I think we’re on a train east of the rural psychedelia. Or was it west of the plains? Maybe north of Amarillo? The image keeps slanting. The whole thing is just there, in the aftermath revealing itself.
Full Spectrum Records’ continues a hot streak of debuts from regional underground talent; small-scale stories that sink deep into an indescribable personal truth. Such is the case with Logan Heuer’s C45, “The Pattern”, that was released back in summer. Following in a tradition alongside other label alum like Nick Zanca, Hueuer returns himself to a series of old pre-Spring 2021 sketches and somewhat finished pieces. The kinds that demanded a new curation and vision in the aftermath of a move; a chance to reconnect with a younger version of himself.
I find these types of releases fascinating if for the fact that lost wisdom often finds itself peaking around the crevices of the sound design. Hueuer admits in the bandcamp PR that these were sounds “I was only able to create when I was younger, back in days that I do not remember.” The memory recreation is strong and the urge to consider these sounds in such a manner is second to none. Yet, the hypnotic quality that has long been gestating in these pieces is still readily transparent and only more vigorous as a full longform work.
It makes the Pattern something of an industrious undertaking for Heuer. The stainless steel sound of percussives that clatter into the strength of a locomotive, amongst cryptid machinery that emit deep bass and noise. Ominous almost-voices babble and no-fi static akin to ham radios rain down from outside a conscious state. Stoned out big city horns wail out from a megahertz well trawled. There’s THX noises and Lucy Liyou-style pitch shifted text-to-speech! Classic noise table shenanigans, even! Deep alien bleeps and bloops that the US Government has refused to classify! At the end of the day, it’s a 45 minute night bus journey deep into the mind.
What perhaps has made me gravitate towards the Pattern so much in the past couple of months is that it has a strong sense of its understanding regarding place; imagined and reframed, decaying but not rendered incoherent, and ALWAYS in motion. The kind of place that cannot exist anymore as much as the landscape around it stays the same; because it is always shifting ever so slightly. It’s the kind of energy that fosters videos of abandoned malls and the memories of a space; as well as those rare moments on an Amtrak one is left without a signal staring at the central coast. In both moments there’s a realization “I’ve been here before! Yet, the place doesn’t remember me.” Beyond its deep personal characteristics, The Pattern instinctively conveys that. And in the wreckage, it finds a tumultuous understanding and perhaps, necessary peace to it all.
Pro-dubbed, edition of 100 available from the Full Spectrum Bandcamp
It’s easy to say that there will never be another band like US Maple. The Chicago quartet, in a lot of ways, broke the mold of what noise rock could be, sitting somewhere between the sensibilities of a long running free improv group and a classic rock band. US Maple always sounded like they were on the verge of collapsing, barely held together by a few key moments of coherence that would surprise again and again, even after repeated listens. How someone else could pull off this kind of tightrope act seems nearly impossible.
But that hasn’t stopped the entire Denton, TX scene from trying.
In what seems like a never-ending slew of new collaborations with the best band names in the world (Gay Cum Daddies, Bukkakke Moms, Big Hole, Cherry Garcia and the Bong Bongs, Chris Angel Mind Freak, I Hate Basketball, The Bozo Big Shit Garbage Band, … I can go on), the musicians that comprise Denton’s scene constantly pull from the same source material that made US Maple what they were: no wave, postpunk, experimental music of all strands, and a light sprinkling of the cocky classic rock attitude that all of these genres supposedly mock. And while Denton’s scene stretches into a wide spectrum of sonic territory, groups like Sexual Jeremy are not only showing that musicians can still inhabit the ground that US Maple broke so many years ago but you can expand, iterate on, and reimagine that ground as well.
On “The Real Sexual Jeremy,” the band’s most accomplished release to date (not to mention my favorite album of the year), Sexual Jeremy draws directly from the playbook that made Long Hair in Three Stages so quintessentially US Maple but filters it through a modern lens. Long stretches of meandering guitar noodles and tight drum explosions sit alongside heavy, angular riffs in time signatures that only God can calculate and underneath deeply odd lyrics that are sometimes spat directly into your face and sometimes growled at you like a dog and sometimes recited in a tone that can only be compared to a teenager being forced to recite the declaration of independence in their least favorite class. The vocals never mimic the impression of an old man dying that Al Johnson perfected over five albums, but it sounds just as a weird.
To jump to another set of references, the album sounds like The Conformists (another band that pulls from the US Maple playbook) listened to a lot less Fugazi and a lot more Load Records bands from the early 2000s. Sexual Jeremy doesn’t have quite the same angular sensibility as The Conformists, but it still peaks through while a whole host of other influences get moved to the foreground. The coexistence of the hypnotic and glittery polyrhythms of “Bowls of Fruit,” the frenetic (and nearly Mars Volta-esque) prog sensibilities of “Chloe from the Strange,” the almost thrash anthem that is “Hell and Suck,” and the jagged riffs plus even more jagged vocals formula that defines opener “My First Rodeo” speaks to the diversity and complexity of these tracks. Especially because these stylistic jumps don’t just happen from song to song but from section to section, refusing to ever go in a direction the listener might expect (including, but not limited to, returning to riffs you heard so long ago you thought they were part of another track).
