Tabs Out

Shanyio – Unseen Realm

10.9.19 by Ryan Masteller

Anybody can be a fan of Alexandru Hegyesi, aka Shaniyo, because there are just so many points of entry, so many points of reference on a given release that there’s really just no excuse. Nominally a folk archivist, Shanyio combines his own material with field recordings and ambience and noise to translate a language (musical, but Romanian) into something completely new and compelling, a lexicon that’s easy to slip into once you’ve got the hang of it. And it’s not hard to get the hang of – I didn’t even need my Rosetta Stone tapes (a long discussion for another time) to work out the Shanyio worldview, which is good because that would’ve probably taken a couple weeks before I could even listen to “Unseen Realm” anyway. See how useless those tapes are? Wait’ll my boss hears about my latest Ukrainian “mishap.”

“Unseen Realm” can be treated like a real unseen realm, one where fairy tales and folklore exist among a population steeped in tradition. It’s like a village tucked away in the mountains in old Europe, where the ghosts still flit among the local tombstones and ancient hexes continue to ward off evil. It’s a deep dive into all that, and Shanyio is our guide, piping in local ensembles among his scrabbling and sculpting, his séance-ing and soothsaying, and those might even be the same thing. Here he’s curated an anthropological smorgasbord, delicate and fragile like ancient scrolls from some mountain library, yet robust and vibrant like the spells cast when the words are read on ancient scrolls from some mountain library. There’s just too much to delight in, too much unearthing of the mysterious and the bygone, too much here to educate you into the next version of yourself, which is probably even better than the version that’s stumbling around Starbucks and murmuring discontentedly about “wrong order” and “name’s not Bike Staley.”

Anyway, you’ll thank me for steering you toward “Unseen Realm” so you don’t have to shell out for a plane ticket and Airbnb somewhere in the heart of rural Eastern Europe. Unless you want to! Actually, I might look into it.

EDITION OF 50 FROM ORB TAPES.

Van Jack – Summer Electrohits Zero

10.7.19 by Ryan Masteller

Did you know that summertime in Brazil is in December? Me neither! Give me those good old American seasons in the right months so we can take our vacations properly. Can you imagine the Fourth of July fireworks celebration happening at the same time as New Year’s? It would throw everything off, and that’d even be before you consider the market hit with Big Fireworks having to consolidate all its budgeting to Q4. Too big to fail!

But this isn’t about my stock portfolio or the untold millions I’d lose if somehow we’d start catering to the Global South. This is about the party, the “Summer Electrohits,” as the Som Livre compilations were known as. Fortunately, we’ve got an intrepid sound scientist in Van Jack, who traveled from future Brazil throughout his country’s 2000s summer shindigs collecting the unmitigated truth of freedom of body, mind, and soul. I’m talking about the dancefloor, and I’m talking about not entering it sober or inhibited or square or stupid in any way. I’m talking about letting it go, letting it loose, and letting the groove overtake you to the point where you’re one with the eternal season, where youth and life infiltrate your bloodstream and pulse along with the drum machines and synthesizers. 

Van Jack does all this. Van Jack harnesses the power of the club and runs it through some thick zones, pounding an unflinching humid party vibe through your temples till it impacts your frontal lobe. Then you’re powerless to resist the good time, the camaraderie. Yeah, it may sound like an alien sound source slowly melting into a nuclear morass at points, but that’s just the texture. It’s all good, always.

Summer in December … who’da thunk it.

Tape on Houndini Mansions, edition of only freaking 25 – awoooOOOOOOoooo with me at the moon!

… Not Houndini, but Houdini? … No – that’s not funny, I don’t get it.