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February 19, 2020February 19, 2020

Tabs Out | Larry Wish – Laire Wesh

Larry Wish – Laire Wesh

Well, it’s nice to know that Larry Wish is as consistent now as he was back in the day. Although “Laire Wesh” was recorded and released in 2011, Wish, real name Adam Werven, decided to remaster this sucker (actually, “mastered for the first time ever”) and rerelease it under his Bumpy imprint. Why’d he do that, you ask? Well, he wanted to “apply … a fine polish to an album and effort close to my heart.” Makes sense to me!

And no, I haven’t heard the original Soothing Almonds Collective release, so I can’t compare the two. But the 2019 version of “Laire Wesh” sounds great, the electric piano and synthesizer tones mixed right up front, sounding crisp and clean and so not like the backward DIY effort the original surely was. (Remember, no context for remarks like that.) Still, it’s clearly the work of a singular mind, a man with a 4-track and some keyed instruments and a drum machine, casio-pop for the painfully “wiggly and weird.” (Or are those live drums??) One thing is certainly clear: this is a labor of love and executed exactly how Werven wanted to execute it.

And of course the particular element that will garner attention is Wish’s voice itself. Delivered in a whimsical cartoon yawn, the vocals inject just the perfect amount of bizarre-ity, an exact fit for the crayon’d prog escaping from Larry Wish’s gleaming, candy-colored mind. Whether it’s piping out a nostalgic instrumental like opener “Riding His Bike Segment” or wannabe stadium anthem “Ubduction Revisited,” a new wave torch song like “The Designer” or even the tape-manipulated collage of “Secret Number,” “Laire Wesh” has a lot to offer and a lot to like, a nice distillation of Adam Werven’s oeuvre. It’s time to right the wrongs of missing this in 2011 and getting to it right now.

Ch-ch-ch-check it out!

Tabs Out | Various Artists – Vanishing Standards

Various Artists – Vanishing Standards

2.18.20 by Ryan Masteller

Amek Collective has emerged from Eastern Europe – Bulgaria in particular – as a force to be reckoned with in the experimental tape game. I’m here to perpetuate the legend of the label far and wide – well, at least to you goofballs who regularly check this site for some reason. (I know it ain’t for the podcast. That thing is intolerable.) So how does one not knowledgeable with said label make inroads into its catalog without feeling overwhelmed?

With a compilation of course.

Even so, “Vanishing Standards” isn’t ALL Amek artists – in fact, it’s “an effort to reach outside [the label’s] creative circle and explore the music of fellow artists who share a similar vision for contemporary electronic music.” But it wouldn’t be a label comp without SOME familiar names, would it? How about ate – that’s it, lowercase “ate” – who pairs with Randomorb on the ambient opener “Sequence_01”? That’s a good start. Add in some Valence Drakes, whose “An Angel in Alliance with Falsehood” I’ve juuuust recently covered. Mytrip hops aboard for the joint effort “Lies That Were Built and Observed.” Ergomope’s back too (Tiny Mix Tapes [RIP] and I have you covered for that one). I’m pretty sure I wrote about Vague Voices for Tabs Out … somewhere. I KNOW I wrote about LATE – I think that was my intro to Amek.

But the n00bs are just as consistently excellent. Phlp. kicks in some heavy darkwave with “Immobility.” Yuzu is frighteningly abstract on “Catcher” until the beat drops. Closer “Recovery” by krāllār is heartbreaking ambience interrupted by static. And perhaps no track is as tuneful as Maxim Anokhin and Ivan Shopov’s “Angela,” a trip-hop soundtrack to a sleek nocturnal urban future. That’s not all of them either – this thing’s a C86, so there’s TONS to sink your teeth into, depending on whether you want to get a sense of what Amek’s like or whether you’re interested in the Eastern European experimental scene in general. And don’t get me wrong – this tape’s on Amek, so it makes sense for all these artist’s to appear on an Amek comp. They’re kindred spirits. This is their and our and your introduction.

And what’s with these vanishing standards? Nothing of that sort here, not that I can tell.

Tape limited to 133 copies, probably because there are a lot of artists to give these out to. Get them into the hands of the people!