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Remote Choir – Behemoth Conundrum / Sacred Cow
7.9.18 by Ryan Masteller

Jimmy Crouse has a vision. It’s similar to the one my friend and bandmate Paul had back in college when we were ripping off the Pixies and using our rock and roll lifestyle to, ahem, appeal to potential mates – you know, like peacocks. (Well, I was anyway. Regardless, none of us was good at it.) See, Paul wanted to ditch the standard four-piece lineup and bring in a bunch of likeminded souls to hum and chant, likely with minimal accompaniment (Paul was good at stripping a song down), potentially circling around a stage, likely holding candles. Come to think of it, Paul may have just wanted to start a cult.

In any event, I was totally against it – no way we were picking up chicks with a CHOIR. But Jimmy Crouse somehow, somewhy, obtained the key that unlocks the mystery of the unified vocal, the stretched harmony of chords emanating from the human mouth, and put it to use – not sure if it’s for good or evil, but let’s let you guys decide as you sift through it. Regardless, Crouse has compiled his Remote Choir, which is “made up of people from different places and times, some who have never met, and maybe never will.” That’s the gist, the likeminded camaraderie of a coterie of friends and strangers lending their voices to these original hymns, combining to form a liturgical Voltron heaven-bent on piercing the veil between the inner and outer, “the space that separates us.” These gothic paeans call to mind, for me anyway, the aching mantras of DAMA/LIBRA’s “Claw,” an intense song cycle and one of the favorite things I’ve written about in my now illustrious writing portfolio. (Google it, it might show up.) Remote Choir does it pretty well too – it’s lovely stuff.

But don’t take my word for it – or Paul’s (god, was he ever right!). Head on over to Specific Recordings or the Remote Choir page and grab one of these tapes, which contains both the “Behemoth Conundrum” and “Sacred Cow” EPs.

Toni Dimitrov + Jared Sagar / Derek Piotr – split
7.4.18 by Ryan Masteller

Jakarta’s Tandem Tapes has been a repository of dream collaborations for a while now, and you should be all caught up on their catalog, which now spans a whopping 41 releases. These cassettes, in measly editions of 25, are highly sought after among the tapehead community, holy grails of one-off experimental excursions from some of the most interesting practitioners of sonic mayhem. Just keep an eye on that postage from Indonesia, am I right? High five!

Toni Dimitrov and Jared Sagar’s side filters field recordings through digital processing until they come out the other side so warped and reconstituted that all context is erased. Even birdsong becomes ominous in their hands! “Palabra,” which is Spanish for “word,” does not contain a single uttered syllable, instead leaving it up to me to impose text and meaning upon it. Which I am not interested in doing here! Mainly because the lack of language is actually doing all the speaking for the duo. That and the ominous birds. Among other things. Still, “Palabra” takes seventeen whole minutes to unleash its inner beauty to us, which is perfect because I only have seventeen more minutes before my soufflé is done.

Speaking of seventeen whole minutes, Derek Piotr’s “Live at Crunch House 2018” also unfolds over the exact same amount of time. Gone are the Eastern melodies and glitchy vocal contortions saved for Piotr’s proper album releases, and instead we get the experimental scribbles of an artist stretching out a little bit beyond the comfort zone. Although not sprawling drone in the slightest, “Live at Crunch House” has more in common with “Drono” (2016), a hard left turn in Piotr’s discography that too takes its time to get where it’s going. But where “Drono” stayed true to its titular allusion, “Crunch House” is all over the place, everywhere at once, not staying still, cycling through sounds and territories with abandon. It’s a lot of fun, never a dull moment.

And now my soufflé is ruined.

There’s only a few of these left, so grab one while you can from Tandem Tapes!

Peter Kris – Error Into the Sun
7.3.18 by Ryan Masteller

It is happening again. This was the first time, the initial double cassette release Peter Kris (of sonic patriots German Army) snuck into the world via Never Anything Records, and I missed out on it for some reason. Was I sleeping? Was I on vacation? Was I buried up to my neck in a desert in the Old West in some sort of slow-death nightmare? It could have been anything – point is, no matter how hard I try, I can’t will a copy of “Labrador” into existence. Even scouring fuzzy images of Tabs Out headquarters that the podcast boys post to Twitter turns up nothing, so I can’t even beg Dave to send me Mike’s copy while he’s out of the house. I’ll just have to settle for “Error Into the Sun” then.

