Tabs Out

cassette podcast focusing on noise & experimental sounds
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Tabs Out | Soulstorm – Form Cuts

Soulstorm – Form Cuts

5.10.22 by Jacob DeRaadt

Form Cuts, a single-sided C50 released late 2021 by Soulstorm, is the first release by this project of one Neal Samples, the head behind beloved Tollund Men, Universal Violent Action, Material Sequence (I wore out this tape in my truck in Maine), Xakatagawa, Blesse De Guerre, Broken Column, and a bunch of others. This project brings synth starched shoegaze post punk songs with laidback or driving dub rhythms, occluded vocals that seem to want to hide from the listener but must speak into the void. This tape comes complete with lyrics sheet and a Xerox art piece in simple B&W fashion included. Program repeats on both sides.

One of the instrumental songs, “Plague Omens,” reminded me of Dome with tape loops of instruments fading in and out of synchronization, those off kilter 15 second loops that throw you off the scent, as well as the feeling of loneliness and empty streets of lockdown. Is there a worship service going on in the room next to the recording of this song?  

There’s some good simple rhythms on this one that remind me of Human League sketches for Dare but with entirely different tools and intentions. Very strange mixing with big swooshes of loud noise overwhelming keyboard leads and drum machine, then parts where EQ is cut in and out of the mix on multiple channels at once. Sometimes, like on the song “Form Cuts,” the vocals give me the same feeling as Basic Channel demos with processing vocals toasting solidly below in the mix.

The tracks have a sequence that seems like a logical progression from abstract to concrete realities, however dubbed out they may be at moments. “Flower Scream” is almost a return to Tollund Men territories, sounding like a morbid version of a house-era Xymox with lyrics about hating your dead father and killing flowers, up my alley entirely. I wish I had gotten the other release of this project on AUTO-da-FÉ. Worth looking for on Discogs. 

No online samples. Buy it here.

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Tabs Out | Episode #178

C. Reider joins us for a round of Tape Label or Weed Strain. Plus tapes!

The Center for Understanding New Trigonometries – Shapes, for Experts (Strategic Tape Reserve)
Problems – This is Working Out (Orange Milk)
Joys Union Group – Boredom Euphoria (Trouble In Mind)
Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson / Andy Heck Boyd – Ideas on Tape (Radical Documents)
the Bran (Another Plight Of Medic’s…) Pos – Tape #2 (self released)
C. Reider – Feedback Systems January 2022 (Vuzh Music)
Zekarias Thompson – Goodnight Shiva (Atlantic Rhythms)
Shoeb Ahmad – Breather Loops (Atlantic Rhythms)
C. Reider – Listening After The End (Vuzh Music)

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Tabs Out | Rob Collier – Driftwood (and Other Found Objects)

Rob Collier – Driftwood (and Other Found Objects)

5.4.22 by Matty McPherson

(What feels like) An endless array of Casio CZ-1 Phase Distortion Synthesizers greet you when you open the Jcard to Rob Collier’s Driftwood (and Other Found Objects) cassette. Collier has carried this particular batch of ambient synthesizer pieces in his back pocket for over five years. He’s just been patient about issuing it until February of this year for the sly Noumenal Loom label. It does not come without reason. On his last release, Moving Backwards for Geology Records, Collier alluded to being inspired by how the perception of time in nature differs from the human world. The piano tunes for that release practically existed out of that latter world, their stillness evolving drastically yet subtly over their runtimes. Driftwood (and Other Found Objects), holds that same natural harmony, acting as an unexpected time-traveling companion that enshrines his ethos.

To an extent, Collier’s work on the Casio reminds me of Arovane’s Wirkung from Puremagentik Tapes –itself a release that purposely evoked naturalism as an MO for its sonic palette. The comparison would not go much farther than that though, as Collier is deeply locked into how the Casio CZ-1 can convey otherworldly, calming drone fuzz as much as sugary minimalism. Tracks like Driftwood or the Shimmer of the Lamps Above lean into the latter, letting small notes dance and flicker off of synth ambience; there is an underlying baroque quality to these compositions that feels out of a contemporary time or place. If anything, it evokes the deceptive levels of deep listening burrowed within Windham Hill’s pleasant piano melodies.

As such, when Collier goes head-on into ambient, it is enrapturing. “Everything Repeats Itself” and closing tack “The Stairs Lead Upwards” are quite alluring in that regard. Their minimal sound palette may not impress immediately, that is until it practically floods the room (on an ambient sound system of course). It’s at these moments that Collier’s belief in how these sounds he’s wrangled together “feel beyond us” comes into focus. Everything around sounds of an astral opera, wading through assuredly and steadily, completely out of the human conception of time, even beyond the natural order itself.

Edition of 75 Available from the Noumenal Loom Bandcamp.