Tabs Out

Constellation Tatsu Winter 2023 Batch

1.18.23 by Matty McPherson

Constellation Tatsu had a steady and immensely giving 2022. Their 10th anniversary offered a chance for the label to decide to dig back in and champion over 20 of its chill-out, deep zones, and sonically veracious releases. All with an additional 2 batches of tapes. Lockstep pattern that seems to be going about right on time in 2023 with a batch of electronic veterans and label newcomers. Keeping to around 30 minutes a piece, each tape stays to a particular lane of techno runoff, amplifying different modes of dub, ambient, and lo-fi variations.

Grim Beazley – Big World

Grim Beazley is an entirely new name from all that I can tell. At least only holding a single appearance on a 2021 Australian 12″ 4-cut compilation. Big World’s 4 cuts across the C27 minutes are still a nifty fit in the CTatsu star chart, a sauntering display of new agey synths and four on the floor that remains starry-eyed and funky fresh; vaporous and gaseous zones that cruise like midnight interstates. There’s still a level of character building and finding one’s sense of self that Beazley’s music is working itself into. Arheron Way and Eucal Regnans more or less chill quite hard, with rigid drum programming that often lacks an immediate flair or trait to them, and yet slowly spurn and prove themselves over the cuts. Meanwhile, Reefer Red Gum, the tape’s standout, often brings in metallic textures and clap-beats that combo off of each other in snappy, tantalizing manners. All the while, synth noise, hi-hats, and beloved bird-sounds feel of a chiller strain of transient electronic listening music that was hiding on Artificial Intelligence. On Big World, a sample about technology and its affects away from the physicality of time & laws of physics. It’s a lofty sample that comes across the ethereal piece, which recalls Ki Oni’s own works. And I bring up Ki Oni because this piece indicates an MO and perhaps an argument for mutating the chills of “stay indoors/plant life” type music with a heart for creation and physicality; if anything alone, it all edges towards why this music is destined for rave spaces and I’m curious for what Beazley is tuning into next.

Strategy – Graffiti In Space

With a long spanning catalog that dates different eras and ideas of his approach to music, Paul Dickow can turn wildly between releases. Graffiti In Space has precedent in the catalog, perhaps stray invocation of Drumsolo’s Delight’s glitzy textures or a more looser approach to the Infinite File’s rigid psych dub. There also stands a deep thought line towards DJ’ing chiller and more sinisterly playful works than where his last for Peak Oil had done only months prior. Over 40 minutes, Dickow gets to the brass tax with custom instrumentation attempting to tackle a larger summation of dub aesthetics in the process. His approach goes in two directions splitting half the album. 3 lighter cuts that play up the ambient and house textures of the bass’ rhythm, having patterns on his synths or keys work in focus and towards pleasurable repetition; bubbly, if glitchy “Daydream Space Graffiti” or “Surface Words” ensure.

Then there’s the moments where he strikes lightning in a bottle, when he lets his technology create noises that are each their own acid tests. The lazery twitches of Fountain of Youth find a cyclical trance that dub bass refracts and reflects further and further. The Pan•American nod and dubby fun of “In Space No One Can See Your Screen” is bolstered by glitches and wobbly keys that skip around the edges of the piece. That this is all rendered in a lo-fi, vhs tinged fidelity adds to the tape’s highest moments. It also gives a crisp feeling, the kind like mountain air, towards “Remote Dub” and “Message from Ouroboros.” Across the 40 minutes, the bass remains both a reliable bolster towards dance and equal to the general alienness that his sounds are easily mutable and fantastically easy to lose themselves in.

Hoshina Anniversary – HakkyouShisou 発狂しそう

Yoshinobu Hoshina is a DJ based in Tokyo, having released a series of recordings that date back more than a decade across letter soup imprints like TCY, GND, BNR, & ESP–as well as Impatience and patience sister labels. He’s a busy fella you have to tip your hat. HakkyouShisou 発狂しそう’s six techno cuts are omnibus pocket dimensions that brilliantly balance ambience with crushing beats and twinkling details. HakkyouShisou 発狂しそう is a deceptive C32, a bonafide mula of lo-fi dubby drums, orange milk-esque left-field midi magic, and Japanese house aesthetics–pockets of gaseous space and the time between climaxes feel of mini-orchestras or beat sequences. I’ve seen works from 99 Levels and Row Arai before that have played to this, but the addition of more “goo core” type sound effects give this noise a precocious and unique quality.

