Tabs Out

„DJ VLK” – Ballermann Partykeller

2.4.20 by Ryan Masteller

I didn’t know what Schlager music was exactly until “Ballermann Partykeller” came across my desk and I was forced to write about it. I still don’t know what “Ballermann” means other than that it’s a subgenre of Schlager music … I think? I’m not exactly teeming in worldly references here. I may have to leave this up to the Germans themselves. (And I throw my hands up in defeat as a person with mostly German background.)

Of all the things I just said, “being forced to write about” “Ballermann Partykeller” was by far the most egregious lie, as I do this for fun, guys, c’mon. Also, anytime a Strategic Tape Reserve release hits my mailbox, I know I’m in for an amazing treat. The Cologne-based label’s concepts are second to none, and whether or not they’re actually serious (impossible to tell – you can’t get past that stoic Teutonic façade!), they make me giggle just a little bit inside. The deadly dry presentation of both product and commentary is a hallmark of the label, whose wry witticisms pepper their online presence with a sturdy thoughtfulness that belies its depth.

„DJ VLK,” fully quotation-mark’d to ensure separation from plain-old VLK, appears here in Balearic party mode, ready to rock whatever cellar everybody’s gathering at. Here the tunes are strung together, warped, destroyed, mixed, layered and stretched until they barely resemble their original Schalgeristic forms. „DJ VLK” is a plunderer of phonics, a student of styles, and a master arranger of disparate hits till they bend and conform to whatever it is that constitutes the „DJ VLK” way. And yet the party is mild one – there’s no four-on-the-floor club bangers or strobed rave-ups, just chilled head-noddage interspersed with sound-collage snippets. It really is like Strategic Tape Reserve is suggesting you have your own party for yourself in your own basement, maybe even without anybody else around.

That’s OK. These two long mixes have something to do with “beer kings” and “Ham Street,” two (probably) very German references. These are things close at hand, beer and ham, and these are things that can enhance a party, especially one of your own making and for you alone. And Mallorca is actually pretty far away at the moment, so we’re at the mercy of what our minds return to us after ingesting the stimulus. Still, the incredibly European acid-lite ethereal dance jams that „DJ VLK” runs through the PA closes that distance, brings us into contact with a cultural phenomenon that we’re probably not going to get any closer to than we are right now, on our couch. At least that’s how I feel, old, tired, and in pajamas, not looking for anything other than some sort of cerebral musical experience.

Oh, look at that MS Paint cover! (That’s not „DJ VLK,” by the way.)

Edition of 30 from Strategic Tape Reserve. Brilliant release, as always.

Qoa – Tupungatito

2.3.20 by Ryan Masteller

I’m going to show you this picture of Tupungatito, a volcano situated in the Chilean Andes on the border of Argentina, about halfway down the country near Santiago. It’s breathtaking, isn’t it? Magnificent. Majestic and massive, at once tranquil and imposing, even from this distance. Imagine getting right up on that thing, via helicopter or, god forbid, on foot. (Do people hike around the Andes like they hike around the Appalachian Trail? I’d do it, but somebody needs to confirm that for me first.) It then becomes mostly imposing, a disruption of the earth’s crust that dwarfs any sort of human experience. Also, the fact that you’d be standing on (or flying over) terrain that could blow your bottom sky high if it so chose adds to the daunting aspect of it (but makes it no less grand).

Then in comes ambient artist Qoa, whose “Tupungatito” is a definite love letter to this natural phenomenon. Qoa’s synthesizer births “a handcrafted ecosystem inside a vulcano or a forest of millions lighting micro Vulcanos,” which I take to mean that Qoa is either drawing inspiration from Tupungatito’s interior or the frigid heights of Tupungatito’s peak glistening in the sunlight. Qoa certainly treats the volcano with a sense of complete awe, the twinkling and bubbling synths expressing the artist’s wonder at such an impressive sight. Yet it does so from a distance, a remove that suggests MAYBE there’s a limit on how close we want to get to this thing. Still, look at that picture again. Utterly gorgeous. Qoa captures that.

Oh, forgot about that “inside a vulcano” part. I’ll leave that up to Qoa – that can be Qoa’s thing.

