Hey, are you even allowed to do this? I’m not sure if there isn’t a squad car on the way to my house right now just because I’m listening to Brigitte Bardon’t’s “Radio Songs,” and it’s not because the real Brigitte Bardot suddenly awoke from a nap in St. Tropez and sicc’d the fuzz on me. Although that would be quite interesting, and the chase even may take on some sort of international espionage or action film overtones where I’m the debonair rogue in possession of illicit goods on the run from multiple factions. I mean, beyond what’s going on in my normal everyday life, of course. Gotta dodge them international spies and whatnot!
No, what I’m talking about here is the deliberate manipulation of songs on the radio. Brigitte Bardon’t – which I’m now under the impression is a pseudonym – flitted about to a bunch of different cities (in the United States, Canada, Italy, … Canada) and recorded the radio, manipulating the recordings into this glob of a mixtape where static and tunes and collide like they’re in a gladiator arena and fighting to the death. Static always wins by the way – there’s some sort of scientific property that governs sound and its eventual decay. I wanna say entropy? Let’s go with that.
“Radio Songs” is a fascinating collage that documents specific moments in time, and regardless of whether or not you’re actually familiar with any of the broadcasts – there’s a lot of banter and processing into incomprehensibility, and I’m honestly not hip to a lot of these tunes – the result still feels like its own weird thing. That’s the magic of Brigitte Bardon’t. That’s why I’m tossing this tape on the passenger seat of my Aston Martin and pulling on my driving gloves and getting ready to peel the heck out from the parking lot of this remote hotel as sirens sound in the distance. It’s because I believe in it, its realness, its standalone identity.
Do what I tell you. This exists in an edition of 100 from Already Dead. Check it out, man.
It’s been a long time since I’ve played “Final Fantasy VII,” but I’ll never forget the endless hunt for materia and the boundless joy of figuring out how to properly equip it to deal damage to monsters prone to the opposite effect or to absorb damage from monsters attacking me with the same effect. I was really good at “Final Fantasy VII,” but so was anyone, probably, who had their trusty strategy guide on hand. I found all the good stuff, in order, and I was able to prepare myself properly for Sephiroth and his infernal accomplices. Although Emerald Weapon always gave me trouble. I don’t think I ever beat Emerald Weapon.
SqrtSigil is like a mana spring you stumble across in some remote place early enough in the game when you can’t just fly your ship or whatever to restorative locations. Maciek Jaciuk, one of the founders of the Plaża Zachodnia label, weaves field recordings into his bubbling ambient textures, emerging with melodic textures that wouldn’t be out of place at some sort of remote monastery hospital, where benevolent monks and other clergy administer healing balms after you’ve faced some sort of tragic fantasy trial and come out with your life. Hey, sort of like a mana spring in “Final Fantasy,” or Lothlórien.
“Materia,” then, is health magic equipped to your traveling armor, where at every step a micro amount of health or strength returns (and there are in fact items you can equip in the games that can help you do just that). The tiny fragments of sound are woven together and progress through their iterations until a full picture emerges, like when you get real close to an impressionistic painting, where the paint is all muddled and weird and you can’t make anything out, and slowly back up until the painting itself becomes clear. I swear to god those Monets look bizarre when your nose is touching them, but you won’t be able to dwell on it too long before museum security ushers you back out into the rainy alley you snuck in through.
Where was I? Oh right – “Materia” is a perfect soundtrack for those miniature moments in games like “Final Fantasy” when you find yourself in a secret, safe place. Edition of 25 from Sweden’s Purlieu Recordings (only 9 left!).
“If you’re not familiar with outsider Bulgarian electronic label Amek Collective, rectify that immediately! (And yes, I realize how pompous that sounds.)”
This is what I added to my post on Present Listening, the Facebo… internet social media website group that fosters conversation about what the heckity heck you’re listening to RIGHT NOW. I was listening to Valance Drakes, “An Angel in Alliance with Falsehood,” which I had received in the mail one day earlier. When I get excited about something, I don’t wait long to dig into it. I was not disappointed in the slightest.