Whoa, whoa, hold on – let’s get this out of the way. I’m not “settling” for anything. You certainly don’t “settle” for double cassettes with this much care and preparation put into them. This, readers, is the crown jewel of a crown jewel batch from NA, and I say that with no intention really of elevating one of the four releases in this batch over another – this one’s just the biggest. You go on over to one of those Bandcamp links in this here internet story and you buy those tapes from Event Cloak, Nils Quak, and Micromelancolié. That’s just your duty as a music fan, a Tabs Out listener, and one of my closest friends.

A deep dive into “Error Into the Sun” yields an intensely immersive experience, but do we not expect that from Peter Kris now? (This one just lasts twice as long as his average output.) His ability to sculpt worlds with his treated guitar is utterly second to none, whether it’s the lonesome reverbed strum of short intro “Adopted” or the guttural doom of “Collecting Circle.” Even album centerpiece “Michael Palin” (shoutout ftw!) shapeshifts over its fourteen minutes from murky drone to angelic shimmer to tense rumble to crisp outro, showcasing under one title the array of emotive playing Kris is capable of, a supreme power derived from extensive practice, not from farcical aquatic ceremony.

(I had to shoehorn in a “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” Palin reference somehow, right?)

This double cassette is in an edition of 50 from Never Anything Records – it is NINE DOLLARS folks, why don’t you have this in your collection already? Bargain.

Andrew Quitter and Nick Hoffman – Apotheosis Putrefactum
6.28.18 by Ryan Masteller

Andrew Quitter and Nick Hoffman have populated more scenes with more music than is probably healthy, and speaking of health, this tape on Weird Ear doesn’t give the sense that the boys are interested in anyone’s well-being anyway. This is their second collaboration, by the way, the first being “Nu Grotesque” (2013), and I sense a pattern in influence: “Grotesque”? “Putrefactum”? Eh? OK, I had to look up “Putrefactum” just to make sure I wasn’t missing something, and sure enough, it means what you think it does: “rotted, putrefied.” That’s just grotesque!

So what sort of black bile is churning around the bellies of these two lads these days? If the sound emanating from this tape is any indication, it’s actual black bile! Yes, “Apotheosis Putrefactum” is a study in disorienting queasiness, the kind that ratchets up tension in good horror flicks. Quitter’s “synthesis” is of the analog variety, while Hoffman prefers digital, but combined the two will have you sitting down, clutching your stomach, and mumbling “I don’t feel so good” before internal rainbows burst forth from your mouth “Exorcist”-style and continue until you too have become a victim of these two “artists’” whims.

Artists of the REVOLTING, that is!

So I hope you’re in the mood for some diabolical nausea-inducing sound art, because that’s just what this tape provides, four tracks of extended wickedness and dread doled out at tortuously slow pace. Let this evil sonic goo coat your mind and body – you won’t even pray for release, you’ll be too far gone already. I think that sounds like a winner of a way to spend this summer afternoon!

Edition of 50 still available from Weird Ear. Act now!

Introducing American Damage
6.27.18 by Ryan Masteller

American damage – as if we haven’t done enough already! To ourselves, to the world … it really is sort of a cottage industry at this point. Speaking of cottage industries, tape labels these days, am I right? They just seem to be popping up all over the place, with their ideas and their innovation. Free from the constraints of business decisions and marketing departments. Free … free indeed. We enjoy saying that freedom is an American tradition, an inherent ingredient baked into our DNA. Which brings me to this tape label that I’m about to talk about, a tape label so free and so American that they called themselves American Damage. American Damage is from Chicago, a city in our great country. It’s run by a guy named Jordan Reyes. They currently have five releases. I’m about to talk about three of them.

