Tabs Out

Mallwalker – Danger

4.6.23 by Zach Mitchell

Learning about someone posthumously is a messy, beautiful process. It’s happened to me twice over
the past year: once when my friend Nick (of the wonderful band Spiral Rash) died and a second time
when Sarah “Underhill” Danger passed away. I didn’t know Sarah like I knew Nick, but what little time I
spent with her was spent with someone who treated me like I was her best friend even after just
meeting in passing a once at Gonerfest. When she died, I regretted not knowing to get her better. I saw
the tributes from people in Milwaukee and the people who knocked back beers every year in the
Memphis heat with her and felt a strange twinge of guilt along with the expected sadness. That’s
obviously selfish on some level, but that’s what’s hard about having a new friend in your life pass away –
you end up mourning the person and the friendship that never was at the same time.

Thankfully, Biff (the great bootleg head of Das Boot Tapes) over at Tetryon Tapes released Danger, a tape combining the Mallwalker (Sarah’s band) album that never saw an official release with an incendiary set he recorded live in Buffalo. Another funny connection here – the Mallwalker album was recorded by Eric and Stacy over at Sex Tape Records, who, at one point, tried to court my band Big Clown by telling us that they had the record ready to release. They sent us the album and I never listened to it.

This was the story of my experience with Sarah until summer 2022, when Big Clown made the trek up to Milwaukee to play a show at the fabulous Circle A with the equally fabulous Florida Brothers Band. Sarah was a Gonerfest regular but we never really had an actual conversation. I didn’t see Mallwalker when they played a 4 AM aftershow or when they played the festival proper; I walked in during MOTO’s set two bands after and was told I missed a great set from some band with a wild singer. I filed away the information for later. I saw Sarah, all dyed hair and provocative punk clothes, and knew she had to be cool. I didn’t feel cool enough to talk to her, so I didn’t. She obviously thought my band was cool enough to pump her fist and yell along to our songs at a sparsely attended show (and again at a very chaotic 1:30 AM Gonerfest afterparty that was better attended (we played better in Milwaukee though), so this was totally a me thing. Hindsight is always 20/20.

I wish I had listened to this album while Sarah was still alive. I want to tell her that “Parent Trap” felt
relatable in ways that punk songs usually don’t. I want to tell her that laughing about turning into your
parents is more worthwhile than hating it. I want to tell her that the sexcapade outlined in the first verse
of “Phase” is fucking gnarly and made me wish I could’ve/would’ve raised a Gonerbrau to it at the Hi
Tone. I want to tell her that it sounds like this is what she was born to do. Some people just make sense
as punk singers. It’s not about the costume (which she rocked, clearly) or the lyrics (which hit the
modern punk sweet spot of being funny, gross, and passionate). It’s the venom. It’s the confidence. It’s
the charisma. She sings exactly the same as she talked and that’s the kind of energy I crave in my music.
So what actually was Mallwalker? Who was Sarah? What did I learn from this tape?

1. Mallwalker was a good band that absolutely earned their opening slot at Gonerfest.
2. Mallwalker was the kind of band I don’t think I would’ve appreciated in 2019 if I saw them at
   Gonerfest. This, again, is a me problem. I have become much more appreciative of energetic
   performances and opportunities to live in songs than I was in 2019. Ironically enough, that
   MOTO performance changed a lot for me.
3. Mallwalker had an absolutely killer bass tone that more punk bands should rip off.
4. Sarah could front any band and it would be worth listening to.

Mallwalker was clearly special among a heap of other scuzzy four chord floor tom pound punk bands.in my life. It’s impossible for me to separate this band from the context of the tape, its creation, and where I’m at, but I also just don’t want to. This is all I’ve got left of someone who was warm to me and
could’ve been someone I got to know better in years to come. It’s worth holding onto that for as long as
I can.

Tapes of the fabulous available at the Teyron Tape Bandcamp Page

Heejin Jang – Me and the Glassbirds

4.5.23 by Matty McPherson

Alright before I talk shop here about this tape, I need to give a massive tip of my hat to the PR email. I haven’t received a PR email more inventive this year than the one Z. Emerson of Doom Trip Records enthusiastically threw my way after asking “hey is it okay if I send you this PR email that’s really just a big Notes app message?” Finally! Someone meeting me where in 2023 where I resonate most: a giant litany of font colors and links with information that is more in line with feeling like a Web 1.0 page that just blatantly tells me what I need to know and the links worth sharing if I so desire to go further. Wow! PR-heads…take notes. This is how you grab my attention.