I also realize that the alleged pomposity of that initial statement comes off as genuine and respectful within the Tabs Out community. I honestly assume that the discerning audience here possesses a bit of familiarity with most of the stuff I write about, so I lock in to that wavelength instead of serving as a guidepost to suggestion. In fact, I expect you to be more “in the know” than I’ll ever be.
So you should all have your copies of “An Angel in Alliance with Falsehood,” and as such we can all press play together and listen to it as a group. The first thing we should all realize is that this is a Serious Endeavor, with caps. Before the first sound squirts from the speaker we’re privy to treatises as track titles, philosophical musings that will only serve to underpin the sonics that ensue. “Roses Are Not Armour.” “Expression of the Soul’s Desire to Escape.” “Looking at Heaven Puzzled and Defeated.” And there are seven more where that came from! It’s like Valance Drakes spent an entire four-year college experience listening to post-rock and majoring in creative writing. There’s probably a literal degree in that somewhere. (It’s either Harvard or Trump University, two great learning institutions on the cutting edge of literature.)
But the work here fully underscores the literary weightiness infusing these tracks. Valance Drakes peddles a darkish ambient, a minor-key synth world where a hardscrabble existence perpetuates itself in the shadows, poking its head out into the daylight only periodically before re-submerging itself in its desperate business. Scuttling glitches punctuate “An Angel,” which juxtapose themselves with the more tranquil ambience in what seems to be the central theme of flawlessness or characteristics above reproach being lowered or debased – entropy in action. As usual, it takes an enlightened gearhead to weave together a wordless narrative of perpetual decay before we even take notice that we’re headed down an irreversible path with our corroding humanity, passengers in the proverbial handbasket on its way to hell. Great tunes piping over the system though!
Rectify, rectify, rectify your unfamiliarity with Amek that I know doesn’t even exist because you’re so with it! “An Angel” limited to 111 copies. Divisor of the beast!
Now THIS is a concept. Jen Kutler’s on the cutting edge of electronic experimentalism in a way that intersects sexuality and humanity in the center of a surprising Venn diagram that, quite frankly, is interesting and brave and riveting to listen to. If you’re not familiar with Kutler’s work, she has modified a vibrator (yes, that classic self-gratifier) so that it outputs data into a synthesizer and processes it into sound, all while the device is within the performer’s body.
As you might expect, the electric tremors lend themselves well to a noise/drone idiom, and the synthesis of sound and experience informs the listener’s approach to it. “The Ways We Wait” pulses with energy, suggesting that the waiting, in itself, might in fact be the EASIEST part, depending on what you’re doing while you’re waiting for … whatever it is you’re waiting for. So yeah, galaxies bloom behind closed eyelids as recording gear captures every moment, and every single pulse is translated into study-able sonics.
Which is where the academic in me (and anyone) comes in: how does “The Ways We Wait” interact with a society increasingly aware of and focused on issues of gender and sexuality (among other things), and how can it inform the conversations that constantly swirl around these issues? As an artist, Kutler is at the vanguard of this debate, subverting the very notion of what constitutes “appropriateness” (in general) and how that and art itself relates to culture at any snapshot in time: Where do norms and mores overlap with confrontational tactics, if they do at all? What is the root of the divide? How does one viewpoint inform/clash with the other? Is the vast majority of people just being waaay too sensitive about the whole thing? Or is that the point, to poke and prod those exposed nerves until something happens?
