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3.25.20 by Ryan Masteller

Existential crises – we all have them. They can manifest at any given time and affect us in a variety of ways. Sometimes they make us think that anything we try to do, any plan we make, will be rendered useless in due time, often quickly. At other times, they make us think that everything we’ve done has been for nothing. And at OTHER other times, they just make us feel completely irrelevant in a grand universal manner.

All these things are the same.

Secret Boyfriend dabbles in a little bit of the Gramscian, in that “the old is dying and the new cannot be born. … In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appears.” “Memory Care Unit Vol. 2” charts a course through this arrested progress, where tones beget tension the longer they’re allowed to hover in the air. Normally I’d call the whole family into the living room to gather round the hi-fi and enjoy the latest primordial synthesizer masterpiece as it drizzles in from the speakers of the hi-fi, but I think this one might just set everyone on edge a little bit, grind a few sets of teeth. That may be one of the symptoms, though: avoidance. Facing our fears and future head on is probably the healthiest thing we can do, because we can look to each other for help and guidance through the tough times. But fuck that shit – I’m sticking my head in the sand.

“Memory Care Unit Vol. 2” moves from crisis to full-on breakdown as the tape tracks from side A to B. At first the synthesizer follows you around, stalking you from behind and ramping up the creep factor as it overstays its welcome in your consciousness (“Memory Care Unit”-as-physical-creeper, not “Memory Care Unit”-as-musical-artifact – I don’t want THAT thing to stop). The drones get under your skin and in your head. But when the second side hits, we get into a nightmarish tape-manipulation game that begins with a stretched and screwed field recording that contains an unearthly scream. The “Forgotten Choir” reminds us that there’s still thick slabs of synth awaiting us, but as soon as it becomes the “Fossilized Choir” it glitches out again. From there it’s spooky horror soundtracks to the end. Horror soundtracks to our unholy existential crises.

That is until “20th Version” ends the tape like it’s the rapture or something. Well, a rapture straight into a supernova, anyway. We’ll all hold hands around the table and enter into oblivion together, and all the crises and cancerous symptoms will dissipate in a flash of fission. Sweet freedom!

Available from our weird friends at Hot Releases.

3.19.20 by Ryan Masteller

Yet another German Army project on Skrot Up, eh? It almost seems like the Bermuda-based imprint is a vanity label of sorts for GeArheads, featuring not only offshoots like Q///Q, Final Cop, and now Kris and Tavi but also German Army itself, who released their SELF-TITLED TAPE on Skrot Up back in 2013. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if it proved to be a secret GeAr headquarters, like a remote island where Bond villains set up shop. But of course German Army are the heroes here, so it’s a good island. Well, once German Army takes over the world, that is.

Peter Kris here joins Tara Tavi for some heavily treated guitar-and-voice-and-sometimes-not-voice meditations, the tracks drenched in reverb like they’re playing in an echo chamber. Think Dirty Beaches without the swagger, or James Hurley’s “Twin Peaks” tune with a little bit of self-awareness and depth. (Shut up I love “Just You” and I don’t care.) If I were going to slap a genre on it, I wouldn’t be able to choose between shoegaze and folk, because neither are right but neither are far off either. Maybe if, instead of the titular heroes in “Honey I Shrunk the Kids,” Mazzy Star got shrunk by the shrink ray and set up their gear inside a shoebox instead of spent their two hours together running from ants and bees we’d be closer. But without drums. 

Still, it’s hard not to think of Peter Kris wielding an ax with “This Machine Kills Fascists” emblazoned on it. That just seems right. Except this ax is plugged into an effects board. Ol’ Woody’d be so proud.

Hey, only 3 left from the original run of 29! Don’t miss out!

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3.11.20 by Ryan Masteller

Look, I know you can basically do anything with tape, but did you know you can record Eurorack synth patches to reel-to-reel? Me neither, but that’s why I do this, that’s why I’m here: to learn, to get better at my job, to make the Tabs Out family proud of me. I think we’ve got a real winner on our hands here, and I can’t wait to teach the podcast boys a little something they may not have known.