It’s a compressed, crisp tape as well, and the egging of the fidelity turning into sauna-like finesse in its best moments. Dakuten 濁点’s razor jagged edges slowly unfurl, providing a grungey characteristic to this. HakkyouShisou 発狂しそう’s pulsing broken-transmission melody brings out queasy jazz keys (themselves the center of Sugisaru Hito 過ぎ去る人) and frantic clap-patterns, before revealing a reverberated peak that echoes MJ Guider’s own effort for CTatsu nearly a decade prior. It spends it’s back half not building from the ground up, but digging deep into an underground tangle of wires. Dareka no Rettoukan wo Nomikomu 誰かの劣等感を飲み込む’s mechanic 240p quality pulse is a wildly versatile match under somber keys or illbient-esque hi-hats and a unnerved bass, as synthesizers give it a divine almost-transcedence that’s left in breadcrumbs. Nothing on the release ever quite feels like it’s suffocating each other and all loaded together it has consistency with massive repetition allowing for short stories to unfold.

Windy Boijen – In a Sense

1.17.23 by Matty McPherson

Ephem-Aural, the New York, NY based label recently passed 40 releases. Congraturaisins! I sent all of ’em chip n’ dale birthday cakes straight from the SFV; hopefully the chap inside has enough oxygen and hamdingers to last through that layover in Kansas City. But anyways, many folks would tell you getting to 42 is important because that’s what life is all about; although anyone in the business knows a tape label’s life starts at 40, the release number that indicates a commitment to the spirit of ferric. Of course, I wager 40 + 1 is the real sweet spot. And what a stellar lil’ fella to show up with, bringing Windy Boijen into the fold with In a Sense as no. 41 for the imprint.

Boijen’s name won’t show up on discogs nor is he a name that many households would know. He fancies himself as a sometimes blogger, running a Boogie Banjo Blog on the rare occasion, with an upload about once every 18 months on a misbegotten banjo player or sonic excavation. Although the chap has also had a steady stream of recordings that date back to 2008; including a 2021 series of “Just Intonation exercises” accomplished for an ASU online course offered by Jacob Adler—a nifty act . Needless to say though, the gentleman’s bread and butter focuses around “Spontaneous Improvised Sound Experiments,” much of which is captured and documented in precocious capacity on In a Sense. Genres like “experimental, metal, avant-garde, drone, & noise” are thrown out like it’s a pick-one candy bar bag at Halloween and one of ’em has a razor or something hiding. Except there is no razorblade; none of those genres are really ever achieved on the release. In fact, the label’s term “goofball psychedelia” serving a greater credit to Boijen’s soundscapes.

In a Sense has a freewheeling quality to its 10 cuts that allow it to channel between sunskipping almost-instrumental indie pop (Waiting), jittery digital-damaged free improv drumming and xylophone noisery (Makes Sense/Mask Chakra), amongst the occasional 75 Dollar Bill/Wilkes n’ Gendel sonic dirge (Xalam for Yari, most of side b). It’s a stable template that allows for the occasional banjo to dip in or a track like “Y’all” to harken to late-00s freak folk or Deerhunter blog ditties. Yet, when all three of these elements combine, like on Kids Odd or That Claw Fin Thing Together, the tape is operating at its fullest big brain capacity. A sudden revelatory bliss is unlocked in those two tracks; the kind that ignite a groove-laden yet everyday-ness quality to Boijen’s recordings. It warrants the “goofball psychedelia” tag! Especially when traversing the tape’s b-side, the two become a framework to exactly what makes the tape’s smattering of tracks work. Boijen is often able to ride a small drone and improvisational drum pattern into something that is engrossing, and genuinely zoned-out on its own accord.

