Tabs Out

cassette podcast focusing on noise & experimental sounds
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Tabs Out | Yves Malone – Beyond the Before

Yves Malone – Beyond the Before

2.12.19 by Ryan Masteller

Just because we know what to expect doesn’t mean we can’t act surprised, am I right? Yves Malone is a household name now, an institution, and it seems crazy that he hasn’t already released something on PDX’s Never Anything Records. Although the reclusive maestro can usually be found in his studio way out in the woods somewhere (which was unmitigated hell to wire for electricity and internet), soldering away at circuit boards and plugging various patch cables into various equipment holes, he still manages to lift his head fairly often to eject a new musical release into the “scene.” These of course get gobbled up by eagle-eyed consumers hunting down the most hilarious Twitter memes, algorithms colliding in sheer fortune as an audience is “cultivated.” Whatever that means. Yves Malone is the shit.

Maybe it’s because there’s a cross-section of cynically humor-minded folks that find solace in that very cynicism, and Malone’s work can act as a soundtrack for it. Maybe it’s because escape into Malone’s soundworlds is the only outlet for the daily frustration of daily frickin’ frustration. Maybe it’s because you just watched a good genre movie (sci-fi, horror, suspense) and you realize that the new Yves Malone tape you just got in the mail would be a good alternate soundtrack. And it would be – “Beyond the Before” is a creepy and synthy and otherworldly in its high-tech postmillennium tension, ratcheting up nerves while it slinks, trying to avoid attention but not doing a very good job of it as it goes about its nefarious business. Think about it: what if John Carpenter had scored “Annihilation” instead of Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow, and then released it on Holodeck instead of Lakeshore?

Seriously: think about that for a while.

Then listen to “Beyond the Before,” edition of 50, which you can get from Never Anything right now. High-quality label, that Never Anything.

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Tabs Out | Hunted Creatures – Sleep Weed

Hunted Creatures – Sleep Weed

2.11.19 by Tony Lien

Hunted Creatures is a supergroup of sorts — consisting of White Reeves Productions label heads Micah Pacileo/Ryan Emmett and earth/vessel member Jeremy Yamma. All distinctive noise artists in their own rights, these three dudes have pooled their respective talents together in a cauldron and conjured something quietly magical.

Behold “Sleep Weed.”

The album is so deliciously lo-fi it feels wrong to listen to it on a computer — which I tried after letting it play through on my tape deck. Consider this the first of two instants in which I implore you to buy the physical version of this album.

Tone-wise, the music reminds me of the soundtracks used in 1970s-era nature/science documentaries I used to watch in middle school on VHS. In this sense, the nostalgic element of classic Vaporwave stuff is present. There’s even sort of a meta-Vaporwave moment near the end of the album when the first track is slowed down slightly and repurposed as the sixth track. An unnameable eerie element permeates these tracks as well — but only in that special way strange dreams tend to be eerie. Nocturnal logic abounds.

The overall fabric of the album is held together not only by the music itself but also by Tim Thornton’s (label owner of Suite 309 and the singular mind behind experimental electronic project Tiger Village) mastering work. The unity of sound he was able to achieve is something to be celebrated.

Lastly, it’s worth mentioning that this is an aptly named album. You have a 100% chance of enjoying this music if you’re listening to it in a dark room whilst smoking weed and attempting to drift off into a warm slumber.

Honestly though, you have a 100% chance of enjoying it no matter what. I’ve been a sober guy for a long while now, and it still struck me just as hard as it would have otherwise. As of writing this, there are seven copies remaining on the White Reeves Productions Bandcamp page. There’s my second ‘buy this tape’ plug. Don’t sleep on it.

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Tabs Out | New Batch – Oxen

New Batch – Oxen

2.9.19 by Mike Haley

Listen, if you’re gonna be a baby about this you should just go. Close this tab now and open up some decisively not scary content on the web. Oxen. Is. SCARY! Skeptical? Take a look at the special edition packaging for the Wasteland Jazz Unit tape above. Spikes? Check. Metal? Check. Black Fabric? Friggin check, M8. Thank your lucky stars that sucker was limited to three and definitely sold out. 💀

Oh, and you read that right: Wasteland Jazz Unit! New tape! The Cincinnati John/Jon-Jazz that was so jacked up nature forced it into hibernation for a few years is back. A regular/less scary version of their tape, plus one from Like Weeds (special edition sold out), kicks off 2019 for Oxen!


Wasteland Jazz Unit – Session to Nothing

Wasteland Jazz Unit delivers their brand of confidence-in-chaos and bemused, dizzy gestures into a skidding vortex of unfurling pieces across two sides on ‘Session To Nothing’. For fans of Jon Lorenz and John Rich’s oxygen deprived frenzy they deliver in abundance their daunting, unclassifiable webs of non-linear showers of noise, the duo expertly avoiding any gestures short of an overwhelming roar.


Like Weeds – The Will of the People

Kenny Sanderson’s new project since hanging up the FACIALMESS moniker has been challenging listeners live and on recent releases to join in the expansion and course change of his particular talent to create sublime obsessive narratives in sound art. LIKE WEEDS THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE obliterates any possible preconceptions of what the master of harsh cut-up noise was up to in 2019.
The answer lies in the presentation of Side A’s COME FRIENDLY BOMBS, a deliberate, spacious and highly disciplined array of blasts and slinky entrails of elusive unwinding knots of what might be distant junk entropy or iron structures collapsing in excruciating slow motion.
No energy lapses completely before it lathers into a gratifying fracture of any constraint. The ominous staccato of bruising clusters continues until it too inevitably gives way to unfettered abandon by the end of Side B’s UNREAL CITY.