No matter what your thoughts, this is still a great noise/drone tape from an important voice in the genre. Edition of 100 from Flag Day Recordings.*
*This exercise was ripe for parody. Honestly, if you’re reading this site, you’re coming here to laugh a little bit along with the rest of us, hoping for some levity to cut through the absurdity of daily life. But humor can be dangerous, and so I thought deeply about how to approach this. Why, I ask myself, do I immediately gravitate toward making light of something that’s attempting to instigate a necessary dialogue, especially at a time when such dialogue could actually lead toward a type of reconciliation? I mean, I love to laugh, but I’m sort of embarrassed by my first inclination here, which was to be silly and toss off a bunch of jokes. In wrestling with my own sense of humor in what I hope is a positive way, I hope to enable the discussions that Jen Kutler is suggesting that we have. Starts with me (the self). (I’m also not leading with this. This is not the reason you’re here.)
This solid mass of shifting noise and effect-drenched drone is like a biohazard of gastrointestinal upheaval. It’s uncomfortable, it’s loud, and it’s gurgly, and I’m sure if it had a color upon pouring out of your speakers, it would be brown. That or the same nasty toxic green as the tape shell. Actually, that’s an excellent shade of toxic green. Almost tilts into the “ecto” spectrum.
Manure Movers of America are doing our dirty work for us. Because if somebody’s gotta do it, why can’t it be somebody other than me? That’s where the Manure Movers come in. They’re so happy to shovel us out of our own shit, they practically revel in the act. “Cassette Tape # 2” is therefore something of a field recording, in that we’re being graced with the result of that labor, the psychic representation of wandering through a swamp of someone else’s sewage. It’s also not a field recording at all, but the actual source material created by Manure Movers of America. It’s all of us and none of us, everything and nothing.
I don’t know either – look, I just ate a bunch of tacos, and this is sort of reminding me what’s happening in my gut right now, so I’m not too focused on stringing thoughts together. Pretty soon the descriptive review copy “splattered with static and dissonance like a sewer line backing up and out one end” that I was gonna somehow weave in here is going to be more real to me than I had hoped. I guess sometimes you just have to embrace the quease. Just like I’m currently doing.
(By the way, if “You gotta be shitting me” isn’t part of your opening line about this tape, we’re coming for you. We’re gonna revoke THE HECK out of your music-reviewer credentials.)
This disgusting thing available in a run of 100 from our friends at Already Dead.
It’s almost impossible to think that Günter Schlienz still has so much to say. In the copy for one of these tapes, somebody mentions that it’s his “thirtysomethingth” release (or thereabouts), meaning he’s been around and doing it for a while, and doing it (and doing it and doing it) well. I guess you’ll get to “thirtysomethingth” pretty quickly if you release three or four tapes a quarter, among records and other things (mostly records), and also if you have your own label, as Günter Schlienz does with the excellent Cosmic Winnetou. That doesn’t mean you can’t release things on other labels. Günter Schlienz dabbles in that as well. In fact, as we review three of the Stuttgart synth maestro’s opuses from the past few months and consider them in the parlance of our times, we’re treated to no less than one label per tape, and by the rules I’ve just defined, only one is Cosmic Winnetou. That’s three labels giving us Günter Schlienz music! I’m so pumped.
Günter Schlienz – Farbton
I’m gonna dust off my old Google Translate and plug in “Farbton,” and I get “hue.” Fair enough. How about “Tiefes Weiß”? “Deep white.” “Flageolett Gelb”? “Flageolet yellow.” I knew what the colors were in German, but I had no idea that a “flageolet” was a flute-y kind of instrument, but now I do, and my vocabulary is increased. But these things all make sense, the “hue,” the “white,” the “yellow.” The tape itself has a two-tone shell, and I bet you can’t guess the colors on each side, and which track they pertain to. Give up? I’m not falling for it, nor do I have time to entertain silly answers. “Farbton” was recorded using a “DIY synthesizer and cassette tape,” and “Tiefes Weiß” utilizes field recordings and vocal samples and weaving together an utterly haunting excursion through repetitious world-building, each pass through reinforcing and invigorating the last and realizing the remarkable whole. “Flageolett Gelb” unfolds like a lullaby, like someone’s humming the most beautiful tune and it’s just carrying you off into wild unconscious adventures. Except that their mouth is a synthesizer, so it’s even better than you thought at first. Did I mention that each side’s a half hour long? Gosh, there’s so much going on here. Cosmic Winnetou tape available exclusively on the “Galactic Supermarket” tour, which is over now. EVERYTHING ENDS.