Limited to 50 copies from Fluere Tapes! Sparkly cassette shell … you know you love sparkles. And volcanos. And twinkly synths.

Personal Archives – End of the Year Batch (2019)

1.31.20 by Ryan Masteller

Milking the Dubuque teat (among teats from other places), Bob Bucko Jr.’s Personal Archives label is the gold standard of experimental lunacy, the go-to Bandcamp site to peruse outsider wares or stream outsider tracks. Now that 2019 has come and gone, we turn to their turn-of-the-decade tape batch, released at the ass end of what turned out to be a pretty crummy year. (And yes, I do realize that I just wrote “teat” and “ass” in the intro to this thing. I’ve been wandering in the country among the cattle a bit too long now.) Let’s start 2020 with something less crummy! Like a new Personal Archives batch perhaps? Wait, I think I just said that.

AVERAGE LIFE EXPECTANCY – HOARDER

There’s something inherently unsettling about the idea of hoarding. The obsession with obtaining more and more things and not getting rid of any of it when you run out of room, just letting it pile up around your house or apartment, is as creepy as it gets. You walk into a hoarder’s residence and are greeted by mounds of stuff, junk, sculch, reaching the ceiling, pouring out of cabinets and closets, or testing the limits of tables and shelves. I don’t suppose hoarders have guests over all too often. There’s gotta be a self-loathing element to it, yeah? And that’s where Average Life Expectancy comes in, the mutant metal/crust band boiling over with self-loathing and disgust. As bands of this type are never ones to hide their feelings on any particular subject, Average Life Expectancy alternates between seething sludge and seething bouts of thrash – but always seething. Mixed somewhat murkily (to nice effect), “Hoarder” still retains its pummeling vision, a vast hatred aimed outward in loud blasts of anger. By the time “The Hoarder” rounds out side B, you’re wondering what kind of people could have pissed off Average Life Expectancy so much. Before you answer yourself with, “Probably everyone,” take a look at that title and remind yourself about the hoarders. It’s always hoarders.

LEAAVES – VIENNESE PERIOD

Nate Wagner’s letting his loops disintegrate again. Over two sides, one recorded in New York and the other in Vienna (hence the name), Wagner immerses us in a tactile environment, letting the sounds of his surroundings build up in his workstation and manipulating them until they trickle out speakers like escaping molecules. It’s impossible to determine origin even though we’re at least given the cities the tracks were recorded in. I for one don’t think New York sounds like the delicate glitching hisses or hissing glitches or whatever of “Brownstone Anticlimactica” – I think it sounds like traffic and construction. Same with Vienna – certainly the Austrian capital doesn’t sound like the delicately pinged and reversed objects of “Hell Bounce” – it probably sounds like traffic and construction. (Sadly, Vienna is one European city I haven’t been able to get to, so I can’t let you know for sure.) What I do know is that Leaaves is a very careful project, whether Wagner’s zinging us with synths or cut-up Terry Crews-es, and “Viennese Period,” like my own “Macaroni and Glue Period” (seriously, check it out at a MOMA near you), follows that ideal that Wagner’s set for himself.

PARTLY ZOMBISH / PHONED NIL TRIO – SPLIT

What are these guys, messing with us or something? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love it, I love to be messed with, and I know you do too. But check this out. That cover is peanuts on a snare drum, and one of the Partly Zombish tracks is called “Nuts, a Snare Drum, and a Salad Spinner.” In fact, all of their tracks are just them doing things with objects, resulting in a particularly strange sort of found sound/noise experiment. There’s a little piano on “Justin: Irony Crisis? Joe: That’s How It Goes. That’s How We Roll” (great title), but it’s impossible to tell if it’s live or if it’s being played via some other medium (cassette maybe?). Stuff moves around; stuff gets dropped. What are they doing? Why are they doing it? We must imagine the results. Phoned Nil Trio adds some elements of amplified noise with their (grammatically dubious) contribution “Three Contemporary Lullaby’s in D. Lawrence Minor,” a single track on their side that moves from zany synthetic expulsions to barely audible noise and back, all within the span of thirteen minutes. It is what we have come to expect from the mad scientists, the Milwaukee experimenters. They once again have our attention.