10.3.19 by Ryan Masteller
Tabs Out | Pink and Yellow – Bare Bones
Pink and Yellow – Bare Bones
10.3.19 by Ryan Masteller
I just finished the first season of “True Detective” (took me long enough), and I’ve sort of got an unpleasant taste in my mouth for Louisiana at the moment. I mean, I get it – that was a fictional television show in which terrible things happened, but Louisiana is still a real place, and I’m allowed to get a little heebly-jeebly about it, especially when the first thing that pops into my mind is antler-y cult stuff.
Again, not pinning Louisiana as the Ritual Murder State or anything, just got a feeling right now.
So I’m pretty pleased that Pink and Yellow’s come up out of the bayou (or, uh, New Orleans) and plastered this technicolor delight all over the side of the police precinct, its fluorescent neon vibe a complete counter to the murky mud pit outlook I can’t seem to shake. But shake it I will, and I’ll do it with gratitude to Alex Cino, the mastermind behind Pink and Yellow. How can you not smile when accosted by squelchy 8-bit melodies that dance around for nickels like Handsome Pete? What are you, some dark-hearted, pessimistic noise musician or something? Lighten up.
Pink and Yellow exists to “lighten up,” blasting their version of “noisy glitch pop” and “vapor experiments” over the intercom at the grocery store until the manager breaks the office door’s lock and confiscates the offending cassette player. But hey, we’re already long gone, zipping down a pink lemonade waterslide on the other side of our minds in a frictionless attempt to commune with hundreds of multicolored blinking lights. We’ll leave the lights up to Pink and Yellow (Alex Cino needs to keep an eye on which buttons to press) and jolt instead from one sugar rush to the next. Did I say we’re having fun on “Bare Bones”? We’re having a helluva a lot of fun!
So much fun, I’ve completely forgotten my Louisiana aversion.
Oh wait, there it is again.
“Brand new super ferric tape in blue tint shell”! Get one of 100 from Mystic Timbre.
10.2.19 by Ryan Masteller
Tabs Out | The Tuesday Night Machines – WÆVER
The Tuesday Night Machines – WÆVER
10.2.19 by Ryan Masteller
The Tuesday Night Machines are playing a dangerous game. This “WÆVER” tape, so self-released that they drew on the tape itself with a Sharpie, wants to drag you under the surface of the ocean. Imagine that! Under the surface of the ocean, where you can’t breathe and the pressure will crush you if you go down too far. I won’t even get into encounters with giant squid, sea serpents, krakens, and “Abyss” aliens. It might scare you away from “WÆVER” for good.
It shouldn’t. The Köln-based artist (that’s Cologne in English, by the way) doesn’t want to hold your head under – this whole trip’s only available if you want to go on it. But if you can imagine the intensity of the sound of whatever in your ears as you hover submerged hundreds of feet down, you’ll already have prepared yourself for the full impact of “WÆVER.” “A continuous ambient drone and noise music release,” “WÆVER” was created “entirely on an AE Modular Synthesizer,” and if you know anything about synthesizers, they can pretty much synthesize anything. (Except a sandwich. Oh god, how I’ve tried, though!)
And while “WÆVER” is fully impacting your senses, it’s also got some “multi-dimensional disorientation” going for it, messing completely with your equilibrium. I swear, the first time I came up from this TNM experience, my inner ear was all out of whack for weeks. But it was fine because it had also given me a kind of natural high, a pleasant warm sloshing that also stuck around for weeks. Imagine the boardroom hijinks that ensued at Apple.com with me in that state! Oh, if only I had taken some photos.
Anyway, look, if you want to do any of this, there were only 25 of these made to begin with, and only 7 remain on the Bandcamp page. What are you going to do?