Tabs Out

cassette podcast focusing on noise & experimental sounds
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Tabs Out | Whettman Chelmets – Giant Eyes & Infant Steps

Whettman Chelmets – Giant Eyes & Infant Steps

3.1.19 by Ryan Masteller

I’m a dad – my kid’s seven, an incredible athlete (like me), and reads at a fourth-grade level (in second grade, also like me). No big deal. Whettman Chelmets is also a dad, but he’s got a little one – I mean a REALLY wee babe at the moment, a daughter born in 2018. So, unlike me, who’s coaching soccer and trying to curtail his boy’s runaway Super Mario habit, Whettman’s stumbling around in the dark in the middle of the night, fumbling for nightlights and pacifiers and bottle warmers, praying to whatever deity is up there that he’s swaddled that darling girl just right so he can sleep uninterrupted for the next two hours before she wakes up again.

Oh… that sounds awful. No more kids for me. No thanks.

“Giant Eyes & Infant Steps” though – as much as I want to relive parts of those days, this tape’s sort of a warning. Delivered with love, surely – don’t get me wrong about that. Whettman’s nothing if not the devoted father. But he’s clearly letting off some steam here, and it’s really working in his favor. Backing away from some of his post-rock tendencies, he delivers drones with gritted teeth and bloodshot eyes, sleep-deprived and on edge, but with an insanely big heart for this little life that’s so much a part of his world. Readers, seriously, I apologize if you don’t get the appeal of being a parent (and I was one fairly late, comparatively), but these intensely competing outlooks on parenting (zombified waking hours vs. shaping an entire worldview of someone that you helped make) form the dichotomy that defines the life of a parent and, perversely, invigorates them.

Whettman Chelmets just happens to be able to coherently intertwine these things into an artistic statement.

“Interruptus” is easily the theme, but “TFW It’s 4:00 a.m. and You’ve Already Been Up 3 Times” and “MRW I Drop the Passie in the Dark” illustrate the gallows humor necessary to navigate the dreaded “nighttime” with a child. But it’s all offset – how could it not be? – with the shimmeringly manic “Dada,” the bewildering and wonderful sentiments of the title track, and, of course, the hallucinatory wonder of “She Says Dada,” that magical moment in a barely functioning parent’s life when their child finally addresses them through a haze of exhaustion. It’s worth it more than you could possibly know.

“Giant Eyes & Infant Steps” is out now via PDX’s Girly Girl Musik – get one now!

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Tabs Out | Hypnagogue – Adrift

Hypnagogue – Adrift

2.28.19 by Tony Lien

I’m always happy when one word song titles and/or album titles actually turn out to augment the music they are attached to — as opposed to denoting laziness or the depletion of imagination. All those nü-metal bros back in the early 2000s were the undisputed kings of the latter. Remember? I do.

“Adrift” by Hypnagogue (known in the real world as James Rosato) represents the former camp. And, it’s about as far from nü-metal as you can get — a brief, peaceful breeze of minimal electro-acoustic ambience.

To be clear, I’m not just suggesting that the album and the songs that comprise it are aptly named. No, what I’m really suggesting is that three simple words — each one a song title — manage to convey a story (in conjunction with the album name).

The first track “Submerged” introduces a nameless human being swallowed up whole by an ocean of circumstances — and even more so the moment the human realizes that, beyond oneself, one has little control of anyone or anything. The genesis of the onslaught of adulthood, in other words.

The second track “Inward” tells of the choices one makes after being submerged, and the shaping of a complex and imperfect soul. Facing and accepting oneself despite shortcomings and disappointments.

The final track “Fractured Light” represents the jagged, beautiful, kaleidoscopic nature of memories and reflection, and how that light flickers and breaks apart over time. Getting older every day.

Altogether, “Adrift” is simultaneously a heavy and free-floating album; its sounds are lighter than dust particles in stagnant air, but the images projected by them could fill the sky and stretch past the horizon.