Tabs Out

Windy Boijen – In a Sense

1.17.23 by Matty McPherson

Ephem-Aural, the New York, NY based label recently passed 40 releases. Congraturaisins! I sent all of ’em chip n’ dale birthday cakes straight from the SFV; hopefully the chap inside has enough oxygen and hamdingers to last through that layover in Kansas City. But anyways, many folks would tell you getting to 42 is important because that’s what life is all about; although anyone in the business knows a tape label’s life starts at 40, the release number that indicates a commitment to the spirit of ferric. Of course, I wager 40 + 1 is the real sweet spot. And what a stellar lil’ fella to show up with, bringing Windy Boijen into the fold with In a Sense as no. 41 for the imprint.

Boijen’s name won’t show up on discogs nor is he a name that many households would know. He fancies himself as a sometimes blogger, running a Boogie Banjo Blog on the rare occasion, with an upload about once every 18 months on a misbegotten banjo player or sonic excavation. Although the chap has also had a steady stream of recordings that date back to 2008; including a 2021 series of “Just Intonation exercises” accomplished for an ASU online course offered by Jacob Adler—a nifty act . Needless to say though, the gentleman’s bread and butter focuses around “Spontaneous Improvised Sound Experiments,” much of which is captured and documented in precocious capacity on In a Sense. Genres like “experimental, metal, avant-garde, drone, & noise” are thrown out like it’s a pick-one candy bar bag at Halloween and one of ’em has a razor or something hiding. Except there is no razorblade; none of those genres are really ever achieved on the release. In fact, the label’s term “goofball psychedelia” serving a greater credit to Boijen’s soundscapes.

In a Sense has a freewheeling quality to its 10 cuts that allow it to channel between sunskipping almost-instrumental indie pop (Waiting), jittery digital-damaged free improv drumming and xylophone noisery (Makes Sense/Mask Chakra), amongst the occasional 75 Dollar Bill/Wilkes n’ Gendel sonic dirge (Xalam for Yari, most of side b). It’s a stable template that allows for the occasional banjo to dip in or a track like “Y’all” to harken to late-00s freak folk or Deerhunter blog ditties. Yet, when all three of these elements combine, like on Kids Odd or That Claw Fin Thing Together, the tape is operating at its fullest big brain capacity. A sudden revelatory bliss is unlocked in those two tracks; the kind that ignite a groove-laden yet everyday-ness quality to Boijen’s recordings. It warrants the “goofball psychedelia” tag! Especially when traversing the tape’s b-side, the two become a framework to exactly what makes the tape’s smattering of tracks work. Boijen is often able to ride a small drone and improvisational drum pattern into something that is engrossing, and genuinely zoned-out on its own accord.

Limited Edition Cassette from the Ephem-Aural Bandcamp is Now Available.

MIDI Janitor – Buk Order & Fumerolles – Nuit jaune

1.10.23 by Matty McPherson

About four and a half years ago, local Tabs Out legend Ryan Masteller took a mosey on down to Hotham Sounds, the Vancouver BC based label dedicated to Pacific Northwest “experimental” electronic transmissions in limited private press tape releases. Hotham Sounds is still continuing their own refinement and curation, creating dedicated batches and zoned out bliss of their own volition. Anyways, they decided four days into the 2023 to go ahead and plop down THREE tapes that seemed to just burst forth from the volcanic grounds. And good lord do these tapes pass inspection, even going as far as to break label law and sign from a providence outside BC & release an 84 minute set of synth JAMS

MIDI Janitor – Bulk Order

Jonathan Orr of Vancouver found a MIDI controller in an East Van dumpster, more at 11. Oh it’s 11 right now? Well he took said controller, patched in 90s sample packs and cheap beats and made a scrapping junkers’ delight of a tape release. Bulk Order purposely isn’t trying to hide its spend-thrift, economical nature in the amalgamation of not-quite bass-damaged beats and “casper the friendly ghost” type synth aberrations. Together, the two sounds from this approach make for a particular strain of electronic listening music. The kind that you likely have encountered in special interest vhs tapes and old gluttonous industrial arts films.

But seriously, Orr’s work as MIDI Janitor is homely and subliminally quixotic; even the cover is a brilliant evocation of private press industrial records but tuned to the current era’s fascination with synth magic. The dozen cuts on Bulk Order are small triumphs, private press “electro” nuggets that excel at melody and texture without ever completely forgoing stable repetition and a frame of reference. “Born From a Voice” bubbles and peaks with a giggly twitch and crack, before then taking its small crescendoes and bows out, moving back into the earth it came from. Whereas “Keep Still” indeed, distills these synths to their most lovingly rudderless and stilled. Even “Vapor King” swaggers on its budget, as “Athos A.M.” drones with that 5am red eye energy that makes a lot of this tape a blast. That they retain a strange familiarity (to artists I’m refusing to name bc you sorta will know IMMEDIATELY what he’s edging towards) while also offering a real genuine acknowledgement of this MIDI’s limits and STILL oozing with rudimentary flair make the tape an easy one to ponder and gush over.

Fumerolles – Nuit jaune

So forgive us if this tape comes late, perhaps over 4 years late even. Nuit jane has existed in digital format since 2018. Although, Hotham has taken a liking to the recording and provided a reissue of the brevity-laden EP. Fumerolles (aka librarian Frédérique Duval) crafted this during a hot spell (one of many that has plagued Montreal in the past 4+ years), working on utilitarian synthesizer music built from effect boxes and homemade modules. At six tracks all flirting with but never breaking the 4-minute mark, it is a sweet treat to see in the Bandcamp email pop up.

I did listen to this EP while on lunch away from helping patrons with library cards and shelving holds. It will always, without fail, move me to hear librarian music–not library music, librarian music. And I’m working on defining this genre tbh, because I don’t hear a lot of music from librarians often. While that does not mean that the copyright-free banger genre known as Library Music is shied away from (although Cyclique could easily have been slotted onto Mexican Summer’s Unusual Sounds), what I garnered a sense from Fumerolles was a deep capacity for harmony and layering that is deceptively simple; her music fits like a glove and becomes an instant sugar rush. The strings and trickles of Sismographe are bolstered by crashing waves of percussive tangs. Pulmo bubbles and fizzles like a UFO attempting to jettison into orbit, but always falling short. The buzzing synthesizer loop of Ptero takes a moment to reveal itself, hidden behind keyboard fantasies and other cresting percussive smatterings, but it feels like a thought line to a future. Un charme, the shortest cut of the EP, is especially thoughtful in how it throws itself from lazer haptics and ambient synth-lines into a whole buzzing cacophony that sucks you in.

Harold Turgis – The Sentinels

1.6.22 by Matty McPherson

I am sent an astronomical amount of things and I have to tip my hat to the individuals that brave import fees and customs checks to bring something to Tabs Out to have sent across the country for play in my Yamaha; you all are heroes in my eyes, people that truly believe that the right ears will get what you are doing. Anyone who reads this though should know, I’m not always the right ears, and that I come into 2023 with a chip on my shoulder and a belief there is more out there than I am often immediately able to give credit for.

In 2021, I did receive a tape from Harold Turgis, and let my biases get the better of me. Turgis is “members” of a post-punk band known as Hygine. An act that existed at both ends of the 2010s, early as an act pushing records out on La Vida Es Un Mus and Static Stock, and on the other end in 2019 emerging as on Upset! The Rhythm. In that time, a figure known as Pat Daintith emerged that provided keyboard and seemed to be doing something of their own under this Harold Turgis nominer. Harold, I know at the time I was undervaluing your Satellite: 1997-2021 compilation. The fact that the Quietus decided to cover The Sentinels release already warranted a “hmm, I should probably see if I got that in the mail” from me sort of confirmed that I’d been a big dingus here. Turgis has been staunchly off the books when it comes to social media–sans using Twitter dot com to express a fascination and affinity for modernist architecture. But neither the Satellite comp nor “the Sentinels” wasn’t pressed on brutalist grey or modernist carbon or what not. He used a half red, half black shell, and his cuts of ambient synth charging and drum experimentation that sorta teetered a weird unclassifiable realm.

Side A’s tracks were edited all as one piece and side B itself is just a long form. But it does pay off. Side A is able to metamorpihize through almost-industrial experiments and video game interlude music that seems too cunning for its own good. And it is! Especially as it coalesces into The Sentinels (West) and The Shining Pyramid, where it feels a little gurgle-laden and aquatic, as much as sandpaper laden and splashy. It makes for a gripping seventeen minutes. Although, the journey of Xeethra seems to warrant the tape itself. Picture yourself on a train coming back from the new year’s festivities and passing through a series of crossing and unregulated stops. The kinds where ghastly aberrations and misnomers seem to haunt and almost pierce the veiled windows. All while the gentle lulling and loops of the train’s systems continue on schedule. That’s what side B sounds like, and if you learn to conquer your demons (via going downstairs to the cabin car for a 22oz bomber), you’ll actually find that you can get quite a lot of work done; especially as it lulls and bobs into a stable reference motion. The kind of reference point that seems to play out in reverse and lull you into a breathing routine and blissful out of body state. It’s a morose loop at first I’ll credit that, but it’s stability and near-trancey qualities it gives off as it pushes down into a blissful state warrant me genuinely curious as to what this Harold Turgis figure is all about.

Limited Edition Tape Available from the Harold Turgis/Noble Lowndes Annuities Bandcamp