Tabs Out

Wiggly – If I give you a cherry, the least you could do is spit the pit back into my bowl so’s I can suck on it later, and you don’t have to poke me in the eye with the stem

8.3.21 by Matty McPherson

The New Jersey based Cavern Brew Records holds an open demo policy that has rewarded itself with a blind bag of lo-fi in all its pop, field recording, and unclassifiable forms! Of most recent note is their release of the Kansas City lo-fi chameleon Wiggly with an album title THAT long and cover filled with THAT much negative space. It all screams “Joy Void 2k15,” and indeed the hissy murmured vocals of everyday imagery would almost make it so! For Wiggly is a one-man machine making songs the color of dusk and dawn, somewhere between basement pop and open sky folk. 

Wiggly’s one-man process to put these songs to tape involved a smattering of instruments and adverbage usage ( “electric guitared, bass guitared, harmonicad, floor tomed, tambourined, synthesizered, keyboarded, kalimbad, and bongo cajoned”). In the process, he’s presented soundscapes that sound like the last 35ish years of 4AD, mending the cavernous folk of Heidi Berry or a Victorialand instrumental (“Over”) with Deerhunter’s astral gaze (“Everlasting Light” and “Keeper’s Sign”) and even a smidgen of Amps’ basement fuzz. Perhaps it strikes you as a mouthful of references. Yet, with every listen, I find another earworm to hold onto or another curveball freakout, like the “Strangeface Rant,” to dissect and untangle, and with the skies so gosh darn blue right now, it’s quite a treat to savor.

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Seth Kasselman – UV Catamaran

7.29.21 by Matty McPherson

I had a large grin on my face when I discovered we were in for another surprise from Seth K so soon! Kasselman’s previous release, Anteroom in Birch, was his formal return to the world of tapes, trafficking in bubbly yet eerie musique concrète. It’s a sonic framework that UV Catamaran retraces back from one state to another, literally. These four pieces (all running around 9-10 minutes) were recorded between a 2014 move out of LA and finished in 2018 at Phoenix; the decision to unstick them from time and drop them now has (in the words of Kasselman) revealed an “unintended canonic feeling” that further dive into aquatic longform zones, exploring the indeterminate paradoxes that come from within those spaces. 

I guess what I’m saying is that onf UV Catamaran, Kasselman finds expansive space to convey a feeling of being mentally immobilized or hindered without ever sounding completely stuck. Side A opens with the title track, where you can find Kasselman meticulously applying an inquisitive electronic hum while window gazing for the perfect echoey drum pattern. Squeamishly re-terraforming itself, the pattern turns towards the most watery and tingly it can, becoming a necessary buffer as an ominous and grand drone breaks towards the surface, trapping everything in its path. On “Long Time Machines,” Kasselman plays up the ominous drone patterns as if it’s a ghost sauntering through his house; clashing with his field recordings of breath or clarinet noise, it sparks piercing moments of horror and sublime bliss. 

Side B, with “Comet Tricks” and “Are Overhead,” continue the steady mapping of brain fog. The former balances the babble of a voice under an interrogative wave of synth droning, scanning for the most quixotive of sound cacophonies to tease out and let glisten, if only for a second. After about nine and a half minutes of exploring every nook and cranny there, Kasselman comes down for the latter. “Are Overhead,” featuring Jared Cox on guitar, pieces together the past three tracks into its own. A sputtering and elastic jam until it decides to rip it up and start back from scratch. Halfway through the piece turns its focus on a formless percussive until Cox comes like an angel from the heavens! Gracing Kasselman with a searing, astral solo, Kasselm helps brings UV Catamaran to a plane of jubilant solace.

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