Tabs Out

Church Shuttle – Mind Leash

7.22.19 by Ryan Masteller

“I won’t be, like, tethered to nothin’!”

So says Church Shuttle as he casts off the “Mind Leash,” filtering everything that’s trapping him through loops and cassettes and synth pads and all other sorts of crazy nonsense and compiling it into this document. For Chris Durham, the Michigan mind behind the ’Shuttle, putting together “Mind Leash” was the “equivalent of gathering all of my angst into one place and then firing it into the sun” (*quotation mine, not Chris Durham’s, because that’s what I imagine him saying about “Mind Leash” when asked about it for a feature Spin interview). Regardless of who put words into whose mouth, there’s still half a C100 here (weird, right?) filled with garbled noise loops and rhythmic pulsations that’ll leave you bobbing in a life raft in the middle of a plasma sea on the surface of said sun, for at least the millisecond you’re still conscious before the awesome power of our closest star pulls all your molecules apart.

If you were to press play on this Church Shuttle tape in the vicinity of a galactic disturbance or even just in front of the most convenient magnet, the results would be the same: total disintegration, of loops of sound sources, of intent, till only the sounds of the destruction itself become the ambient foci. That is, until the voices pierce the mix. Then it’s like you’re standing on the bridge of the Event Horizon and watching the awful videos of people eating each other, or whatever that was. But again, that’s all part of Chris Durham’s plan, all part of the great expulsion of bad thoughts and sad energy, the casting off of the shackles of the Mind Prison. The “Mind Leash” is UNleashed, UNattached, INeffective in its purpose of keeping the average person down. And that’s what makes it a fascinating listen – one person’s angst is another person’s treasure. Something something empathy.

Grip a copy of this bad boy from Anathema Archive, edition of 100 pro-duped tapes. Remember, though, it’s only on one side!

Winter Sleep – Return to Dream City

7.19.19 by Ryan Masteller

To quote the runaway television hit “Game of Thrones,” “Winter is getting closer.” And by “winter” I of course mean “Winter Sleep,” a fresh-faced Philadelphian named James Webster, who took his moniker from the hibernative qualities of the castle of Winterfield nestled snugly in the north of Westeria beneath the shadow of the mighty Ice-Formed Wall. It’s not for nothing that “Game of Thrones” garnered all those Emmy noms for their final season – the ultimate events of said series were universally showered in acclaim.

So Webster rides the wave of popularity and releases music with a tenuous connection to the show.* Like the Three-Eyed Blackbird, he peers into multiple aspects of human life, documenting what he sees from that dreamlike perspective and envisioning vast multidimensional composites, of which he focuses on minute details in order to explicate their intricacies, absurdities, and sheer banalities. In other words, Webster makes music about what he sees when he wargs through his dreams. And what he sees is both strikingly human and equilibrium-shiftingly odd.

Thus Dream City, and its “Return to” so hauntingly alluded to in the title. Wordlessly, Webster gathers his tools – I dunno, synthesizer? Sampler? – and dives into future nu-scapes only glimpsed through the fog of slumber, the haze of unconscious vibrations. Dream City is a place that’s easy to imagine if you’ve ever caught yourself in a self-aware moment within a dream, the impossibly familiar surroundings suddenly seeming to expand endlessly in a labyrinth of avenues and passageways. All is crystal and liquid metal and smooth pastel. It’s as reassuringly benign as it is brimming with adventure. Truly Webster has crafted a visionary mindspace where future, present, and past combine, and distance and meaning are relative and unstable.

The question really is, can Webster see the Dead Ice Emperor in these extrasensory warg travels of his? 

… How should I know – do I look like Steve R. R. Martin to you?

“Return to Dream City” came out at the tail end of 2018 on Ghost Diamond, but you can still head there for a fresh copy if you so choose! (And you should so choose; honestly, you should also just grab whatever they have in print.)

*He doesn’t really have anything to do with GOT – I’m just jerking your chain.