NINA RYSER “Laughing Tears” (Ranch Jams Records)

Sick swill from the Philly gutters, Laughing Tears pours down from our face thick like soup, mixing with sweat and fog and grease and wiz, a slurry of toxic tones from glowing Casios emitting carcinogenic vapor. Nina Ryser puts the “w wav” in “new wave,” opting for angularity over smooth forms. Sometimes lurching like an oversuited David Byrne but also just as sometimes reeling like an underhatted Mark Mothersbaugh (or just cooking in the lab like … a scientist with synthesizers … with Laetitia Sadier!), Ryser flits like Beaker from beaker to beaker to make sure the Bunsen burners aren’t overcooking the sauce. But there one is, boiling a tune to vapor; there’s another, coating and crusting the sides of everything it sprays; there’s a third, congealing into paste following a wind-gust-related flame mishap. I’m not doing the dishes.

The sauce is the boss, and we live to see its effects. Laughing Tears fires cylinders of enthusiasm through the mechanics of industrial waveforms, the pistons becoming coated and cracked by energetic use. And yet the cocked-and-loaded melodic structures puncture the attention of everyone racing to the toolbox with an idea, an addendum. Such eagerness Laughing Tears inspires! Nina Ryser is nothing if not the torchbearer of excitement, a visionary of skewed concoctions and othered song cycles. Also a pretty inventive songwriter, if you want it plain.

https://ninaryser.bandcamp.com/

https://ranchjams.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

SUFFERING PROFUSION “Obsiliatary” (Nailbat Tapes)

While I’m tempted to start this off with a bit of snark, as in, “Oh, Suffering Profusion, probably gonna be a breezy afternoon with this one,” I won’t (though I sort of did), because of the d(r)ead seriousness of the material and its affiliation with Nailbat Tapes, whom we like quite a bit. Also, Suffering Profusion isn’t your run-of-the-mill noise artist with an impenetrable wall of static and feedback. No, Suffering Profusion is all over the map, a maestro of dynamics within the genre. A little blistering feedback here, a little rumble of low-EQ’d tectonics there, a few healthy doses of glitch and faltering connections, some heavily processed tortured vocals, a bit of proto-industrial clang and thrash (as in, “thrashing about in a seizurely way”), and voila! You have Obsiliatary. I don’t know what Obsiliatary means either, but it can’t be good.

This is serious stuff, a heaving beast of transgressive activity, a deeply disturbed chronicle of anguish, a blood-soaked missive to the world. It’s also sonically rich and refuses to be pinned to one genre or another. But it’s extreme – don’t get me wrong, this thing’s extreme. And the more you listen to it, the more you’ll be able to decode the throes of misery Suffering Profusion is wallowing in. It’s remarkably cathartic, and wildly listenable too – so much to dig through!

https://sufferingprofusion.bandcamp.com/

https://nailbattapes.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

SHIT CREEK “Don’t Cry Sci-Fi Tiger” (Moon Myst Music)

Paddle or no paddle? The question hovers, unanswered, unanswerable, irrelevant as “Don’t Cry Sci-Fi Tiger” unfurls itself from glowing speakers, claws unsheathing and retracting, tail swishing, mouth yawning. It’s a languid, sleepy kind of afternoon, and Sci-Fi Tiger is not ready to pounce. It lays in the shade on its own, contemplating something that may make it sad. This is why we ask it not to cry.

Shit Creek is from Bristol, which is in the UK for those of you without a globe handy, and “Don’t Cry Sci-Fi Tiger” plays like a storybook for children in a terrible alternate universe where children are in charge somehow, demanding the adults to cater to their every whim while the plot destructive plots but get too tired to really pull anything off. Somehow that’s a place, because I conjured it, and there’s one of infinite alternate realities that went this way. Anyhoo, Shit Creek plasters noisy elements to the walls like they’re prize artworks on a refrigerator. Glommy guitar, syrupy synths, plocky percussive elements, an annoying patience with getting to where he’s going on a convoluted path that he’s plotted through detours and thickets and diversions, and in the end it doesn’t go where it was planned to go anyway, and there wasn’t even a plan to begin with.

There’s a grisly digital nightmare called “Creepy Robot Bird Monster” and an oddly restrained dribble of composition called “I’m Bursting Yr Tires You Prick! Here Comes Mr. Keys!”

That may be all you need now for your attention, and the Sci-Fi Tiger raises its head, twitches a whisker, and pixilates till it’s sated.

Ah, it was no paddle.

https://moonmystmusic.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

ROBERT COLE RIZZI “Conversations” C52 (Histamine Tapes)

This is an unreviewable tape. Not in a bad way, like, “Screw this tape, I hate it!” But in a way where anything beyond description is irrelevant, useless, ambiguous, disingenuous. So let’s start with the premise:

“Conversations was conceived in the cold months of winter and early spring in Denmark 2019.

“Setting out to pursue a different artistic path, this album is composed using small fragments from a conversation with my father - field recordings and improvisations on an Organette.

“I was talking with my father Richard J. Rizzi in his home upstate NY in the winter of 2017 – and I wanted to record us hanging out in his kitchen – looking at his work and him telling stories. The parts I decided to used [sic] for this album, were mainly on subjects of art, philosophy, spirituality and a little about the man I’m named after – Robert Cole – my father[’]s friend and a gifted musician and conductor, who was killed the year before my birth – the rest of that story, is another album …”

The field recordings add a sense of heaviness to the air, a tension, and the text intersperses the sound. The result is a vibrant electroacoustic noise experiment that you must delve deeply into – skimming is not recommended. Set aside an hour and drop in on Rizzi and contemplate his intense work.

https://soundcloud.com/rizzi

https://histaminetapes.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

TODD BARTON “Ro” (Flying Moonlight)

I had a colleague who played the shakuhachi, but unfortunately he passed away a few years ago now after a prolonged battle with cancer. I can only imagine he utilized the practice as a centering tool or a meditative outlet to remove himself from thoughts or pain associated with it. In fact, “Ro is the lowest note on the shakuhachi  … Blowing the note Ro for 10 minutes to an hour a day is traditional training for shakuhachi players. Ro focuses breath, embouchure, timbre and listening.” That sounds about right. My colleague was certainly a contemplative soul.

Todd Barton’s been around a long time – in fact, Ro was originally self-released in 2003, but we get a reprieve from its scarcity with this new edition from Flying Moonlight. While you can usually find Barton tooling around a Buchla, Serge, or Hordijk synthesizer, or giving a talk or a workshop in Rome or Berlin or Vienna or some city far away from his hometown of Portland, Oregon, but here we’re treated to the talents of a true multi-instrumentalist. Not only are the recordings on Ro remarkably tranquil and dreamlike, but they’re also focused and purposeful, and concentrating all your attention and energy on them produces a sort of clearminded trance – an elevation of mind to a higher level? Who knows, and my mind is certainly not one to take that next leap to a hitherto unreached mental state (despite my impressive vocabulary), but maybe I’m just not doing it right. Maybe I just have to adjust the knobs and dials of my focus a smidge … ah,

[ZEN]

…there we go.

http://toddbarton.com/

https://flyingmoonlight.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan