Tabs Out, Author at | Page 204 of 1032

Dylan Henner – A Dingo Crossing a Stream

Let me stop you right there, OK? Right at “I visited Australia for my day-job as a photographer’s assistant.” Already you’ve stoked the pangs of jealousy in the heart of this wanderlust-struck music aficionado, one who’s never been to Australia and who may never get there. There’s a lengthy flight to the other side of the world that I’d have to deal with, and also it’s probably pretty expensive. I know one, maaaybe three people in Australia (and I may be confusing one’s domicile with New Zealand). And who knows if there will even be an airline industry in a few months. (Oh right, the bailout!)

(Fun fact: my parents were applying for jobs in Australia before I was born, so it’s possible I could have grown up in the outback, by crikey.)

So, Dylan, I guess we’ll have to experience Australia vicariously through your Inner Islands tape “A Dingo Crossing a Stream,” the title a warning for anyone with small children to keep them close at all times. But no, let’s remove all of our humanness from “Dingo,” shall we? Let’s just let the Dingo be, let it lap at the water, let it saunter into the bush. That’s what an Inner Islands release would condition us to do: observe, document, reflect. Allow time to pass. Allow nature to take its course. With that in mind, Dylan, we’ll have to thank you for perpetuating the style, stringing together pools of rippling synthesizer that perfectly synchronize with the time lapse of “A Pool Deeply Gouged Out by Water” or “A River Drying Out,” long-form actions that stretch across generations.

And with so many stretches of space in Australia, it’s easy to superimpose these sounds and imaginings on the place itself. By the time we’re ready to “Take a Feather from the Old Pelican,” the sidelong closer, we’ve been indoctrinated into the geography and ready to go on walkabout. Stuck as I am in the United States, my walkabout must of necessity be a spiritual one. But hey, I need all the exercise I can get! Too bad it won’t be on site Down Under. But thanks, Dylan, for recording your impressions of the place for us. Now, the Dreamtime awaits!

Edition of 100 from Inner Islands.

Tabs Out | Morast – Drawing Figures into Negative Space

Morast – Drawing Figures into Negative Space

4.28.20 by Ryan Masteller

Hey, you guys doing OK?

I’m doing OK. I realize that “doing OK” is super relative and that maybe a lot of you are readjusting your definition of what “doing OK” is, and maybe some (a lot?) of you are finding that sliding scale to be a bit more intense than you feel you can deal with. I’m hoping that you have support from friends or family. I hope you have a crap ton of music whiled away for times such as this, where you’re holed up and bored, and where your tape player beckons you at every moment to feed its gaping maw. I hope that music can get you through this. It’s not food or rent or medicine, but hopefully it’s that spiritual stimulus that keeps you on the path to the other side of this thing.

But really, I’m doing OK – no need to worry about me, anyhow.

Two points: 1) this is my first quarantine post, and hopefully it’s the only one I acknowledge, because that would get OLD; 2) this is my first post since I “cried retirement” but just didn’t write for a few weeks. I wouldn’t call me “back” quite yet, at least not at THAT pace.

So, let’s see, what have I been listening to since I can’t get out of the house and go anywhere… oh, here it is, Morast! Yep, Morast’s “Drawing Figures into Negative Space.” I’m not sure what the real antidote is for antisocial blues, but it might just be this Morast tape – well, it’s the antidote for even trying to walk out the door, as in, gosh, I feel so cooped up, maybe I should check out the spring outdoors NOPE Morast is dragging me back into a broken electronic claustrophobia that’s as comforting as a chain-mail duvet made out of circuits and gears and electrodes. Meaning NOT COMFORTING AT ALL.

But somehow fitting in “Quarantinaville,” which I’ve come to nickname this end of the house where I can listen to experimental tapes – the other end is where the NORMIES (read: my family) spend their time judging me. “Drawing Figures” plays like that moment in a postapocalyptic film when you’re hunkered down in the tense quietude of your shelter, then a mob of out-of-luck/chances/time survivors descends ready to wipe out anybody who’s left because, you know, can’t accommodate everybody in this new paradigm. 1980s Kurt Russell is among them. They miss me though, and I’m down to “Drink from Your Own Liquids Until You Suffocate” on the stereo, which is definitely not helping the mindset.

Or is it?

It is. It’s assisting in the preparation of my defensive position, and I’ll be damned if I’m not the last holdout in this hellstorm of inactivity and mind-wandering-ness. This noise-blasted rhythmic call to retreat into oneself is indeed the perfect antidote for feeling even remotely the necessity for connection. You just headphone this sucker like a mainline injection through ear canals. Nobody will bother you.

Well, you’ll have to interact with your family at SOME point, I guess. (Actually, embrace your family quite closely, if you can.)

Available from Baba Vanga in PRAGUE.