Tabs Out

3.12.19 by Ryan Masteller

That was a great Bible study – I’m really glad we were all able to meet and really dive into the Word and pray with each other. I don’t know what I’d do without my small group – I really feel like I can open up to them about all the things I’m going through, all the issues at work, all the financial strains I’m shouldering from putting two kids through private school, all the marital stressors that pop up here and there. But mostly we work through these things by reading the Bible, consulting God’s Word for holy answers. And it works for guiding us through these troubled times, too – some social ills are so clearly condemned that we can help guide those who can’t understand that toward the path of righteousness. The Bible is Truth. God is Love. GOD IS SO GOOD.

Oh, what’s this? “S. Cooke teaching tape,” eh, “Weigh the Word”? Don’t mind if I do, thanks – I’m on a pretty good spiritual high right now that I could use some “Personal Ministry” guidance through the “Pathways in the Prophetic.” Just have to press Play…

Oh God! Jesus! Heavenly Father in Heaven, hallowed be thy name, and help me! What are these words emanating from this tape, and these sounds? Are they a test, O Lord? Are they a sign of the end times – is the Rapture upon us? This is SO not a “Personal Ministry” tape, it sounds instead like the unholy gibberish and warped physics of the demonic plane! I’m terrified, here comes a spiritual crisis… These voices mock me, they make sense to themselves but not to me. Now would be a good time to allow me to interpret these tongues, Lord! Maybe I’ll check InfoWars to see if they have anything on this S. Cooke …

Jackpot! InfoWars linked me to this great interview with We Need No Swords (sounds like a lefty peacenik organization if you ask me), and you can truly get a glimpse into the process this Cooke guy (S. stands for “Seth”), but you’re going to have to scroll pretty far down to do it. Turns out he grew up in a Christian environment, and he got his hands on some tapes his dad had put together NOT for artistic abuse, and there’s some text-to-speech programming involved (whatever that is), and Cooke doesn’t even believe in God even though he can recite Bible verses! I simply cannot fathom it – it all reeks of blasphemy. It even SOUNDS like blasphemy, all these warped readings, sometimes in unfathomable languages, interspersed with what sounds like a VHS tape getting eaten alive. Hymns become swarms of bees! I don’t even know anymore.

You heathens are gonna love this, but I’m going burn it along with some Eminem and Jerky Boys CDs… Edition of 77 from Satan’s buddy Cooke himself.

3.11.19 by Ryan Masteller

When I first heard that Patrick Shiroshi and Arturo Ibarra were going to mash together my two favorite songs by The Doors – “LA Woman” and “Roadhouse Blues” – I couldn’t believe my luck: instead of having to listen to TWO songs, I’d get a single tune with all the best parts of each. I wouldn’t have to wait for one track to end for the other to begin.

Imagine my surprise, then, when “LA Blues” began to play and it wasn’t even REMOTELY what I thought it was going to be. However, instead of giving in to the brief flare of white hot rage that passed like an energy cloud across my consciousness, my humors quickly abated as if they were hit by a sudden cold front as I decided to give this a chance, regardless of how easily my foolish and completely misguided expectations had been dashed. The urge to chuck my cassette deck out of the second-floor window disappeared before I had the chance to yank it out of the wall.

That’s not to say the music I was hearing wasn’t white hot. “Loosely inspired by the forms of Japanese guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi,” “LA Blues” from the get-go rends physical space like a swiftly fissioning star, finding alto saxophonist Shiroshi and guitarist Ibarra swirling about each other like primordial starstuff, their notes atoms trying to form bonds at velocities approaching light speed. Dangerous, dangerous stuff, and something you don’t want to get too close to if you find such things disturbing! Tracks 1 and 4, “Projection 8” and “Projection 58,” respectively, are “‘mass projections,’ marked by bombast, intensity, and a total disregard for anything approaching conventional melody or structure.” The Doors, or the idea of listening to them at this specific time, turned into Huxley’s actual “Doors of Perception” and flung themselves wide to welcome me into cosmic embrace of chaotic functionality.

These performances masquerading as neutron bombs sandwich “Projection 14” and “Projection 3,” in which Shiroshi and Ibarra’s considered interplay is more readily apparent. But neither is a break or a reprieve, just a slower eruption of plasmic materials. The duo’s live takes are physical workouts, as if the players’ are lifting weights with their lips and fingers or running a marathon with their lips and fingers. Regardless, they probably have to sit down after a while to recuperate, let their lips and fingers slowly regain feeling again after all that energy expulsion. Not unlike Ray Manzarek after “The End.”

Edition of 100 from Eh?/Public Eyesore. Not a lot left…