Günter Schlienz – The Icelandic Tapes
Not to be outdone by himself, Günter Schlienz took off for Iceland and made this one there (and this is the description that has the “thirtysomethingth” line, so there’s your citation). Still using his DIY synths, he captures the desolate loneliness of the landscape, the simple progressions as filled with space and cold as the island nation. Interspersed with field recordings, the progressions repeat and converse, sinking into your mind and marrying your imagination of what Iceland is (if you haven’t been there – I haven’t) or your recollection of the place to Schlienz’s representations of the living, breathing processes of Icelandic geography and society. Winds sweep across vistas, lava bubbles in volcanic lakes, the northern lights flicker across the night sky. Schlienz captures all of this in sound with a videographer’s eye, and does so over 35 minutes (program repeats on side B). Stay for the quirky ending! “Edition of 60 pro-dubbed cassettes housed in a cardboard box” on Hangover Central Station.
Günter Schlienz – “Island”
Iceland, now “Island,” where are we going next? Not where you’re thinking, sadly, because, yes, you could use a tan. No, this island is the Huxley one, as in Aldous Huxley, and I’ve not read the “psychedelic novel” of the same name. I read “Brave New World” for my high school English class (loved it even then, so much so that I read ahead of our assigned chapters!), and I read “The Doors of Perception” also in high school because of The Doors connection of course. That one baffled me though. Still! “Island” is a miasma of lysergic ambient, with freaky samples and field recordings serving as, ahem, islands of focus throughout the sounds, although those islands of focus are all about LSD and religion and evolution and all manner of strangeness. Günter Schlienz is a willing and patient guide, allowing this trip to unfold and play out as shifts color and shape within your brainpan. Then it becomes tranquil, and pools and lakes and other various bodies of liquids and waters engulf you. This is all just like an LSD trip, just like Aldous Huxley intended. Did Huxley foresee this tape version of “Island”? Probably, on some shamanic spiritual wandering through his own mind. How could he not? Edition of 50 “dubbed in real time on high end decks” available from Feathered Coyote Records.
Halloween is over, pal. It’s time to put the critters and ghouls away and focus on very safe and not scary things like Quiet Evenings and a Free Kitten.
I GUESS Frostower is a literal tower of frost, kind of like that one Mario Party minigame where you have to grind ice to make a taller snow pile. But the name probably to its detriment reminds me of Zap Rowsdower, the “Final Sacrifice” hero who wondered if there was beer on the sun. And since we all know that there is no beer on the sun in reality, we are left to shrug and get back to our lives. In the end, it’s all a matter of “Indifference.”
Literally.
Frostower is not a literal tower of frost, just an icy electronic composer content to push glaciers through landscapes and watch the weight crush the surface of the earth, leaving irreparable changes in its path. “Indifference” is the outward mindset toward those changes. How can something as big and powerful as a glacier have any sort of regard for the terrain it’s plowing? It just doesn’t. And Frostower gets it, because Frostower doesn’t have time to worry about whatever Frostower is plowing over either. Frostower simply moves through space, and if something is in the way, it gets obliterated. Easy peasy.
“Indifference” also marks the plight of the solitary composer, locked behind closed doors and creating in order to stave off the gathering darkness of societal obligations. Just let Frostower be Frostower! Right? “Indifference” allows the coexistence of gritty ambience and beat-tape reveries, an antisocial and inward-facing study of the psyche. What were once pent-up frustrations are now unleashed in a torrent of tone and timbre, but not in such a rushing-on of feeling and emotion that we’re in weird, uncharted territory; we’re just left to stew with our ennui and angst. Sometimes that’s all we need to get off on music.
