This is what I'd like to see more of! It's such a wonderful thing to put on a new tape from an artist I've never heard of and immediately be met with a work of compositional brilliance that is both melodically and rhythmically inventive. It's not that I don't enjoy my fair share of drone and noise tapes, but I have to say that I'm always especially pleased when folks use the cassette medium to share other forms of music than the ones that so frequently grace these pages. (hear that you eccentric popsters, folksters, punksters, etc out there: send me your tapes).
This tape actually contains two albums by Peter Kalyniuk, one recorded on a digital 16 track in 2005 and the other recorded on an analog four track in 2001, but released just this year on a new label called Canada Goose. This makes me think "where on earth has this guy been for the past ten years"? A cursory internet search reveals little information: he's from Toronto, apparently he's also a comic artist. That second tidbit makes a lot of sense because his music definitely has a madcap cartoonish feel to it.
How to describe it? Maybe like a much more dense take on Esquivel for the current millennium? That definitely does this tape some justice. Across 30 different songs, Kalyniuk layers strange and varied keyboards over beats and assorted instrumentation (all digital? I can't tell, probably) to create one of the most strangely grooving releases of recent memory. It's actually kind of shocking to me that this guy doesn't have more of a name for himself as I can see this stuff fitting into collections of decidedly diverse bents. On second thought, who am I kidding? This stuff is pretty darn near psychotic. From madhouse carnival romps & space alien waltzes to psychedelic civil war marches, Kalyniuk delivers the goods in ways I'm not sure you'll even begin to comprehend.
Lucky for you, you don't have to, I've already done all the comprehending necessary, all you need to do is go spend $5 at http://www.canadagoosetapes.com/tapes/ (they've even got some audio samples up there).
Here at Cassette Gods, we've traditionally taken the view that positivity should be paramount on these pages. The thinking has been: "well this label/band/person only put out 100 copies of the tape anyway, why waste the time to dis on it", but after an intense 24 hour meeting of the Cassette Gods, fueled by coffee cake and Merzbow tapes, we've come to the conclusion that we will let the iron curtain of positivity fall, essentially opening the floodgates to a whole new era of bilious spew. I figured I'd be the first to make a crack in the dam of good intentions and post some reviews from the last few years that I thought it better not to write in the first place. So keep those tapes coming buckaroos!
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