When trading favorites with Mr. Foxy Digitalis back in May, Brad Rose confessed that L’âge de l’absolutisme was one of the most awe-inspiring releases of 2021 to date. And indeed, when the tape came around, it HIT on the soundsystem and turned me and a pal into literal goo; a fantastical post-rock hybrid and a mongo act of self-realization for MMMD* (pronounced Muhammed). The Athens, Greece based duo of Illos (Dimitris Kariofilis) and Nikos Veliotis have spent 12 years on Illos’ Antifrost label with over a dozen albums. In that time, they’ve decided to make a mad investment in the low end. Beyond the theoreticals and theory, just straight into the veins with the LE oscillators (Look at that back j-card–how you goin’ big on big?). For 2021’s dispatch, Alem joins the duo, to perform a series of baroque stone cold classics that he does with finesse and stateliness you’d expect from your grandfather’s mutant Phillips C60s. To great effect, MMMD brought the choir, the cello and those oscillators to create a “gigantesque basso continuo” that operates as a second skin running under Alem. Baroque Drone wasn’t on my tape 2021 bingo card, but its appearance is worthy of the bubbly–or at least a mad hangover cure. Even as a tidy C30, the three pieces are unnerving in their own cunning and fascinating morose elements to lie into and suck out the impurities. A sublime cleanse.
99Letters has been working in and around (what I believe to be) the Kansai underground scene for over a dozen years, racking up releases with THRHNDRDSVNTNN and Seagrave back in the mid-2010s, in between the occasional DJ mix or other one-off. However, 99Letters has been quiet for a bit since 2018, only recently kicking things back into focus with two releases this year, the self-released Shirankedo and the Cudighi Records distributed Ibuki. Both releases have a bit of a reflective melancholy bubbling through them. 99Letters’ own take on these projects has been influenced by COVID and the Kansai scene’s own slow decline as a result of COVID. It’s changed the approach to tracks, with 99Letters using Ibuki as a springboard to explore the “familiar parts of Japan to show the importance of living powerfully as a work”, crafting songs from traditional Japanese instruments and even using the tape cover as an opportunity to highlight Shozo Michikawa’s ceramic arts.
The resulting set of tunes are patient, subterranean house bops. It’s perfect music for lingering liminal moments as much as rain stricken urban plant life gazing, especially ”Saikai Zyoushiki / 再会常識” wails, with its crisp level of digital ambience (a feature found throughout the 11 tracks) saturating the frame. “Baniku Oishi / 馬肉美味” reminded me of hard hat zones with its 4/4 beat, while a stringed instrument takes the center of the track, imparting a longing and lurching character to the clatter. Of course, you can keep your head to the ground and strut those shoulders in the club if you want, which a track like “Ponzu / 酢” practically encourages. On that track, the percussive tones of those traditional instruments are still mechanistic, yet airy and dynamic enough to bring its loop to the forefront.
99Letters’ approach could be said to be rooted in deep listening practices, a unique manner of enacting the process. Although, I feel more assured noting the way these tracks pull out flow states from these instruments. Certified Downtemp Bop “Mousou Samurai / 妄想侍” exemplifies that. It slinks with its hi-hats that become the track’s guiding base, with the sudden unexpected appearance of a singular, repeated sample giving it a bit of gusto that ties the whole thing together; there’s a dance move to be made out of that one. That feeling is also warranted towards “Tamakorogashi / 玉転がし” which especially amps up the spacious qualities and surprise drops a melodic set of key chords–the bubbly kind that practically signify when you’ve opened a secret chest–that crescendo and crest over and over again. It’s a tantalizing rhythm, nestled deep in an album that channels a soft, radiating power.
Limited Pro Dubbed Cassette Tape Available from Cudighi Records
It’s been a moment since Tabs Out HQ checked in with Denver, CO-based Aubjects’ and their “short-run & home-made experimental recordings & ephemera.” Eagled-eared podcast listeners, as well as beagle-eyed readers may recall D. Petri and his penance for home-dubbing, upcycled tapes, with various trinkets and goodies ranging from “good boy rocks” to “xerox art booklets” (he’s also recently reengaged the Petriblog outpost, with boodles of cassette, tape label, and brainy people spotlights dating back to 2012) . Personally, I adore these kinds of “craft tapes” and the goodies when they manifest out of the giant tape review box I stick my hand in when I so dare to–there’s an alluring quality I have to sit and chew on; a past I’m just not privy to but am the product of. Also, it’s way more preferred to throwing the ferric oxide into the Tabs Out West Coast HQ furnace (a laborious task that does not reveal any prophecies or omens or even free Bandcamp codes; honestly it’s really just kinda wasteful).
Anyways, I digress. D. Petri’s Directives project is at the heart and soul of Aubjects and Protenomaly furthers what Directives entails beyond where 2017’s Usphutorontus Deius Nissesubla last left off. For starters, Petri has become enraptured with “novel anomalies,” which means sudden shifts in fidelity mixtures from track to track, hard-to-pin-down equipment transistors, amongst other manipulations. Over the course of side A, Petri (& Hillary Ulman) take these in stride, culminating in results that sound like those moments of sudden-whiplash shock Longmont Potion Castle upends a casual phone conversation with. The tape fizzles and straddles, prancing on a vision until it can’t be held and then moves up to another realm.
There is a method to this madness, or at least the track titles across both sides comprise one of a sort of roundabout sense. As a listener moves through the sheer morse-codian noise of “Lower Digestive Register”, the follow track “Upper Digestive Register” scales the noise into a droney yet vicious melody. It’s all short-lived though, when “Beyond Registration” pushes the noise to a textured character, allowing drums and bells, alongside bass, and even keys begin to find a sense of real harmony that “Above Beyond Registration” almost turns into a deconstructed technoise ditty. By this point though, Directives hits a transcendent plane with “Across Many Gulfs”, utilizing a harmonic sound (not too far from a guitar) that sounds like sine waves surfing and thrashing.
Side B makes up for less tracks with greater time dedicated to these zones, which ends up culminating in full-fleshed longforms. “Society Toothpick Diorama” could be a fancy way of relating the ways in which a dentist manages a drill, with noise pulses and outbursts moving in cyclical, focused patterns that recall such the labors of a root canal with decadent results. “Tangled Narratives” and “Slumping Into Progress” meanwhile materialize haywire, schizophrenic vestiges into the vaguest sensation of “noise pop”, but it’s not until Petri hits “Towards Fertile Grounds” that everything comes into focus–literally it’s a personal field recording; one that’s beyond a momentary relapse and more a full fledged place of solitude. Petri crafted most of these sounds over a span dating back five years ago, and coming down to end the tape with the crystal sounds of cicadas and other various ephemera offers a passage out of the Protenomaly, as much as a reflection to this era of novel anomalies. To new frontiers.
Home-dubbed-in-real-time C60 in upcycled norelco cases w/ hand-cut / stamped / glued / numbered j card & insert utilizing personally significant 8-50 year-old upcycled papers + 16p b/w art booklet. Hand-numbered w/ elements hand stamped / glued & different square of antique construction paper w/ crayon markings by humans who were pre or grade school children at the time the markings were made (between 1975-1985; mine came with the letter b etched on it)! 66 copies produced in total.