So crack a cold one on the surface of Sol (oh shoot, it’s real!) and strap in for the mildly disruptive (but fully enjoyable) “Indifference” on Mystic Timbre.
Tell me you guys aren’t into it, I dare you. The first thing you’re hearing on this tape is a rock band called Little Angry & the Sweets playing some jangly power pop, and guitar is the calling card. This isn’t some outsider bullshit, this is Antiquated Future, the revered (REVERED) PDX tape label known mostly for how you can’t pin em down. Oddly, I always think “folk” when I think of AF, but that may only be because of the “Antiquated” in the name. (And also actual folk stuff like David Thomas Broughton, but it’s all OK in the end.) Then I get hit with Midwife and the The Washboard Abs, and I’m like, oh yeah, folk what?
Point is, over the past seven years, Antiquated Future has released a lot of cool stuff, and this new collection celebrates those releases by throwing a bunch of their artists together on a compilation. There’s the ethereal roots jangle of Flying Circles and Guidon Bear, the ruminative indie rock of If It Ain’t Breakfast Don’t Fix It and Upside Drown, the horn-aided wistfulness of Advrb, the dreamgaze of Reignbeau and Midwife, Tucker Theodore’s instrumental Neil Young worship, the perfect electro pop of old faves the Washboard Abs, the shocked gospel of Indira Valey, and so many others. I feel like I’ve shortchanged like a million people by not naming everyone on here.
It’s basically almost a million people though, because nineteen (see? That’s a lot) of the greatest the label has to offer are featured here. The songs are cherrypicked for an ebb and a flow, and “The First Seven Years” comes off as the gold standard for the type of mixtape I would’ve made in college to get my friends into the deeper reaches of independent tunage. They’d all be listening to, like, Third Eye Blind, and I’d be like, “That’s stupid. You’re stupid.” Then I’d play this and they’d be all wide-eyed and “Oh, what is this?” and “I love it, this is so much better than Barenaked Ladies!” (I went to college at a weird time.) And they’d be absolutely right about all of that and would finally burn those awful CDs they were listening to until the acrid, poisonous smoke choked the night.
And we’d only be listening to Antiquated Future music, because it’s perfect for night fires and hanging out.
Then life would go on, and we’d grow old listening to “The Last Seven Years,” because it’s not only a great starting point but also a great companion over the long haul. Find it, today, before it’s too late (edition of 100) from, duh, Antiquated Future.
My exercise routine gives me a solid bottom also, but I don’t think any of us are clicking on any Tabs Out ads to come here and read about my physical condition. (And if you are, I’ve been diligently working out all my muscles. Consider yourselves updated.) CARL (not this one), on the other hand, have been digging around a thesaurus and not using “bottom” in the same way that I am. Instead, the trio of Damon Smith, Andrew Durham, and Danny Kamins are interested in the “bottom” of the sound spectrum, the low end, as it were, the one populated by all that bass, the foundation of all great music. Solid bottom indeed!
As you might expect from an Astral Spirits release, the trio has gathered to improvise, utilizing such far-out frequency generators as double bass, electric bass, baritone saxophone, and radio manipulation and effects. The result is a rumbling maelstrom, like heavy seas charged with atmospheric disturbance. The sounds swirl together and wash through the speakers as a whole, a heaving mass of sonic commotion. Only when you tune your ear to the individual performances does “Solid Bottom” start to open itself up to you.
While Smith and Durham frequently occupy that low end, they allow Kamins to surface and swirl like a waterspout on his sax. And even though the emergence is attention-grabbing, it should do nothing to detract from the constant submarine churn. This is all about the “Solid Bottom,” after all, so stay on your toes and be ready to dodge the tsunami headed your way! (Note that I am always ready for peak physical activity.)
Purchase forthrightly from the lovely folx at Astral Spirits.