Manuka, aka Glasgow-based Rory Green, made these three meditative pieces all in one take. You gotta get yourself in some kind of groove to be able to hold that mood for the duration, and sure enough, Green’s basically in a synth trance for this whole thing. Instinctively manipulating the machine so that it emits waves that tiptoe the fine line between sound and light, Green messes with your senses in such a way that you’ll be seeing sound-activated color pods the whole time you’re listening. The color palette changes with the mood. And it’s always moody!

Bouts of synaesthesia aside (which I battle quite frequently; well, “give in to” rather than “battle”), “Tape Shaping” sounds nothing like its process or its parts, and that’s just fine. It gently hijacks your mind and veers it down hidden synthetic paths worn smooth by circuitry and electronics. It makes you feel like you’re riding “Tron” laser bikes, but if those bikes were going way slower and taking in all the computer scenery. Maybe you’re spending the afternoon with your sweetheart on a tandem “Tron” laser bike and heading for a picnic. Anything’s possible!

And anything’s probably in the hands of an expert. Hey, this is a tape about making a tape with tape we’re talking about here, an experimental synthesizer tape at that too, so this should be like catnip for all you weirdos out there, including the Tabs Out boys. I dare you to prove me wrong. 

Please don’t try to prove me wrong, I was just saying it.

These lovely tapes come courtesy of Philly’s own Dead Definition. 

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3.9.20 by Ryan Masteller

Am I allowed to reference a post on a website that’s dead at the moment? Like, even link to it? There’s not some sort of digital necrophilia involved or anything, I hope. I could probably go to jail for that. Regular necrophilia, not digital necrophilia. I’m going to assume digital necrophilia’s OK, actually.

So I wrote about Diamondstein’s “Reflecting on a Dying Man” over at Tiny Mix Tapes before it went belly-up (but maybe it’ll come back FINGERS CROSSED), and, yeah, it was a “heavy” lift, emotionally, as I mentioned there. That’s OK! Sometimes you need to burn yourself clean, get out the crud to get past it and on to better things. It was cathartic in that way. Depressingly cathartic.

Well, Doom Trip is back with a collection of remixes, with artists as diverse as the Album Leaf and How to Dress Well picking up where Diamondstein left off. And if you’re as excited as I am about the names you DO recognize, wait until you hear the tracks by the ones you DON’T! I’m talking Jas Shaw’s “2nd Floor Studio (13th Floor Mix),” a darkwave clanger slathered in synth that’s surprisingly propulsive. And Maral’s “Treachery of Language Remix” of “Rumors of Crime” brings the titular crime straight to the fore – but let’s not point fingers or anything, I’m not brave enough to be a whistleblower. Still, it’s as clanky and janky as a prison door slamming shut. Now THAT’S spooky!

And yeah, the Album Leaf and How to Dress Well do just fine too – but you KNEW that already. 

Diamondstein also drops a new tune on here, “Empty in a Time of Need,” a pulse that slowly builds into a frigid cloud wall of opacity shot through with lasers. The lasers invigorate the clouds and make them glow. It’s like Laser Floyd at a Sunn O))) séance. He also appends his own “End Credits Remix” to “Someday You’ll Have This Too,” a music-box-y reimaging of the “Tron”-ified original, delicate, subtle, dreamy. It’s the perfect way to end this new one, a fresh take on something that certainly was never dead to begin with, nor in need of reinvigoration. Still, “Reflecting on a Dying Man” and “American Electric” together make for a fully energized and unified whole, so check em both out (but “American Electric more because it’s a tape, and this is a site for TAPES).

Edition of 120 out NOW on Doom Trip. Ohhhhhh boy!

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3.3.20 by Ryan Masteller

What the heck IS “bunker jazz,” anyway? I honestly don’t know. The internet wants me to listen to something called the Bunker Jazz Band, but that isn’t it – I want to listen to Women of the Pore, the New Brunswick troublemakers responsible for things like “Don’t Let Them Bastards Grind You Down” and “Dump Babies.” For me to sit here and try to define the undefinable, the conceptually slippery, the culmination of random words slammed together for the heck of it would be futile. Just think about what a bunker is. Then barely apply jazz to it. Like German Army, maybe, but without the samples or the industrial clanging.