The pinnacle of the album, however, is “Came,” a seven-and-a-half-minute behemoth of a jam that begs you to try air drumming along with it just so it can trip you up and laugh in your face in front of your friends. The song begins with a barely audible yet hypnotically repetitive two-note guitar riff, slowly gaining in volume before the bass and drums announce themselves with a swift kick to the stomach in the form of an angular, polyrhythmic, and barely comprehensible post-punk sort of riff that ends with a full band turn around that sounds like they pulled it straight from the end of a Looney Tunes cartoon. Free noodling ensues and then the riff kicks back in, but after one repetition the guitars just… sort of… speed up? But everything else is the same? And then they slow down? And then just start doing whatever they want? And then everyone is back together on that Looney Tunes thing. Then everyone is going wild but the turnaround comes back and then more feedback and noodling and then the turn around one last time before a new, quieter guitar riff begins that is, again, in some time signature that demands a TI-86 be used while figuring it out. Over the top of this comes howled and delayed vocals that sound like they were straight up stolen from an ONO record. And then THAT stops and a NEW two note riff kicks in that is so goddamn heavy and then a one-note riff that I’m pretty sure is in 1/1 kicks in as the feedback moves to the background and then the foreground.
Then it all just stops on a dime. And as the cutsie 4/4 riff that opens “The Quick Trip” starts up, all you can do is ask what the hell just happened before forcing yourself to just move on.
Not to belabor the comparison, but mapping this track reveals exactly how Sexual Jeremy can so easily tie into US Maple’s whole vibe without simply recreating their exact sound (even though they do sound like them sometimes). Writing out what happens in the song from moment to moment makes the whole thing sound like an absolute jumbled mess but when you listen to it, it all becomes crystal clear. Because at the core of Sexual Jeremy’s music (and the music of their predecessors), there exists an internal logic that can be felt and experienced but can never be fully understood or known from an outsider’s perspective. Sure, you can follow along, but only the people making the music can really understand (really know) what’s happening. And while that makes for highly cerebral music, the fact that it hits so goddamn hard makes you forget that part of the band in the moment. In turn, the album demands an endless number of repeated listens to pull apart and put back together the brains and the guts that can’t actually ever be separated in a sound like this.
But eventually, if you’re like me, you’ll just give up on trying to “figure it out” and let the album pull you back into it’s weird, encompassing, and enthralling world. Again, and again, and again.
Jamie Levinson – Trouble in Mind Records Explorers Series Vol. 24
12.1.22 by Ryan Masteller
How long was I out for? It doesn’t feel like that long, but I guess a lot can happen in a year and a half away, which is how long it’s been since I last wrote about the TAPE SCENE. And it’s not like I was unconscious or in a coma or anything. I was just doing non–TAPE SCENE stuff, which, I suppose, is a much better use of my time anyway. In fact, I don’t even know why you’re paying attention to me right now, much less reading past this sentence.
Know what Trouble in Mind Records has been up to since the spring of 2021? Releasing TWENTY-SIX friggin’ experimental tapes under the Explorers Series banner, that’s what! The overlap is uncanny, but I have no idea why the label waited until I was gone to drop these bad boys. It’s like they didn’t want me noticing these awesome cassettes, even though “Explorers Series” is the EXACT kind thing to title a run like this and make me want to mainline the sound directly into my parietal lobe. That’s the hearing part of the brain, right? Who cares! JUST HOOK IT TO MY VEINS!
I’ve already forgiven Trouble in Mind, as well as Jamie Levinson, because Vol. 24, Jamie’s self-titled “solo debut” (get in on the ground floor, people), bubbles and reverberates an ever-expanding joyous repertoire, foaming to fill in the everyday emotional cracks and strengthen the perpetual vibe that keeps you putting one foot in front of the other. (Also because Trouble in Mind probably didn’t diss me on purpose; in fact, they likely weren’t even thinking of me.) Yeah, that’s right, Jamie milks that mana spring for all its worth, self-actualizing through restorative tonics and melodic oscillations.
On Jamie’s journey toward the inner reaches of the mind, the results meld with those of the host of other like-minded “explorers,” emptying into the great mesmeric void. I felt like I floated there, dreaming like a dreaming dreamer until I was awakened by my own sense of completed restoration. I felt the weight of my time doing other things leave me, freeing me to grab that true inner joy I’d misplaced, a joy that can only be triggered by synthesizers and electronic programming. Was my awakening an unnatural occurrence, a lie? Jamie, please! It was dead truth.
So in the end, yeah, maybe I missed a bunch of stuff, but it was worth it. Because now I get to come back and catch up on a bunch of amazing things, like Vol. 24 of Trouble in Mind’s Explorers Series! And the other twenty-three releases before it. And the two after it. What a time to be alive!
