Tabs Out

New Batch – \\NULL|Z0NE//

5.3.19 by Ryan Masteller

\\NULL|Z0NE// . We wish we understood you. We wish we could pin you down. We wish you were more predictable so were ready for you. We wish, we wish, we wish.

But that’s not even true. Not by a long shot.

One of the things that makes this Athens, Georgia, label a favorite is its unpredictability, and our baffled and flailing attempts at keeping up are a comedy of intense personal errors. What’s the point if we’re force-fed the same thing all the time? Michael Potter, who runs \\NULL|Z0NE//, would never cave to sameness – he’s a slave to variety. And for that we as listeners and paragons of the underground and the outsider, cheerleaders of artistic freedom, trailblazers of taste and cultural cache can rest assured that there will always be something valiantly interesting from Potter’s camp.

I’m actually sort of embarrassed for anyone who thinks like my first paragraph up there.

SKINNED OR SUNBURNT – SKINNED

Sahada Buckley’s skinned or sunburnt project allows the violinist to realize her compositions as part of a quintet. Indeed, Buckley’s joined on piano by Brad Bassler, drums by John Norris, clarinet/bass clarinet by Kathryn Koopman, and bass by Jamie Thomas. After a few iterations that lean toward the abstract and experimental, the players teasing out some of the more unconventional predilections, the quintet opens up, really flourishing in the spectral jazz of “ethereal green” as the violin and piano dance around each other over a galloping rhythm. “hab’ galest” is like a German-language chain-gang blues tune, although I’m not sure “hab’ galest” is German. (Somebody check me on that.) But these two centerpiece tunes fracture back out into raw experimentalism once again, with “skinned” tripping back down mushroom-glazed twilit forest paths. Buckley and crew won’t leave the jazz alone though, and “temper tantrum” appears out of nowhere like a #BlackLodge smoky club in a clearing, offering the promise of taking off the edge but more likely enhancing it. The tape ending on strange, unhinged laughter over dissonant piano chords doesn’t help. Gives the whole thing an unpredictability … something we’ve already championed as a good thing around here.

PLAKE 64 AND THE HEXAGRAMS – ALL HAIL YEAH

Alex Homan is a psychedelic bodhisattva with an ear for dense arrangement. Freak folk for the spiritually ascendant, “All Hail Yeah” invites listeners in and assimilates them into the all-seeing oneness at the center of the mind, the galactic manifestation of eternity through sound. That’s a fancy way of saying that Homan’s work as Plake 64 and the Hexagrams is far out, man. At times utilizing acoustic guitar and a soothing, multitracked vocal delivery, at others tapping the primal sound sources available within the bowels of various synthesizers (I’m assuming), Homan embraces the – dare I repeat it – unpredictability of his creative whims and crafts a variety of earthy yet mystical zones. By the time he’s ascending “The Mountain” (and then descending it) by tape’s end, he’s fully encapsulated every impulse of his into a single sprawling trek, a fitting and fantastic end to “All Hail Yeah.” Maybe you can hoof it up that magical mountain yourself, get a little inner peace while you’re at it.

Each tape comes in an edition of 50.

New Batch – Patient Sounds

4.30.19 by Ryan Masteller

Patient Sounds’ releases often capture that time at the tail end of winter when the cold is still sort of firmly holding on but the thaw is right around the corner. They evoke the bleary-eyed malaise of a people and a city – Chicago, in this case – sick to death of that prognosticating groundhog Punxsutawney Phil, who, even when he’s got the ol’ early spring forecast in his book (I forget if that’s because he saw his shadow or because he didn’t see his shadow – my bleary-eyed malaise has rendered me useless in the research department), can’t seem to get Chicago’s weather pattern quite right. We here in warmer, more southern climes start to stretch and breathe a little. Chicagoans hunker deeper into their coats.
But the “private press record label and book publisher” soldiers on (pun definitely intended), and because of the seasonal factors and weather characteristics of that windiest of cities, Patient Sounds is in the perfect position to reflect what everybody’s feeling right back at them. How does it make you feel? It should feel like a warm, fuzzy blanket, all the time. Let’s see how these new joints do.

CELER – VAMPS

Tokyo-based Will Long may hold the record for most releases ever by an artist. Seriously. The hyperlinked “Celer” just up there goes to his Bandcamp page, and you may spend the next month, month and a half or so combing through it. Maybe longer. Long certainly gets the “patient” thing, so it makes sense for him to finally link his talents to PS. “Vamps,” of course, sounds anything but like what the title implies, as there are no vampires to be found at all in these two sidelong pieces. But oh! The dictionary includes another definition, a verb meaning “to repeat a short, simple passage of music.” This makes more sense, as the quiet piano figures move slowly, ghostlike, gently drifting like snowflakes on the breeze. So even though Will Long’s on the other side of the bloody planet, he’s still able to find that gentleness, that peacefulness that a cold winter’s night can bring, if, of course, you’re not out in it. Imagine that – someone from a faraway place connecting through music to us waaay over here. People aren’t so different after all, right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A CRUSHED ROSE – SOMEONE IS LOOKING OUT FOR US

Alisa Rodriguez also observes the snowflakes falling on the sleeve of her coat, which may not surprise you when you consider that Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is her home. Milwaukee is no stranger to the types of polar vortices that also hit Chicago, and in the dead of winter, you really shouldn’t be outside there for longer than five minutes (your eyeballs will freeze). You also can’t play guitar in winter gloves, so Alisa, who moonlights as dream pop project Apollo Vermouth, took solely to software when making “Someone Is Looking Out for Us.” She seems to have gotten the hang of it, as she coaxes dreams of spring from the slowly slushing snow piles. Even on the minutely propulsive “Ocean Itself” she finds hope in the mist and the murk, desperately trying to shake the cobwebs and the blues and emerge into a warmer sunbeam. It’s all hope in the end though – moving forward, finding your way, stretching toward dawn. The last track here’s called “Unconditional Love,” after all! How’s that for breaking out of a slump?