Tabs Out

Lero – Folkdrone

9.3.19 by Ryan Masteller

Hey, Lero, I didn’t ASK you to do my work for me. Don’t you know that it’s the job of us writers, us journalists, to assign easily digestible categories that can summarize your whole output in a word or two? See, for me, “Folkdrone” is the exact kind of thing I would’ve come up with to describe your music if you hadn’t already stepped all over my toes about it. I’m not sure I feel comfortable anymore about any of this.

I’m only half joking! My ego may be bruised, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy this rich folkdrone music. Because that’s what it is – psychedelic acoustic guitar recordings run through various programs and processors, coming off like fireside versions of whatever the computer and synthesizer nerds are cooking up in their various basement nerd laboratories (looking at you, Wether). Lero plays like a shaman, conjuring spirits and allowing the friction of the instrument and player and recording devices as much space as the instrument itself. The result is a mystical trip through time and space, through the body, through the mind. Are you on LSD? Wait … am I?

(No.)

So, taking my job quite seriously as I do, I must recommend you fine people to rustle up a copy of Lero’s “Folkdrone” from the good folks over at Lighten Up Sounds. Each ten-minute side is an absolute journey to the outer limits of your imagination, a raga-like meditation on the human spirit. Or maybe just a meditation on all the cool sounds you can make with an acoustic guitar and tape loops and mics and stuff. Edition of 50.

The Last Ambient Hero – Messier 87

8.29.19 by Ryan Masteller

Some people were terrified when they saw the image of M87, the first visible image of a supermassive black hole (that’s it on the cover above). Some people were awestruck, unsure of what confirmation of something so disproportionate to any characteristic of life as we know it would mean in a philosophical context. I mean, we figured black holes were out there. But now that we could see one? Sheee-it. The moment has finally arrived to confront the brainbusting implications of just how tiny and insignificant we are and face the fact that essentially everything – literally everything – in the universe outside of Earth could kill us.

The people who were terrified of it had watched “Event Horizon” too many times, which is a weird coincidence because the image was captured using the Event Horizon Telescope.

But here’s the thing: we are once again saved from having to face the internal and the eternal, from having to batter our minds against the rocks of the infinite, by Our Hero, the Last Ambient Hero, the only one who knows us better than ourselves and can process into sound the deepest contemplations of human capacity and the secrets of the tiniest fractions of the universe that we can even observe. It’s like the LAH took one look at the image of M87, closed their eyes, and teleported straight there, to a location where the black hole could be observed from a safe distance. Also not too close that time didn’t get effed up for the LAH in a big way – I’ve seen “Interstellar,” I know the risks. The Last Ambient Hero teleports there, to a safe distance from the black hole, observes it, and meditates on it.

Then the Last Ambient Hero creates a sonic reverie of the experience with synthesizers.

Look, it’s not easy. It’s not a cakewalk being endowed with the power of celestial sight as the LAH obviously is. But if someone had to go to some far-off reach of outer space and report back in a perfect sonic encapsulation of what they’d seen there, it would just have to be the Last Ambient Hero, wouldn’t it?

Maybe Eno.

Get on down with this crazy space music. “White Type I C79 tape with full colour J-insert in a clear case, dubbed in realtime. Handmade with love. Includes bonus cassette only track ‘Sagittarius A’ … edition of 20.”