 

AUTUMN CASEY – THIS IS NO DREAM
The American Damage site is emblazoned with the slogan “The Church of American Damage,” suggesting an idea of religion and the American dream curdling within the hearts and minds of a restless and festering populace. Autumn Casey traps that curdling on her debut solo tape and hits back with “This Is No Dream,” a thirty-minute piece weaving sparse piano and field recordings into a tapestry of twenty-first century tragedy. The dull ache that’s introduced becomes a seasick fever dream the further Casey delves into her (and our) psyche, the melodies invert and fracture and are joined by other instruments and sources. In the end we’re left with the aftermath, the residue, of a horror carnival rendered tame by desensitization and real-world violence. Just the ruins of a run-down roadside attraction devoid of interested patrons. We’re actually living this, it only FEELS like a dream because it’s so surreal.

 

JORDAN REYES – ISN’T THAT FUN
Jordan Reyes founded American Damage on the premise that America is junk and that it’s no longer a nice place to live. OK, you got me – I’m just kidding! Far be it from me to put words in anyone’s mouth, especially about their artistic endeavors. (Plus, I do still like living in America quite a bit, thanks very much. People seem to still be nice here for the most part.) But it’s easy to read between the lines and draw some conclusions, especially when, and these ARE Jordan’s words, the subject of your cassette release revolves around “family, religion, serendipity, discipline, and figuring out how to make yourself pretty while not being too self-destructive.” I don’t know about you, but I can superimpose those ideas over the America I know and see a pretty clear alignment. Yes, we’re struggling with identity (among other things). And Reyes takes what could turn into a heavy-handed approach and settles with it, lives with it at a remove and lets it percolate within himself. With an acoustic guitar and his voice, Reyes explores these ideas – but it’s a red herring, as only the first two of the six tracks follow this pattern. He covers NIN’s “Hurt” with just himself and a piano. Field recordings become a bigger element as he goes, in fact they’re the only thing in “Samples” (just 26 seconds of dialogue) and “Clair De Lune,” the latter a recording of someone playing the classic Debussy piece. Maybe he becomes more free, more unencumbered, as he loses the words and lets the music and the artistry speak for him. That works for me – but again, I’m not putting words in anyone’s mouth!

 

SKYLER ROWE – BEAT WORK: LANGUAGE OF BATTERY
“[M]elodic drone elements as well as … inspired percussive expertise.” That’s the Skyler Rowe way, and his debut solo recording (he’s been involved in the following projects as well: Rash, Mute Duo, Strange Clouds, Nubiles) combines these components into a weird and wistful whole, sometimes unsettling, always interesting. The “Battery” of percussive instruments referred to in the title reveal a strange “Language” upon delving into them, a language that gradually becomes decoded the deeper you listen. The melodies seep into your waking mind, draped over the rhythms, a complex web of interplay. The “alchemy” hinted at on the tape’s j-card fully completes its molecular dance by the end of the seven tracks, and chaos becomes solid gold. How’s THAT result for the toil and trouble of the scientific tinkerer? Solid bloody gold.

 

American Damage’s black & white releases are available in editions of 100 through their Bandcamp.

Thomas Bey William Bailey – La Production Interdite
6.26.18 by Ryan Masteller

Doppelgängers: we all have them. Whether they’re psychic phenomena, replicated clones, products of out-of-body experiences, demon-possessed tulpas, or simply alternate-universe versions of ourselves that have stumbled into our world somehow, there’s sure to exist another version of us that, chances are, we’ll stumble upon sometime during our lives. We just have to be ready for it, that’s all.

Thomas Bey William Bailey has confronted the idea of the doppelgänger head on with “La Production Interdite” (forbidden production), and he has presented both the original version (“Instrumental Mix”) and its – wait for it – doppelgänger, “Vocal Mix.” This experiment is exactly what it sounds like. Each thirty-minute piece unfolds with synthesizers rending the boundaries between universes, allowing for extraphysical events such as life-form passage between universes. Now, if I know anything about multiverse theory and the Higgs boson (and I don’t), that’s probably not possible. But what if!

