bloops, combining Ed Wood terror with extraterrestrial curiosity and all but assuring us consumers that Succulent Sounds is gonna be all over the place in a good way. If this is how the Grays are coming, they can probe me all they want. I’ll volunteer to be in their space zoo.

Also, somehow the beginning of “fLip fLop” sounds like the Sega Genesis startup. And then it kind of keeps going as if the Sega Genesis startup were only a second and a half of an actual song. It’s cool, you should try it!

By side B Magellan is all about getting laid back, where the interplanetary tropicalia of “Yellow Trail,” hypnogogic crystal funk of “Syrum,” and woozy nug-warmth of “Wasser” envelope us in their sweet, smoky embrace. Dare I say succulent embrace? I dare. It’s just such a good descriptor for what our old pal Rigel has ready for us that it’s hard to get the idea out of your system. And I can’t get this tape out of my system – I loved BMSR’s Falling Through a Field and Start a People, and this takes me back to the days when I was just discovering those albums. Maybe this could be the start of a new obsession for you? It probably is for me.

OJC Recordings

Succulent Sounds Bandcamp page

--Ryan Masteller

DJ DINGO SUSI “Dingo” C41 (Fall Break Records)

two reviewers received this tape, so I'm going to post both of their reviews - ed.

All this talk of multiverses is making me thirsty, and nothing quenches the thirst better than a good craft beer, especially if it’s not 7:00 am, like it is now. When it’s 7:00 am, like it is now, nothing quenches that thirst better than a tall glass of ice water, and then I’m hydrated and ready to face what’s next.

Morning discussions of multiverses and beer and DJ Dingo Susi aren’t for the faint of heart, and my heart is 100% Grade A American blood-pumping beef, so I’m ready for anything. On my side of the dimensional rift we’ve had Ariel Pink (h/t to fellow CG-er Roy “Captain Wacky” Blumenfeld for the comparison!) doing his Ariel Pink thing for a while now, and I’ve never really immersed myself in his scene. Not that I have anything against Pink’s music (some of his worldviews, maybe a little bit more), I just sort of ignored it. There, I said it – I’ve ignored Ariel Pink for no good reason! You’re welcome world – commence your mockery.

If Ariel Pink is the Ariel Pink-y-est, then I’m just going to turn on this molecular dispersal machine (or whatever you want to call it) that I found under a tarp in crazy ol’ Doc Walter Bishop’s garage and see what it does. Hey, what do you know! I can move freely from this universe, where I’m as American as American gets, as you’ll recall, to one adjacent, where America is still America, land of the free, home of the brave! There are slight differences, like the blimps and weird bald dudes, but the big one is that there’s no Ariel Pink – weird, right? Instead, DJ Dingo Susi, aka Benjamin Wild, is a freak pop outsider star, caressing eggplants and spinning psychedelic pop masterpiece after psychedelic masterpiece. His debut album, just called Dingo, released in a limited edition on Fall Break Records, sells for thousands of Americred currency on uBay, and he’s beloved both at home and abroad in all eighty-seven American colonies.

Seriously, though, I thought I’d hate this tape because I don’t like the cover (or the name DJ Dingo Susi, really), but I really, really dig it. Roy thought I’d hate it too, but he was wrong! You can hear stuff like Deerhunter in here as well I guess (so says FBR). But I’m pretty sure Mr. Wild is just A-OK doing his own thing and ignoring comparisons like true gangster. Hey, I’d ignore me too!

You shouldn’t though. Ever.

--Ryan Masteller

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Not sure what compelled seemingly ordinary Berlin resident Benjamin Wild to call himself DJ Dingo Susi but I’m sure he had a reason. I know bedroom pop is a genre, an oversaturated one if you ask me, but has anyone categorized bedroom psychedelic? If not then give Wild credit for it. This tape embodies the lo-fi goodness and the psych pop sensibilities that don’t fit any other genre.

I’d say he’s ready to hit with the big leagues and could use a studio upgrade for his next album though. Lo-fi production is good and warm but a proper recording session + mastering could work wonders here. Fans of the more recent Animal Collective contributions, Deerhunter, and Ariel Pink should close Pitchfork on their browsers and give “Dingo” a listen. Stream + buy below.

-- Roy Blumenfeld

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Fall Break Records

Dingo Bandcamp page

DJ Dingo Susi