Tabs Out

Valance Drakes – An Angel in Alliance with Falsehood

11.15.19 by Ryan Masteller

“If you’re not familiar with outsider Bulgarian electronic label Amek Collective, rectify that immediately! (And yes, I realize how pompous that sounds.)” 

This is what I added to my post on Present Listening, the Facebo… internet social media website group that fosters conversation about what the heckity heck you’re listening to RIGHT NOW. I was listening to Valance Drakes, “An Angel in Alliance with Falsehood,” which I had received in the mail one day earlier. When I get excited about something, I don’t wait long to dig into it. I was not disappointed in the slightest.

I also realize that the alleged pomposity of that initial statement comes off as genuine and respectful within the Tabs Out community. I honestly assume that the discerning audience here possesses a bit of familiarity with most of the stuff I write about, so I lock in to that wavelength instead of serving as a guidepost to suggestion. In fact, I expect you to be more “in the know” than I’ll ever be.

So you should all have your copies of “An Angel in Alliance with Falsehood,” and as such we can all press play together and listen to it as a group. The first thing we should all realize is that this is a Serious Endeavor, with caps. Before the first sound squirts from the speaker we’re privy to treatises as track titles, philosophical musings that will only serve to underpin the sonics that ensue. “Roses Are Not Armour.” “Expression of the Soul’s Desire to Escape.” “Looking at Heaven Puzzled and Defeated.” And there are seven more where that came from! It’s like Valance Drakes spent an entire four-year college experience listening to post-rock and majoring in creative writing. There’s probably a literal degree in that somewhere. (It’s either Harvard or Trump University, two great learning institutions on the cutting edge of literature.)

But the work here fully underscores the literary weightiness infusing these tracks. Valance Drakes peddles a darkish ambient, a minor-key synth world where a hardscrabble existence perpetuates itself in the shadows, poking its head out into the daylight only periodically before re-submerging itself in its desperate business. Scuttling glitches punctuate “An Angel,” which juxtapose themselves with the more tranquil ambience in what seems to be the central theme of flawlessness or characteristics above reproach being lowered or debased – entropy in action. As usual, it takes an enlightened gearhead to weave together a wordless narrative of perpetual decay before we even take notice that we’re headed down an irreversible path with our corroding humanity, passengers in the proverbial handbasket on its way to hell. Great tunes piping over the system though!

Rectify, rectify, rectify your unfamiliarity with Amek that I know doesn’t even exist because you’re so with it! “An Angel” limited to 111 copies. Divisor of the beast!

Jen Kutler – The Ways We Wait

11.14.19 by Ryan Masteller

Now THIS is a concept. Jen Kutler’s on the cutting edge of electronic experimentalism in a way that intersects sexuality and humanity in the center of a surprising Venn diagram that, quite frankly, is interesting and brave and riveting to listen to. If you’re not familiar with Kutler’s work, she has modified a vibrator (yes, that classic self-gratifier) so that it outputs data into a synthesizer and processes it into sound, all while the device is within the performer’s body.

…

As you might expect, the electric tremors lend themselves well to a noise/drone idiom, and the synthesis of sound and experience informs the listener’s approach to it. “The Ways We Wait” pulses with energy, suggesting that the waiting, in itself, might in fact be the EASIEST part, depending on what you’re doing while you’re waiting for … whatever it is you’re waiting for. So yeah, galaxies bloom behind closed eyelids as recording gear captures every moment, and every single pulse is translated into study-able sonics. 

Which is where the academic in me (and anyone) comes in: how does “The Ways We Wait” interact with a society increasingly aware of and focused on issues of gender and sexuality (among other things), and how can it inform the conversations that constantly swirl around these issues? As an artist, Kutler is at the vanguard of this debate, subverting the very notion of what constitutes “appropriateness” (in general) and how that and art itself relates to culture at any snapshot in time: Where do norms and mores overlap with confrontational tactics, if they do at all? What is the root of the divide? How does one viewpoint inform/clash with the other? Is the vast majority of people just being waaay too sensitive about the whole thing? Or is that the point, to poke and prod those exposed nerves until something happens?

No matter what your thoughts, this is still a great noise/drone tape from an important voice in the genre. Edition of 100 from Flag Day Recordings.*

*This exercise was ripe for parody. Honestly, if you’re reading this site, you’re coming here to laugh a little bit along with the rest of us, hoping for some levity to cut through the absurdity of daily life. But humor can be dangerous, and so I thought deeply about how to approach this. Why, I ask myself, do I immediately gravitate toward making light of something that’s attempting to instigate a necessary dialogue, especially at a time when such dialogue could actually lead toward a type of reconciliation? I mean, I love to laugh, but I’m sort of embarrassed by my first inclination here, which was to be silly and toss off a bunch of jokes. In wrestling with my own sense of humor in what I hope is a positive way, I hope to enable the discussions that Jen Kutler is suggesting that we have. Starts with me (the self). (I’m also not leading with this. This is not the reason you’re here.)