I’d probably be able to give you more information about the theory behind “La Production Interdite,” and indeed Bailey has provided a seven-page pdf with the download (there’s only a fraction of that text on the j-card), but who’s gonna read red text on a black background on a computer screen? My eyes were bugging out of my skull at the conclusion of the first paragraph. Regardless, after side A’s mystic journey through quantum entanglement, side B’s not-quite-mirror version includes Bailey reciting passages of “autoscopic phenomena” (doppelgänger stuff), pretty much solidifying “La Production Interdite” as the “Twilight Zone” or “X-Files” or “Fringe” or “Twin Peaks” equivalent of cosmic synth drones. And that’s the perfect thing for you and your double to zone out to, possibly on the couch while zonked out on whatever sedative the government agents dosed you both with.

Available in an edition of fifty from Elevator Bath – that’s enough for one tape each per twenty-five doppelgänger pairs!

Nils Quak – Warmer Asphalt
6.21.18 by Ryan Masteller

German knob-twiddler Nils Quak is just like the rest of us if you squint hard enough. Sure, even though he’s probably one of those people whose head is perpetually buried in a bird’s nest of synthesizer patch cords and whose eyes are glazed over from perusing thousands of sample files and whose shoulders are perpetually slumped under the weight of the backpack full of contact microphones doesn’t mean he doesn’t enjoy fresh air or non-microwaved food or the sweet rush of human attention. It just means he records and releases music on cassette tape, that’s all.

And boy howdy, has he ever added to his (impressive) discography with “Warmer Asphalt,” his debut on Never Anything Records but release number 21 if you’re looking at his Bandcamp page. (Look at it!) True to form, “Warmer Asphalt” is a sometimes pensive, often meditative, cautiously curious exploration of sound, with patterns and motifs nibbling around the edges of rhythm like fish. And nothing called “Warmer Asphalt” wouldn’t NOT sound like molten pitch being slathered all over a worn-out roadway on a hot summer’s day – just imagine all that material liquefying, spreading, and cooling, hardening into material strong enough for us to drive our automobiles upon. Quak fills our ears with the melodic imaginings of such matter, the foundation and the life that travels upon it. We are inextricable from the things we create.

You can get “Warmer Asphalt” from the Never Anything Bandcamp page (edition of 50 – hurry!), and you can keep an eye out for other reviews of tapes in this lovely batch around town… “town” being the internet, in case you thought I lived close by or something.

Caloia / Charuest / Fousek – Residual Time
1.18.18 by Ryan Masteller

It’s not easy to know if you’re going to click with somebody. There you are, plopped in a room with two other total strangers, and you’re expected to quickly acclimate yourself to their personalities and ease into melodious conversation? It can be quite a daunting proposition. I mean, go back and listen to Tabs Out 001 – those wallflowers barely talk to each other! Luckily, I’ve been #blessed with a winning personality, humility to boot, and I can keep a collaborative conversation going for a long dang time.

It’s hard to know who knew whom at the very moment double bassist Nicolas Caloia, saxophonist Yves Charuest, and electronic experimenter Karl Fousek first entered a room together with the intention of making music, and there’s certainly no easy way to find out (save actually asking someone, but where’s the fun in that?), but we should mark that theoretical moment on our mental calendars and celebrate it once a year. For it has birthed us “Residual Time,” a 24-minute live improvisation that we can return to and parse and simply enjoy in the moments beyond that evening on July 5, 2016, at Le Cagibi in Montréal, which would be frozen in unreachable time otherwise if someone hadn’t had the wherewithal to record the performance. Kids, take it from me: someone’s always recording you.

The players flit around each other as “Residual Time” unfolds, each moving in and out of the spotlight with confidence and trusting in the others’ accompaniment. Slowly the piece moves through its iterations, with Caloia, Charuest, and Fousek exploring the sonic foundation of the experiment and building on top of it a mazelike architecture with hidden passages and side quests. If this was the trio’s first meeting (and in the end, I highly doubt that!), then we could point to their mutual curiosity as the binding element that keeps the musical conversation progressing. These three are certainly curious scamps!

“Residual Time” is available from the Warsaw, Poland, label Mondoj, released along with this gem of a gem by GDFX. Get ’em while supplies last!