7.22.19 by Ryan Masteller

“I won’t be, like, tethered to nothin’!”

So says Church Shuttle as he casts off the “Mind Leash,” filtering everything that’s trapping him through loops and cassettes and synth pads and all other sorts of crazy nonsense and compiling it into this document. For Chris Durham, the Michigan mind behind the ’Shuttle, putting together “Mind Leash” was the “equivalent of gathering all of my angst into one place and then firing it into the sun” (*quotation mine, not Chris Durham’s, because that’s what I imagine him saying about “Mind Leash” when asked about it for a feature Spin interview). Regardless of who put words into whose mouth, there’s still half a C100 here (weird, right?) filled with garbled noise loops and rhythmic pulsations that’ll leave you bobbing in a life raft in the middle of a plasma sea on the surface of said sun, for at least the millisecond you’re still conscious before the awesome power of our closest star pulls all your molecules apart.

If you were to press play on this Church Shuttle tape in the vicinity of a galactic disturbance or even just in front of the most convenient magnet, the results would be the same: total disintegration, of loops of sound sources, of intent, till only the sounds of the destruction itself become the ambient foci. That is, until the voices pierce the mix. Then it’s like you’re standing on the bridge of the Event Horizon and watching the awful videos of people eating each other, or whatever that was. But again, that’s all part of Chris Durham’s plan, all part of the great expulsion of bad thoughts and sad energy, the casting off of the shackles of the Mind Prison. The “Mind Leash” is UNleashed, UNattached, INeffective in its purpose of keeping the average person down. And that’s what makes it a fascinating listen – one person’s angst is another person’s treasure. Something something empathy.

Grip a copy of this bad boy from Anathema Archive, edition of 100 pro-duped tapes. Remember, though, it’s only on one side!