Tabs Out

New Batch – Park 70

1.10.20 by Ryan Masteller

We’ve trod this Park 70 path before – don’t you remember it? How come? Did you not read what I had to say about them? Were you not interested maybe? Did you have a bad experience on the Tabs Out website? Do you not like the podcast? Do you not like my writing? Do you not like … ME?!? That’s it, isn’t it? You don’t like me!

My self-esteem can’t take that kind of a hit. Not now. Not in the new year.

You just forgot, probably, that’s it. I’ll let it slide this time, because I’m a forgiving kind of person. But that does mean that I have to go over it again, take up some more of my precious time … unless you just want to click on that link in “before” up there – that’ll do ya. But since you’re proving to be unpleasant to be writing at, I’ll give you the gist so you can be on your way. Park 70, Knoxville, awesome aesthetic, nice letterpressed O-cards, heavy card stock insert … you know the drill. If you have a few more minutes, you can check out what I have to say about this NEW batch … but only if you want to.

BRUNO DUPLANT – FEU DANSE

The first thing you should remember about Park 70 releases is that they’re going to require your undivided attention to tease out every last detail, and Bruno Duplant’s “Feu Danse” is as good a place to start doing this as any. Actually, it may be a better place than most, because there are really excellent details just lurking throughout this tape that you really don’t want to miss. In fact, this may be THE BEST place to start, because “Feu Danse” has that kind of Lynchian atmosphere, the kind where there’s comfort but also unease, both coexisting and working together and probably plotting against you or at least your well-being. … No! This this a positive place, dammit, a positive environment built to nurture the weary cosmic traveler adrift upon the transcendental plane. Still, “Feu Danse” translates to “Fire Dance,” something probably every denizen of the Black Lodge has participated in at one time or another. And yet the epigraph comes from Bill Callahan and involves the bottom of a river … a place that Duplant stirs up so that the sediment clouds the senses, teasing us with the subaquatic gold, inviting us to hover there until we run out of breath – or until we grasp the ring lying there, like Sméagol! Or Bill Callahan. This doesn’t sound like Bill Callahan. This sounds like beautiful processed ambience, like you’re bound to find on Park 70.

MODELBLAU – TRAVELERS

Frans de Waard (aka Modelblau) catches us in the rain here on “Travelers.” Just … hang on a second.

Listen to it.

The rain.

When de Waard tires of the rain – and he does – he turns to other sound sources suggesting travel, maybe in the night. Often these things sound like trains, sometimes like energy beams, mostly like inexplicable forces propelling us forward beyond the limits of our known worlds. Like if I’m in Pennsylvania and a de Waard energy beam whisks me off to, say, Alpha Centauri, that’s pretty far out from the comfort of my backyard. But still the rush is there, and any time I can hurtle along with it, I will. Maybe I’m just pacing down a path just before dark, and I have to figure out where to pitch my tent. Maybe my tent (and me, and the path) are somewhere in the proximity of Alpha Centauri, and I still have to figure out where to pitch it. Look, I’m not here to tell you where you are or where I am or define reality or whatever. I’m here to listen to music and chew bubblegum, and this tape just fucking ended, so where’s the Big League Chew?

SEQUENCES – GATHERING COLOURS

Niels Geybels is back as Sequences, and let’s face it, he never really left – he’s been dropping a trail of disparate releases, one every few months, and this time he’s found his way to Park 70, which just makes total sense. Sequences is the perfect Park 70 project, and “Gathering Colours” is a rainbow of smeared ambient … just don’t expect any of it to make its way to that O-card (aesthetics, remember!). And honestly, this gritty gray release befits the tactile b/w art, its granulated electronics just asking to be visualized in some way and then examined under a microscope, where heretofore unimagined worlds pass beneath the blind eye of those who can’t perceive them. Meaning us! But Geybels is helping us out here, at least letting us HEAR what goes on in miniature at surface level. Microbes and bacteria grind away, and we’re none the wiser. Apparently they’re looking for something other than that gray and that grit, something a bit more vibrant – color maybe? Yeah, color. Geybels doesn’t give it to them. Keeps them wanting more.

Lärmschutz – splits with Black Faun, Eugene Chadbourne

1.9.20 by Ryan Masteller

I love the consistency that Faux Amis has displayed with this series. To recap, in 2019, which is essentially over (smell ya later, 2019!), the label, based in Utrecht, Netherlands, unleashed a tape a month from fellow Utrecht-based freeform noiseniks Lärmschutz, with Lärmschutz occupying one side of the tape and one of Lärmschutz’s best buds – or at least contemporaries, maybe even worst enemies? – residing on the other side. I’ve written about them for Tabs Out before (and even other sites, OMG!), and I’m about to write about them again, because they’re worth writing about. We’re on to volumes 7 and 8, featuring Black Faun and Eugene Chadbourne, respectively.

FAUX AMIS VOL. 7: BLACK FAUN / LÄRMSCHUTZ

Black Faun isn’t an easy listen, folks. Power electronics meets hellish drone, the bludgeoning industrial atmosphere of side A’s “Helhesten” is a suffocating morass of metal on metal, hordes of machinery lined up for miles and simply performing their primary functions. Robot overseers make sure everything’s running in tip-top shape. They’re hovering robots, like the ones from “Tron” or “The Black Hole.” It’s a pretty constant onslaught on all senses, and why wouldn’t it be? The planet is uninhabitable (no atmosphere, gravity barely works, second Trump term), and the robots are already equipped to communicate via some sort of bleepy short-wave system, so what do they need us for? “Hi!” says Lärmschutz, who join the party late, a half hour and a whole side into the tape, and take over for Black Faun, who are just as disillusioned at this point as you may imagine. “Valravn” is their contribution, and it starts on such a piercing frequency that my wife yelled down the hall for me to turn it down (but it WASN’T that loud to begin with … Babadook?). As usual, Utrecht’s rowdiest experimenters attempt to one-up their splitmates, this time with a scathing guitar/synthesizer/noise flash flood that erodes any patience you may have left. It’s a toxic churn, and it’s in your head and in your blood, and you can’t help but fling open the door of your house and run out into the street and attempt to pull your mailbox out of the ground with nothing but your own brute strength – and you can’t do it! It’s cemented in there. But so what? Lärmschutz gives you the Popeye strength to at least pull every muscle in your back trying to get that thing out. Maybe you need a robot to help you.

FAUX AMIS VOL. 8: EUGENE CHADBOURNE / LÄRMSCHUTZ

On the complete and absolute opposite end of the spectrum is Eugene Chadbourne’s contributions to the series. You may be wondering, as I did, if Lärmschutz contains the requisite forbearance to match Chadbourne’s restraint. See, Chadbourne not only picks at the guitar strings in such a minimal fashion, he does it, apparently, at least on “Crammed Into One,” in the middle of a bird sanctuary, the avian hordes threatening to overwhelm the sound of the guitar at every moment. Kinda peaceful, actually, if you ask me. The birds disappear on “Ruined Castle,” but that only helps you hear better what sounds like a guitar playing while its slowly being sawed apart. Lärmschutz, I’m sad to report, can’t rein it in like Chadbourne can. But who cares! They still spin off two tunes in kindred tone to Chadbourne’s, they just can’t help it that they’re more than one person and more easily and actively play off each other, goading each other just a little further into the spectrum of wildness. The result is an abstract freeform festival of tension, where every muscle is taut because the music can’t spiral too far out of control, but still it kind of shakes itself in your face like a twerking bagpipe glitched out like it was in the Matrix. And then somebody slumps over at the end because they’ve finally made it, and the relief is palpable. Whatever instrument they dropped probably needs to be tuned though.