Anyways, Doom Trip’s first 2023 tape of the year comes from Heejin Jang. That’s her there central on one of the most evocative and stylish j-cards I’ve seen in a second; a pristine portrait that glistens with a talismanic quality. She trained as a painter but catching a noise performance in 2012 completely shifted what artistic endeavors she was interested in taking up: painting drawn out of noise, more or less. She makes a clear distinction that what she is doing is not rooted in “art” or “music,” but more just general experience. Her work, at least early renditions, were the result of live Max/MSP manipulation (and have been releasing on tape as far back as 2016). And in the past few years has been building in intensity and its capacity for noise textures without being sunk by the sludge, weight, or expectations. The stray dublab session here, an ESS presentation there, and collaborative soundscape work at the start of the decade have been crucial in trying to create a tactile sensory overload. A genuine desire to lose one’s self in the noise.

Me and the Glassbirds caught my ear because quite simply, Jang seemed to have a grip on concise soundscapes that could be abrasively abstract, but also deeply inviting and inquisitive little puzzle boxes of their own accord. That is to say: Me and the Glassbirds is the first real industrial release Doom Trip has curated in their existence as a label. Not a hyper-EBM inversion you’d think the label would shoot for, but an actual legitimate private press noise release that wouldn’t be out of place on Hot Releases or No Rent. Although neither label exactly curates a focus towards the psychedelia that this mode of crafting provides, the bountiful grip on the present experience that with which one can lose themself in. This is perhaps why it makes sense as a Doom Trip release, foreshadowing the uniquely hypnotic and almost-dance characteristics of Jang’s work.

Listening as a full listen as intended and what becomes apparent is Jang’s restlessness. Her palette is one of sensory depraved loops and reverb washed recordings brushed and chiseled down to gaseous states; two matches made in heaven that also could run around like a monotonous carousel if they so desired. They don’t though. Throughout the release Jang seems to be trying to temporally unstick her loops by any means necessary. Mostly that accounts to viciously ascended forms of jamcom’ing. The layering of sounds and beats give the tape a translucent sleekness often missing in industrial of this size. You can barely picture eggs cracking, timers ticking, messages being sent through power lines, and of course the stray cryptid bird noise. But all the while Jang never keeps her foot in one spot long enough to pinpoint and denote a full lineage. Still, her field recordings, drones, or deconstructed club sleights that come through beckon for a novel way of approaching the familiar. An ever present vibe shifts in real time on the release that seems to keep a listener moving.

All of which is confirmed within the central component of this entire release on Our Brief Eternity. It’s a 13:22 track that begs to catch your ear, if only because it is such an upstanding composition of production sleights and asynchronous melodies constructing a universe of its own accord. Part industrial light machine gun pitter-patter routinized and pitch-shifted, another part deconstructed club with tumultuously swinging breakbeats, as much as one giant amalgamation of reverberated bird ambience absolutely off its rocker. A lot of side A teases these pieces, but they do come together into an actual legitimate soundsystem that I’d bury myself under if given the opportunity. Partially because it seems to carry with it its own textbook of influences indecipherable enough into an amalgamation that parallels Twin Infinitives moments of batshit savant electronic wisdom (Royal Trux’s own strung out savant wisdom is one of the closet ancillaries to these sounds). Our Brief Eternity is immensely less strung out than said Trux album, but I detect a similar mania in the razor sharp execution.

If not that mania, a similar deeply ingrained tenacity to chart a sonic roadmap. Me and the Glassbirds does not tell you the name of this place, it merely suggests that alloys and rare earth metals exist here as birds seem to elicit a metallic call. It’s a dimension that always seems to be just between the harmonics of our music systems and the blurs our eyes end up dashing out; a place that really can only be summoned by fucking with Max/MSP and noise as if to tune in to and find a resonate frequency. With that it’s enough to seriously consider that Jang’s unclassifiable style of sound is indeed tapping into various aberrations and specters just outside this world. That is to say, Me and the Glassbirds is one of the strongest listens of the year full stop, and quite frankly the best tape Doom Trip has put out this decade to date. Here’s to hoping for a second edition.

Sold out at the Doom Trip Records Bandcamp! Pester Z to make more tapes because it needs it damnit!