9.9.15: Shingles Sets Off On A Twelve Tape VoyageReady. Cassette. Go! The tape-a-month challenge for Shingles begins! And “Archival Symmetries 33” shows no signs of not being preposterously great. [Check It Out]
Shingles Sets Off On A Twelve Tape Voyage
9.9.15 by Mike Haley
These days we usually find out it’s someone’s birthday via Facebook. I ,however, discovered that Jesse DeRosa (of Baked Tapes/Grasshopper) just turned 32 through the announcement of a massive cassette endeavor for his solo project Shingles. Of course, I read that announcement on Facebook. Sooooo…
DeRosa will be releasing a cassette each month, from September through August 2015, of unreleased solo and collaborative material. I’ll just let him explain the goods, as he did on that Facebook post I just mentioned:
“To kick-off my 33rd rotation around the sun (as well as provide a much needed kick in the ass to deplete an ever growing archive of unreleased recorded work), I’m proud to kick off the first installment of a new archival project. Because admitting you have a hording problem is the first step…
Archival Symmetries 33 will see the release of 12 previously unreleased solo and collab EPs in total over the next year. Each installment will align (or at least will attempt to align) with the symmetrical date of each calendar month (sept 9, oct 10… jan 1, feb 2) from September 2015 (9/9) through August 2016 (8/8). Each edition will be available digitally through bandcamp as well as in handmade physical editions across a handsome selection of contemporary and archaic formats.
The first installment, released today, 9/9, is available digitally as well as in editions of both thirty-three cassettes and thirty-three 3″-cdrs.
The four movements of “Generosity of the Suns” were recorded over the course of a frigid New York December using a modified Sequential Circuits Pro-One and an EVI. They were recorded as an exercise in adjusting the ear to working within a series of non-octave repeating scales derived from the ratio 20:11 for the major third. Breaking each octave into ~34.2 just-tones provides intriguing harmonic options in precision intervals, especially when factoring non-repeating octave displacements (approx 7 cents loss per ascending adjacent octave). Lotsa number-crunching for some rather peaceful jams.”
I think that means it sounds awesome. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I would say that these silky nail biters are available from the Shingles Bandcamp for $5 + shipping, but I literally just bought the last one. Gotta be quick on the hot ones. You can still get it digitally, or on 3″ CDr if you got into a moped accident and busted the part of your brain that judges which formats are good.
9.9.15: Gee Weaver – Merchant IvoryBask in the mood of warm hopefulness permeating from Gee Weaver’s “Merchant Ivory”. [Check It Out]
Gee Weaver – Merchant Ivory
9.9.15 by Jacob DeRaadt
Gee Weaver is a self-described “knob-twiddler” from Pasadena, CA, who runs the Colossal Tapes record label. I hear very little knob twisting going on for the duration of this cassette’s 20-minute span.
Initial fragments of pop calls to mind the work of Joseph Hammer, albeit with more digital reverb in the mix and less organic tape decompression. Admittedly, I’m a huge fan of this genre (pop music nostalgic remix?). The treatment of snippets of information is masterfully orchestrated in some passages, like a room full of vintage radios and televisions’ signals interrupting one another, witnessed by a solitary geriatric in a decrepit rest home.
“Passage 2” delves into some sumptuous organic field recordings treated to the digital equivalent of demagnetizing techniques reminiscent of Knækkede Stemmer’s recent release on Alien Passengers. There is a melodic drone element underlying many of these pieces that separates it from being strictly Hammer-worship, and I’d still rather hear someone ripping off Hammer’s aesthetic rather than another HNW or new age keyboard wanker making a concept record that holds no water in regards to the contents of the release. There’s a mood of warm hopefulness permeating the atmosphere of this release. The sounds of childlike conversation and water dripping bring up themes of nostalgia yet again.
This release is a concise statement with a consistent processing approach, making it a refreshing audio document to compliment the waning days of summer, allowing us to remember the summers of our youth.
9.8.15: Chondritic Sound Marks 300th Release“All The Little Devils Are Proud Of Hell” is an education in anguish and a celebration. [Check It Out]