Limited Edition Cassette from the Ephem-Aural Bandcamp is Now Available.

MIDI Janitor – Buk Order & Fumerolles – Nuit jaune

1.10.23 by Matty McPherson

About four and a half years ago, local Tabs Out legend Ryan Masteller took a mosey on down to Hotham Sounds, the Vancouver BC based label dedicated to Pacific Northwest “experimental” electronic transmissions in limited private press tape releases. Hotham Sounds is still continuing their own refinement and curation, creating dedicated batches and zoned out bliss of their own volition. Anyways, they decided four days into the 2023 to go ahead and plop down THREE tapes that seemed to just burst forth from the volcanic grounds. And good lord do these tapes pass inspection, even going as far as to break label law and sign from a providence outside BC & release an 84 minute set of synth JAMS

MIDI Janitor – Bulk Order

Jonathan Orr of Vancouver found a MIDI controller in an East Van dumpster, more at 11. Oh it’s 11 right now? Well he took said controller, patched in 90s sample packs and cheap beats and made a scrapping junkers’ delight of a tape release. Bulk Order purposely isn’t trying to hide its spend-thrift, economical nature in the amalgamation of not-quite bass-damaged beats and “casper the friendly ghost” type synth aberrations. Together, the two sounds from this approach make for a particular strain of electronic listening music. The kind that you likely have encountered in special interest vhs tapes and old gluttonous industrial arts films.

But seriously, Orr’s work as MIDI Janitor is homely and subliminally quixotic; even the cover is a brilliant evocation of private press industrial records but tuned to the current era’s fascination with synth magic. The dozen cuts on Bulk Order are small triumphs, private press “electro” nuggets that excel at melody and texture without ever completely forgoing stable repetition and a frame of reference. “Born From a Voice” bubbles and peaks with a giggly twitch and crack, before then taking its small crescendoes and bows out, moving back into the earth it came from. Whereas “Keep Still” indeed, distills these synths to their most lovingly rudderless and stilled. Even “Vapor King” swaggers on its budget, as “Athos A.M.” drones with that 5am red eye energy that makes a lot of this tape a blast. That they retain a strange familiarity (to artists I’m refusing to name bc you sorta will know IMMEDIATELY what he’s edging towards) while also offering a real genuine acknowledgement of this MIDI’s limits and STILL oozing with rudimentary flair make the tape an easy one to ponder and gush over.

Fumerolles – Nuit jaune

So forgive us if this tape comes late, perhaps over 4 years late even. Nuit jane has existed in digital format since 2018. Although, Hotham has taken a liking to the recording and provided a reissue of the brevity-laden EP. Fumerolles (aka librarian Frédérique Duval) crafted this during a hot spell (one of many that has plagued Montreal in the past 4+ years), working on utilitarian synthesizer music built from effect boxes and homemade modules. At six tracks all flirting with but never breaking the 4-minute mark, it is a sweet treat to see in the Bandcamp email pop up.

I did listen to this EP while on lunch away from helping patrons with library cards and shelving holds. It will always, without fail, move me to hear librarian music–not library music, librarian music. And I’m working on defining this genre tbh, because I don’t hear a lot of music from librarians often. While that does not mean that the copyright-free banger genre known as Library Music is shied away from (although Cyclique could easily have been slotted onto Mexican Summer’s Unusual Sounds), what I garnered a sense from Fumerolles was a deep capacity for harmony and layering that is deceptively simple; her music fits like a glove and becomes an instant sugar rush. The strings and trickles of Sismographe are bolstered by crashing waves of percussive tangs. Pulmo bubbles and fizzles like a UFO attempting to jettison into orbit, but always falling short. The buzzing synthesizer loop of Ptero takes a moment to reveal itself, hidden behind keyboard fantasies and other cresting percussive smatterings, but it feels like a thought line to a future. Un charme, the shortest cut of the EP, is especially thoughtful in how it throws itself from lazer haptics and ambient synth-lines into a whole buzzing cacophony that sucks you in.