Tabs Out

cassette podcast focusing on noise & experimental sounds
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Tabs Out | Stenorette – (INV) 2

Stenorette – (INV) 2

6.15.22 by Matty McPherson

“Stenorette is a recording project of Ben Worth and Ben Dyson – two UK immigrants who met in their adopted home city of Toronto, Canada. Their sounds are created using various tapes, vinyl, found sound, and heavily processed guitar. All work is 100% improvised and every session is recorded live to cassette.”

It’s a simple bio worth reposting here to contextualize their projects. Last year, Worth and Dyson revisited their the Stenorette archives and came out with a trilogy of reflective drone. (INV) 2, as its Stumptown printed cover suggests, is abstract yet clearly part of a larger sum. Still, the C23’s two longforms for each side have that miraculous effect of existing out of a proper time cycle altogether. Actual Business Letters’ ethereal drone conjures up images of dilapidated subway stations and fickle trains. The air is frigid on this half.

An Uncorrected Proof, further entangles itself down frigid, barren paths. It holds court with a sullen sound of its accord. The low hums of a drone suggest a monolithic presence, while gaseous feedback itself provides a chilling baseline for this side’s state of affairs. In the piece’s most gracious moments, faint chorus or ringing harmonies make way to the forefront. It almost sound of an imagined cathedral, a dream-realm of utilitarian purpose. I have a deep affinity for these type of textures, the kinds of sounds that play so well on those still mornings where June grey reigns supreme in an isolated manor. And as such, (INV) 2 is itself such a treat.

Limited cassette edition of 15, packaged in hand-stamped, 100% recycled chipboard packaging, available now.

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Tabs Out | Stephan Moore – Stage

Stephan Moore – Stage

6.9.22 by Matty McPherson

Stephan Moore is a name we last checked in with in 2020, when he cooked up a batch of “solo voice music” for the “Chicago Sound Show” exhibition at the University of Chicago. Those tracks ended up making the bulk of Dreamwalk with Solo Voice, his fall 2020 release for Dead Definition. Well, Moore had more than just that on his plate at the time, wrapping up an older commission from 2017 for cassette home recording. “STAGE was composed as the score for the middle piece in a trilogy of works by choreographer Yanira Castro and realized by her company, a canary torsi.” I’ve practically undervalued this release even as it sat in a special pile for longer than I can remember. What exactly scared me about this release enough to not directly file it away? I truly could not tell you, as when I recently culled it back from the depths and gave it the hi-fi treatment, I found myself quite engulfed by the timbres found within this plane of existence.

Stage is split into eight tracks. Its slow build to a roaring climax and then bowing out back towards an austere finale do welcome it to these track breaks, yet is much more attuned to being side A/side B longform situation. As the Bandcamp bio reports, the crux of this performance is held by the musicians’ performance on “the Wall of Metals, a homemade instrument comprised of a 10-foot long sheet of steel, used as a resonator, with multiple cymbals, prayer bowls, and brass rods attached to it.” It’s a fascinating wall of sound, filling the space flush with all sorts of textures that feel regionally diverse. Pre-industrial music? Perhaps of its own accord. As the opening movements of side a lurk away from murky zones that best reflect decrepit New England lighthouses and balmy beaches, the Wall of Metals is introduced. It gasps and gushes, an endless gurgling crescendo lighting a path forward. An abstract dream of percussives.

It’s on “Sustained Explosion” that we finally experience the full force of this approach to scoring. Moore’s Wall of Sound collides, its fury enacting a fantastical array of sounds that go beyond a singular locale or zone. It may as well be a dispatch from the gates of Persephone, greatly clamoring and clanking with an intensity that ignites a divine spirit. For as reverent as it is, it is also bright; the melody is its own zippy kind of noise that carries such a bewildering, psychedelic spirit.

However, it is not an energy that can sustain an entire tape, just its climax. The back half of the tape’s B-side (split between “Trio,” “Bath,” and “Transfiguration”) is an eerie, atmospheric comedown. The clanks are minimal, softer and with a little more of a tickle to their sound. Medicine bowls and other deep listening instruments sustain the piece as it slowly comes down. The denouement, Transfiguration, practically sharpens the Wall of Metals into its razor-stricken form. Its vaporous free-jazz, a tumultuous revolt that lashes until it can no more.

Limited edition hand-dubbed rubine cassette, edition of 30, available from the Dead Definition Bandcamp page.

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Tabs Out | Drafting – Everything is Coming Up

Drafting – Everything is Coming Up

6.8.22 by Matty McPherson

I got a tip that slowcore-music–of sorts is alive and well down in Louisville, KY; this shouldn’t exactly be a surprise considering “Louisville,” the entity, is thanked within the liner notes of Codeine’s The White Birch. It’s a thought and ethos confirmed so with Drafting’s five-song slugger Everything Is Coming Up. It took a moment for it to arrive from the Boston, MA based Candlepin Records, a new tape startup eagerly stocking esoteric guitar fuzz and DIY oddities. The Drafting trio fit snuggly next to Poorly Drawn House and Auto-Pilot’s basement worlds, artists also plopped on the roster. Anyways, it’s been sitting in my pile for a bit and I still find myself teasing it out every month or so.

Their twenty-one minutes are concise, minimal executions of the slowcore contextual playbook. It was not immediately apparent with opener, the Rescue, and its folksy “dead orbit” twang and quiet-sludgy’n’loud-quiet fuzz. On the first listen I wondered if the band was doing straight Numero worship or if they are the bar rock band that saves a bar from having to go on Bar Rescue? Track two, Ordinary, teases an answer to this question, erring closer to bar rock than anything else here. Yet, even so it twiddles with its phaser and pedals more than anything else on this tape. Chasing the Clouds has the brevity to evade that path, letting lean, clean skeletal riffs wind down to a communal throwdown as the trio all throw hands on the microphone. It’s at about THAT point I started to be completely floored by the proof-of-concept being put out here. I know these sounds, malleable enough to be codified and adapted to how they see fit. Drafting does the sound service though by regionalizing it with their own small quirks, while also just playing it clean and efficiently it draws one in should they love this sound.

It’s what rewards those last two tracks where the risks seem a little tighter even as the sound is easily markable. Sleeptalker emphasizes the Louisville twang sound, in an almost-Bedhead fashion. It might as well take place from the same liferaft as Whatfunlifewas, with a similar warming guitar sound framing the affair. However, lyrical and composition suggest Seam, with a devious syncopation between guitar, cymbal, and verse often coming to the forefront and knocking all assumptions away. Pillow meanwhile meets between classic simmering builds of MX-80 Sound and bitter fuzz garage chorus of Bitch Magnet. It’s almost ghostly when its not fiery.

Limited Edition pea green Maxell XLII-S high bias cassette tapes sold out!