Tabs Out

Catching Up with Antiquated Future
12.13.18 by Ryan Masteller

PDX-based lo-fi tape label Antiquated Future has been around the block, let’s not kid ourselves. Initially begun in Olympia, Washington, around the turn of the century (if you consider 2008 the turn of the century, which I do – druid calendar, you know), AF has made quite the name for itself with not only its music releases but also its books, zines, and other assorted cool stuff you can find by digging around in their website a little bit. It’s like rummaging through a cool antique shop, but without the musty smell (which is either a good or a bad thing depending on whether you like the smell of antique shops).

But besides the fact that I’m a highly in-demand superstar editor and writer (ahem, here’s my card, email me, AF, ahem), we’re here for Antiquated Future’s music, specifically their two most recent cassette releases, Reighnbeau’s “Slight EP” and Tucker Theodore’s “LSG.” (And to prove my superstar-ness, I’ll tell you that “Reighnbeau” is not spelled correctly; it’s actually “Rainbow,” but of course that’s already taken, so.) Both tapes feature established vets: Bryce Hample’s Reighnbeau project adds Colleen Johnson (Flying Circles, Silver Shadows) and Madeline Johnston (the excellent Midwife [with Tucker Theodore – a link!], Sister Grotto), two singers who will, when combined, give promo proofreaders nightmares forever. Then there’s the prolific Mr. Theodore, known for his experimental guitar explorations. Looks like November was a good release month for Antiquated Future!

 

Reighnbeau – Slight EP
Slight, nothing; Reighnbeau’s a dense configuration, an opaque cloud of electrofolk goodness that shifts its shape from moment to moment. Hample’s production is top notch – the doors of my expectations have completely been blown of their hinges. I admit, I approached this tape with Midwife in my head, and while the head-down gauzy shoegaze thing is fantastic, this is straight digital candy, sugar rushes of electronics and pop flourishes that remain stuck to your ear canals long after the songs end. And the vocals – oh, the vocals. They’re gorgeous. Johnson and Johnston do a lot of heavy lifting in the melody department, their angelic presence hovering over the songs and elevating them to sheer euphoria. Dare I continue to listen long after the EP has begun to repeat? I dare – bellyache from ingesting too much of a good thing be damned.

 

Tucker Theodore – LSG
Theodore, who as I’ve noted also performs in Midwife with Madeline Johnston, is simply a guitar GENIUS (like that’s a surprise to anyone). Here on “LSG” he stretches out over ten “movements,” packed tightly together on each side of the tape, “Movements 1–6” on the A and “7–10” on the flip. He recorded everything by himself in his studio called “Inanambulancerecordings,” which has “now relocated to a hayloft in a barn in New Hampshire,” in case you’re wondering what to plug into your Google Maps. So consider that rural reclusiveness when you approach LSG, which meanders from solo guitar passages to, ahem, “full band” freakouts with relative ease, the feedback mixing with the half-speed acoustic Fahey-isms and ambient backmasking and effects-laden drifts. Packed away in that environment, Theodore was able to experiment as he pleased, and the result is a sheer post-rock cornucopia (if I may, considering Thanksgiving isn’t far in our rearview), scrabbling around every stylistic corner that designation has come to represent.

Keroaän – Pulsars in Rhombus Form
12.13.18 by Ryan Masteller

Magic! It’s when something mysteriously happens that we can’t pinpoint with our human brains, something so out of the ordinary that we ascribe to its occurrence a sense of awe and trepidation. Like when someone seemingly at random chooses our card out of a shuffled deck, or when someone teleports a rabbit into a hat with their mind, or when millions of emails disappear into the ether. Or maybe there’s no human element at all – maybe something just gets conjured out of thin air.

Take Keroaän, then, the project name used to release sound recordings of “Pulsars in Rhombus Form,” a processing and playback program developed by Ian M Fraser and Reed Evan Rosenberg. But rather than do any work, I’m going to simply wave my wand above these computer keys and POOF – a description I didn’t write appears!:

“Pulsars in Rhombus Form is a real-time generative music agent with two major components: a listener and a player.

“The listener takes as input and audio stream from the album Planisphærium by sci-fi technical death metal band Wormed (ES). It identifies kick and snare drum strikes as well as vocal phrasing and communicates its findings to the player in order to trigger gestural events and compositional shifts.

“The player consists of an 8-voice Max/MSP implementation of pulsar synthesis (Roads). It’s parameters are controlled by various chaotic maps and stochastic methods.

“The program performs with no human intervention whatsoever.”

Hey, wait a minute – that sounds more like SCIENCE than magic! Still, we get the “conjuring out of thin air” thing I alluded to above, but that whole backstory makes it all way less mysterious. Regardless, this thing is definitely fascinating – certainly as fascinating as sawing a lady in half or escaping from a locked safe perched atop a skyscraper. The cassette’s eight tracks sound NOTHING like Wormed (seriously, like not at all), instead taking on certain aspects of the band’s manic technicality and spitting it back out in some sort of rhythmic tornado. The sounds are like data blots spattered across a digital canvas, as if Autechre simply threw up their hands and let their harshest gear take over before transmitting the results via radio waves out into the solar system.

“Pulsars in Rhombus Form” comes in an edition of 50 from Minneapolis’s Nada Records. Summon your wallet from the next room and prepare to purchase without the use of phone or cable wires!