There’s some industrial clanging.

Furthermore, don’t be fooled by the title, because this isn’t Woody Guthrie or Bob Dylan or Creed and Fred Durst holed up with an acoustic guitar and a tape recorder. This is instead the basest of the base, the lowest of the low, the subterraneanest of the subterranean, music made on an earthen floor of some room cut into the living crust of the earth itself. A “bunker” perhaps? Sure, let’s get crazy with this. From here the Women ride plodding low-end rhythm, cutting it with blasts of synthesizer and brass and other such oddities and noise-ities that you couldn’t pin down even if you were the music teacher at my high school (who was pretty good). Content with their crapulence, Women of the Pore play music for crouchers, for crawlers, for stumblers who just can’t gain a foothold in this modern excuse for society. These listeners are the downtrodden, the forgotten, the tossed-aside – they need somebody to speak for them.

Wait – maybe this IS folk music, like ol’ Woody imagined all along. Machines killing fascists and whatnot.

Still, this mirror to the basement level is like a psionic punch to the gut as you wallow along with Women of the Pore. The specter of endless toil follows you throughout the tape, and the existential dread builds until it’s almost unbearable. But that’s what makes “Folk Music” such a riveting listen – it doubles down on the environment and mood and never breaks character. You’re left to your own devices in the middle of it, and I’m pretty sure you won’t get up to much except for trouble. Let “Folk Music” be your evil guide.

These grody pro-dubbed cassettes are limited to fifty copies from Orb Tapes.

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3.2.20 by Ryan Masteller

Fusion does not progress any further without Tristan Whitehill. I mean that universally: as a genre, as an act, and in general – literally, Tristan is at the bleeding edge of his discipline. As Euglossine, he continually pushes the boundaries of concept, synthesis, and composition, settling somewhere between a guitar and an electronic savant, which is, like, the goal of a lot of aspiring musicians. I myself floundered in the noise game feeding back a guitar through a practice amp before slumming it as an indie rock loser. I was like a monkey with a rock compared to Euglossine and his advanced technique. (Although as a monkey I WOULD have opposable digits on my feet and a prehensile tail … I’d like to see old Tristan try to peel a banana with his feet while hanging from a tree!)

Speaking of trees (in a roundabout way), “Psaronius” refers to the petrified stems of an extinct fern, its etymology “stemming” (get it?) from the Greek word meaning “precious stone,” because the petrified leaves were fashioned into ornaments worn by people. (Thanks Wikipedia and Keith Rankin.) You ready for some high concept? Euglossine examines the relationship between the patterns found in these leaves and in these ornaments, their natural constructs, and compares them with digital patterns found today, such as those in QR codes. Turns out our world organizes itself in similar ways, across time and discipline, regardless of whether the pattern is natural or synthetic. That’s some neat stuff!

Tristan therefore has composed “Psaronius” to reflect the relationships between the natural and synthetic, the similarities inherent in basic structural forms, using the Psaronius concept as a jumping-off point. Sounding at once both digital and acoustic, “Psaronius” blurs the line between programming and performing, pitting one against the other while combining them, just to see if you notice. Indeed, Tristan has utilized “wooden flutes, log drums, 5 string bass, sequenced fm synthesis, iOS apps, and a vintage guitar synthesizer” to realize his experiments, and the result is nothing less than the most futuristic fusion imaginable. Imagine being placed in the middle of a fully functioning terrarium superintended by green robots whose sole purpose is to maximize sustainable technology to cultivate agriculture that can be used by everyone, everywhere – waste not, want not, forever! It’s like a World’s Fair exhibit come to life, for real, with “Psaronius” as its perfect soundtrack. 

I’d eat those beans!

Check out “Nightflowers at the Beach of Oblivion,” then head on over to Orange Milk and grab a copy of “Psaronius.” Like, why wouldn’t you?

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