Tabs Out

cassette podcast focusing on noise & experimental sounds
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Tabs Out | Heavenworld – Compelling Evidence Of…

Heavenworld – Compelling Evidence Of…

5.20.22 by Matty McPherson

Usually if I nab a tape on mail day and I cannot find any information in a database of inherent value, its a top level emergency. Plop it on hi-fi ASAP! Such was the case with Heavenworld’s Compelling Evidence Of… cassette. It was recently released as the fifth title on the burgeoning Industrial Standards label, which appears to have no presence of any sorts online. Thanks to local, jetski, I got a tip that the release was totally off the grid. Although a lil’ search will reveal that Heavenworld is a name appearing on both Discogs and Bandcamp; each ping only eschews another batch of questions. Just how many 2019 and 2020 releases were they doing? Why is there another Heavenworld based in Nevada while this one appears to be based in the Peoria, IL area? Does this tape reflect that surrounding region or another world entirely? Usual sluethy stuff.

However, Compelling Evidence Of… will not answer these questions! Through its drifting over the course of six tracks, Heavenworld conducts a series of illuminating, irradiating experiments. Sizzly synths, primordial pulses, and resonant frequencies all seem to be functioning as a path towards trance. Gate Inversion opens, brilliantly trapping new age jungle sounds within these electrified bass pulses. The title track seems to find its way out of a volcanic spring, riding a particular droning synth to the surface over its track length. Diagram Spiral lurches with a sense of “artificial intelligence” based listening. Side A itself, continues with two additional tracks that rearrange these two tracks’ ambient playground into further salient knots.

If you head over to the back side, you can rendezvous with Running, an intense “now that’s what I call an Ambient Drone” piece. The low end can be deceptively heavy even as it maintains the tape’s overall sonic…wetness I suppose is the best way to describe it. It all comes to a head with the vaguely dancey, synth droner Near Noxious Glow. It’s here where Heavenworld truly makes a stab towards that compelling evidence, basking in the general trance and meditative qualities that have been underlying throughout this release.

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Tabs Out | Track Premiere: Power Strip – Did I Pass?

Track Premiere: Power Strip – Did I Pass?

5.12.22 by Matty McPherson

Drongo’s lo-fi basement hiss is continuing an impressive streak of tapes. Their latest artist, Seattle locals Power Strip, has a contemplative, strikingly restrained EP called no breeze out 5/18. The watery, bubbly ambient soundscapes often are hiding in the crevices of lingering haunted fragments; Power Strip’s own reference and nods towards Neil Gaiman’s work for “the children” do not go without merit. It’s a true sense of melancholy and abstract weirdness in those releases that have stuck with me (before I was a tapehead, I was a participant in the local summer reading program).

no breeze is an excellent tape to potentially put you in a summer reading mood towards contemplating ghost stories and aberrations. The minimal, hushed Did I Pass? is all based around a few droning tones and a Power Strip’s beckoning, longing voice. What it invokes more than anything I’ve heard in recent memory is a real specific sound Bradford Cox was digging at during Kranky era Deerhunter. It sounds like a lullaby, or even a paean for a past long ago, the kind of whispery pained revelations that Microcastle and Let the Blind… so easily stumbled into.

I can attest from the rest of the EP that Power Strip’s penitence for ambient is wistful and illusory. It’s an easy spell to fall into.

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Tabs Out | Jakob Heinemann – Resonant Ocean

Jakob Heinemann – Resonant Ocean

5.11.22 by Matty McPherson

Today we turn our attention towards Kashe Editions, the solo imprint of bassist/composer Jakob Heinemann. On Resonant Ocean, the label’s second release, the bassist finds himself in triple threat mode: composer, collage artist, and field recordist. The four compositions are edging for a naturalistic, deep listening and thinking modus. The tape itself, from Jcard cover to tape shell, subtly suggest this without beating around the bush. We have all found ourselves outside a small red lighthouse on the water, considering the passage of time.

Resonant Ocean’s four pieces go back and forth between field recording manipulations and loose classic compositions; a stately presence is never lacking on any of these pieces. Side A is the most scientific, jumping straight in with “Lea Projections.” It is one of Heinemann’s “sine tone, autoharp, and double bass” oriented tracks, that features a low level ominous drone. The three instruments aid and parallel the shifting within his Madison, WI area field recordings. Rickety? Yes, the inclusion of a field recording sounds impart a vague industrious character–like someone is building a Tuff Shed in their yard. Recalcitrant? Not over its 11 and a half minutes! A steely drone drifts between metallic mumbles and cicada scrawls, while Heinemann’s autoharp adds a well needed grace to this music. The field recordings and harmonic sleights are quite the juxtaposition on Lea Projections, its gravity felt in the bouts of silence or sudden stops.

It’s a primer for the reserved characteristics of track two, “Places.” Here, Heinemann leaves a composition for the trio of Oli Harris (cello), Seth Pae (viola), and Billie Howard (violin). The trio is not aided nor abetted by a field recording, yet they move with the composure of natural time. Over its ten minutes, they ebb and flow as a trio, building bouts of suspense, low end drones, or splashes of silence into a splendorous documentation of time itself. What strikes me is how they treat a climatic peak as something not to strike out in the end but rather as encounter that occurs on its own merit. Around the four minute mark, there is a a sudden shock with Howard’s Violin, a sound that is harmonized and considered, yet quickly pulled back with restraint of those cello drone.

Side B opens with “Arbor,” Heinemann’s sine tone composition. For its near nine minutes, small bits of bird sound are interposed within a long, continuous sine drone. Let yourself drift as focus turns from the drone itself to the flickers of bass and suddenly, the piece is as studious as a monk. The title track is a fitting closer, functioning as a summation of Heinemann’s MO across the three tracks into one dozen minute opus. A new quartet, Anna March (viola), Nave Graham (flute), Kyle Quass (Bb trumpet), and Anthony D’Agostino (double bass), takes shape, once again playing off of Heinemann’s MO. As a quartet goes they glide even at their most meticulous; they’re the kind of crew that would render a ship unthinkable. The piece is framed by Quass and D’Agostino quick work to enact a low waving drone that is as smooth as butter, while March and Graham add flourishes that recall Talk Talk’s Myrrhman. Clearly, they are onto something mighty pleasing and endearing, as they practically take the shape of a field recording. Over the twelve minutes, the piece devolves until it might as well be rendered the sound of a lighthouse overlooking a resonant, receptive ocean.

Edition of 50 Available from the Kashe Editions Bandcamp