Tabs Out

New Batch – Distant Bloom

4.11.19 by Ryan Masteller

There is a place out in the Midwest where the glistening sun shimmers over a sleepwalking populace. With heads drooped, the people go about their business, their dreams floating to the surface of their everyday lives and disappearing at the first sign of notice. They shake their heads to clear the cobwebs and regain some focus on a forgotten memory or longing, then they return to whatever it was they happened to be doing. It is a place where true life is held hostage by a constant scrabbling toward modern survival.

The place is St. Louis, although it could be anyplace.

Distant Bloom emerges fully formed from the American soil, merging earthly heartache with heavenly beauty. On only their third and fourth releases, the label triples and quadruples down on the life-affirming elements lurking beneath the surface, infiltrating the malaise and ennui and other philosophical-sounding serious words that afflict the modern US of A. Prepare your ears to be cupped gently by the drifting inspiration, and gear up for an onrushing of the feel-goodery that until now has only hinted at its existence from the periphery. We turn first to a baseball diamond carved in the middle of a cornfield.

AZALEAS – DREAM OF FIELDS

“Is this heaven?” you ask, maybe just little sheepishly, knowing the obvious response. “No, it’s Iowa,” Kevin Costner responds, and you know right away that he’s lying because we’ve already determined that it’s St. Louis, which is in Missouri. Still, it’s a fair question and an equally fair rejoinder, but that’s only because it’s been spoken countless times in our modern folklore. But Azaleas, ahem, dream of fields; they don’t haunt a SPECIFIC field or have anything to do with Archibald “Moonlight” Graham. In fact, one would be hard-pressed to suggest that they haunt anything – they just kind of grow, bloom (a pattern here), and exist, flowers of sound beautifying and nourishing the immediate space that Azaleas find themselves in. “Dream of Fields” is one piece split over two sides, an eyes-shut meditation of pastoral beauty and vibrant inner landscapes. The trio of Alice Andres-Wade, Kyle Wade, and Kat Andres taps a radiant new age vein, pollenating minds with effervescent soundscapes and promoting new and healthy mental growth. Plus, $1 of every tape benefits The Spot, a youth center in St. Louis.

BRET SCHNEIDER – CONSTELLATIONS

If “Dream of Fields” is not heaven, then what are we to make of Bret Schneider’s “Constellations”? They certainly sound like they dot the night sky, twinkling in ever-present locations on the star map as our universe continues to expand outward at an incomprehensible rate. You really ought to stop and think about how physics works here, because it’ll simply blow your mind at how difficult it is for the human mind to pin down interstellar movement and relativity. Talk about shaking you out of your stupor! You’ll spend the rest of the day trying to figure out the meaning of it all. Maybe the rest of your life. Schneider’s cool with that – he’s here to help, after all, with “Constellations,” a glorious starburst of quietly overwhelming synthesizer oscillations that sparkle and reverberate just for you – that’s right, just you with your telescope and the chunky Walkman and an unobstructed view of the night sky. “Constellations” is the perfect soundtrack. It’s like you’re in a planetarium, but it’s not a planetarium, it’s the real thing, and all of time and space comes rushing at you as you let every memory and every dream and every particle of matter take over your body all at once. Did I say overwhelming already? I did? I meant it. And here, too, $1 of every cassette purchased goes to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

Both tapes come in an edition of 50 from Distant Bloom. Have at it!

Data – Invisible Witnesses

4.10.19 by Ryan Masteller

Nina and Gabe take your data very seriously. They’ll never reveal it to anyone, or sell it to companies who want to exploit it for marketing purposes. They protect it with uncrackable coding, and they’ll go after anyone – HARD – who even thinks about trying to hack it. It is through the efforts of people like Nina and Gabe that we should all be able to sleep at night. (That is, unless you experience uncontrollable nightmares when you sleep, then you’ll probably want to stay awake with a flashlight in hand.)

Nina and Gabe also make music as Data, a new wave/post punk (thanks Discogs!) duo based out of Philadelphia (thanks MapQuest!). Atop skronky guitar, spare percussion, and keyboards, Nina and Gabe blend their unique voices in spellbinding canticles, somehow sounding as if Eleanor Friedberger had gotten together with Mark Mothersbaugh while practicing a minimalism and utility (and sassiness!) found in the oeuvres of such artists as Violent Femmes.

But from Philly, so there’s skateboards and sludge and cat-sized rodents and scary monsters (I solemnly swear that I will never not make a Gritty reference when referring to Philly again). Data embodies the underdogness of the city, scrappily chipping away at the music scene until it turns its blue-collar attention to the two kooks in weird sunglasses slinging cassette tapes everywhere. And also from preventing hackers from getting all up in your business (another reference I will never hesitate to employ).

Plus, “Invisible Witnesses” is a heck of a lot of fun. Get it from Single Girl, Married Girl, then let’s go hide somewhere at Independence Hall and scare tour groups.