Tabs Out

The Concept Horse – Fills Vols. 1 – 4

9.10.21 by Matty McPherson

There wasn’t a memo attached to the cardboard sleeves, just a foreign pattern I couldn’t untangle and the stamp of one eë editions — a label that took me two months to track down to a Big Cartel page and a Soundcloud stream. I still don’t know the what and why, just that eë editions is a new Bandcampless label in the game, working through experimental distros to get work out internationally. Currently, they’re relocating to Vienna while prepping for their second release in early 2022. Their inaugural release belongs to one DB Friedman, aka the “Concept Horse” who has been spotted around Ithaca, NY playing DIY shows with Sarah Heinnes while still keeping rather quiet. That I filed the 2xCass that comprises Fills Vols. 1-4 as a mere curio, was a bit egregious. I should have been treating it as a legitimate cold case worth pouring over.

Nevertheless, Fills Vols. 1-4 sits at the intersection of record collection admiration and jazz drum looping to create a nervy yet minimal, fast-flowing amnesiac’s kind of library music. It seems that the Concept Horse plundered and warped multiple jazz records aiming to chase down ontological patterns and textures with a kind of elasticity. Listening through the four sides over several months, I was riveted to find myself locked into perfect loops where I couldn’t quite tell what light effects or manipulation was hanging over the entire set of affairs. What you do realize sitting around inside one of these loops long enough, is how the focus from one major beat dips towards those subtle tones or abstractions at the edges of these loops; two paths getting lost in their own directions. As this process slowly works itself through each cut, time after time the Horse Concept deconstructs jazz towards ample scatterbrained poptones, percussive plights, or outright haywire abstractions. Nevertheless, there’s a deep-rooted rhythm and step to the madness. I’m still aghast at the possibility of how easy it might be to slip this on a snooty French restaurant’s reel-to-reel system during a Saturday night rush.

It’ll be hard to pull off such a sleight of hand; all the copies of Fills Vol. 1-4 have been somewhat sold out! Yet, if you scope that hyperlink above, there might be a copy lying around on a Big Cartel internationally. Or you can listen below on the Soundcloud.

Amirtha Kidambi & Matteo Liberatore – Neutral Love

9.8.21 by McPherson

I love Astral Editions, this has been established on the Tabs Out blog page before. Nate Cross has etched down a vision that I find quite endearing, and the 2021 Astral Editions catalog is curating its own specific niche around Astral Spirits’ ever omnibus universe. Hauntology? Covered at the door. Space Jazz? Sure.  Netherlands post-rock post-jazz? Of course. Vocal rumblings and droning guitar tumblings? Well, Neu — oh hold on the captain has something to say.

“We’ve actually got to perform some emergency maintenance; we’re gonna be heading back to the gate”

Okay I’ll level with you: It’s 6AM on a red eye out of chicago. I love morning travel. I expect a clean, concise flight, but we’ve just been punk’d. Today might be pushing my patience though, as I really haven’t gotten the sleep I needed and the 100mg THC shot w/50mg of caffeine just made me feel real conspiratorial as I walked past the COVID [citations needed] sniffin’ dogs, as much as it made me wonder “Did southwest imagine that in fifty years it’d just own a bunch of computer kiosks? Christ, how depressing.”

Anyways, the whole team is there on this red eye: A 3 year old child asking her father “when will the flight take off?” every thirty seconds, a couple speaking 5 dBs too loudly behind me, sporadic updates that border on parody as people get pissy and talk back. Oh, yeah, and uh… That Amirtha Kidambi & Matteo Liberatore “Neutral Love” tape from Astral Editions. It’s not BENADRYL® or more weed, but it’s the best medication when I’m drifting towards a hypnagogic nap on my table tray; one of ancient pasts towards a mysterious future.

Kidambi and Liberatore’s soundscapes are of an artifact that evades easy carbon dating, creating an effect to travel inward rather than take in every meaningless detail in the cabin of a 737. For thirty minutes, I did so, traveling with the two down a cavernous body of water in a little canoe. Liberatore was sailing, but hadn’t brought a paddle; instead opting to let his guitar and its restrained timbres navigate. On “Bells”, every small note or slight droning stretches, providing just enough levity for the bell to expand out and structure the piece’s movement. Meanwhile, Kidambi guided us — without a candle, just her radiating voice. Like her counterpart, Kidambi is patient with her instrument. Where her vocal inflections may start by bordering on pagan ritual, they can slowly move towards the extremes and create entirely new inflections closer to a steam kettle (“Mancanza”) or death by a thousand cuts (“Submission”) that practically command attention front and center. When the two of them cast off each other, it’s an operatic effect.

Each of the tape’s four pieces feel boundless, ebbing and flowing. That’s to say that when you are traversing your subconscious, this tape feels illustrious; one excerpt moves to another without so much of a stopgap to indicate. As suggested above, there are moments of spectacular sleight and abundant siege that the tape imparts, but the silence and patience are all the more rewarding here. By the time of side B closer, “Repose,” the two of them had guided me towards a deep-seated cocoon state. I truly would have stayed with the lights off for another eternity, but alas the pilot just told me we’re to take off. 

First pressing of 200 cassettes on RED TINT shells available at the Astral Editions Bandcamp Page