Tabs Out

cassette podcast focusing on noise & experimental sounds
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Tabs Out | New Standards Men – I Was a Starship

New Standards Men – I Was a Starship

6.12.20 by Ryan Masteller

We’re not going to have great ensemble music for a while, I reckon. What with self-isolation and social distancing, who’s gonna get together for band practice? Who’s gonna tour a full band around the country? Who’s gonna allow anybody in a studio? It’s all up in the air right now.

So we grasp what we can. Did I say “instant classic”? If not, New Standards Men’s “I Was a Starship” is an instant classic, a loaded t-shirt cannon aimed in the face of a superfan, and once that trigger’s pulled, there’s no amount of lawsuits or settlements that will make things go back to the way they were. In fact, just suggesting that you listen to this is going to probably set me up for multiple lawsuits. (I have no idea why I have lawsuits on the mind lately – I tend to be a sue-r, not a sue-ee [insert “Deliverance” joke here].)

That’s because “I Was a Starship” is road music for a series of fatal car crashes shot by Lost Highway–era David Lynch. It’s stoner metal and prog and the deepest, darkest lounge all smooshed together like auto wreckage in a trash compactor. Imagine Tonstartssbandht listening to a bunch of Bohren, or Explosions in the Sky getting their Sleep on. But all at once. AND WITH NO GALL-DANG VOCALS. What, you’re gonna mess up this mood with some jibber-jabber? I dare you to. I DARE you.

NSM is a quintet this time around, the core members of Drew Bissell and Jeremy Brashaw joined by Personal Archives’ own Bob Bucko Jr., Ike Turner, and Luke Tweedy (no, not THAT Ike Turner – he died in 2007). “I Was a Starship” is three tracks this time around (and forever), each an eleven-plus-minute jam sesh that finds the players in total kraut lockstep as they stretch and evolve ideas. And it’s loud – you can really crank this sucker up! So if you’re looking into your crystal ball and see a future bereft of awesome records from bands (my friend John: “Next year’s records are going to be the worst”), circle back to “I Was a Starship,” and flip 2021 right off (god, I can’t believe I’ve already given up on 2021 too).

Plus, the artwork. You see that octopus? *chef’s kiss* That’s courtesy of Daria Tessler/animalsleepstories.

Did I also mention that ol’ Warren Defever of His Name Is Alive fame mastered this thing at Third Man Pressing, home to human vampire bat Jack white of Edward Scissorhands fame? Now you know.

Edition of 100 out now on Personal Archives!

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Tabs Out | New Glue – The Electric Path

New Glue – The Electric Path

6.8.20 by Ryan Masteller

I was talking to someone just the other day (they will remain nameless – who knows what kinds of lawsuits might get thrown my way because of the internet), and we were both like, “Yeah, we need more of that ‘evaporated rhythm’ kosmische, because we’re not getting any calmer out here.” Lo and behold comes New Glue with not only a batch of back-to-basics kosmische tunes but also the kind that sounds like rhythm might once have stuck to it but has now gone as it’s dried out in the basement or the attic over time! I honestly don’t know how any part of a music can dry out, but New Glue does their dangdest to impart age on these compositions by suggesting something that was there but now isn’t.

In truth, and I have to be honest with you, there may have been rhythm at one point – the digital squirts on the title track are certainly in some sort of “time.” But “The Electric Path,” out (NOW) on Lighten Up Sounds, is by no means static or flat. It’s … wait for it … ELECTRIC.

So the person I was talking to was like, “Yeah, it’s not getting any calmer out there, everybody’s afraid of all the COVIDs. It’s time to take a collective chill pill.” Consider said chill pill delivered, ice cold, down the hatch, with “The Electric Path,” a self-stylized “soothing balm for burning brains.” New Glue is the duo of Jason Millard and Matthew Himes, who used to be Glue Clinic, but then put that aside for a while and came back with a new name and a new attitude. Lucky for us they’re putting on an ACTUAL, non-glue clinic here on “The Electric Path,” with synthesizers coming out the wazoo in order to produce “an eloquent ambience for these times of trauma.”

Down the hatch.

Maybe it’s all moot in the end, and the hawks will out-hawk each other and wipe themselves out and leave the rest of the place to us, the meek, those somehow promised an inheritance of the planet. But no – if New Glue is giving us any indication, it’s the knob-twiddlers that will inherit the Earth. Sure, it’s going to be a burned-out husk when they get their hands on it, but they’ll just twiddle more knobs and get us all to Zen out, ruling in a benevolent narcotic haze, like Bill and Ted’s holograms in the future, till the end swiftly comes. 

Related Links

Episode #128
New Batch – Lighten Up Sounds