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Christopher Brett Bailey – Sax Offender

1.29.20 by Ryan Masteller

I first had mixed feelings about Christopher Brett Bailey’s “Sax Offender,” a title so off-putting that I almost didn’t even give it a chance, what with its proximity to this MF-ing Bleeding Gums Murphy record (he looks so sad!) and probably also Herb Alpert’s “Whipped Cream” (that lady looks less sad). Also the track titles are all double entendres – “Sax Pest”? I wish! And then there’s the jail-cell sleeve this thing comes in, giving the whole thing a very retro, outdated vibe: “Maybe I should be in jail … lock up your saxophones …”

But OMG – could that be the point?

Bailey, a London-based writer and artist otherwise (and with that fantastic haircut, what else could he be?!), is a sax caresser, the opposite of a sax manhandler, but in a totally non-creepy way, which makes the whole “Sax Offender” thing a bit lighter, a bit winkier and noddier than some people may realize at first. He’s certainly not heaving “saxily” into that mouthpiece and hoping the spit valve holds out for the duration of a performance. On the contrary, he’s running his instrument through “reverb, octave, and three loop pedals,” layering sound upon sound and drone upon drone until the soup’s so thick you can eat it with a fork. This is EXPERIMENTAL saxophone playing, and not even remotely close to Colin Stetson or anything like that.

So Bailey sets the mood, and maintains the mood, over five fairly lengthy pieces. Only the sub-two-minute “Sax Criminal” ventures into “traditional” playing, with a fairly straightforward (albeit effect-drenched) run tiptoeing into standard noir territory. But the rest is a fever dream, a Black Lodge mist of proto-Badalamenti swamp tone that swirls around itself until you’re not sure where you are or what year this is. Somebody get Dean Hurley on the phone. Bailey’s playing is as natural as breathing, and it will mesmerize you until you can’t tell friend from foe, or even if there were any friends or foes to begin with (there didn’t have to be). 

You still weirded out? Don’t be. Get hip to Christopher Brett Bailey. On Pastel Heck. “Only 50 copies available!”

Nils Quak – Rolltreppen im August

1.28.20 by Ryan Masteller

Nils Quak’s been around the block (and no, that wasn’t an intentional rhyme, but I’ve left it so you can see how skillful I am), having released stuff on, among others, Audiobulb, SicSic, Umor Rex, Cosmic Winnetou, Sacred Phases, Phinery, and “Not On Label” (which I’m presuming was an upstart around the release of Quak’s 2013 tape “Infinite Folds”). Here he lands on Kolobrzeg, Poland, label Plaża Zachodnia, a bastion of ambient and electronic experimentation. Because Quak is also an ambient and electronic institution, the pairing is as apt as it gets. 

“Rolltreppen im August” is German for “Escalators in August,” a strange juxtaposition of indoor technology and time of year. I figure you can ride an escalator anytime, regardless of month, and it would be the same as any other month. For example, if you’re at the airport and you need to get to another level, you may be wearing a coat if it’s winter or shorts if it’s summer, but the interior climate of the building would be the same. Are there any outdoor escalators? I guess at sports stadiums, etc., but you don’t go to those year round. Quak, what are you getting at here?

Maybe he’s playing mind games with us, and that’s OK, because I think he’s playing mind games with himself too, programming his synthesizers and allowing the sound to lead him wherever it goes. The sound trickles across the tiled floors of long, wide, empty rooms, like abandoned 1980s malls or abandoned urban convention centers (with tiled floors). Where’d everybody go? Nobody knows, but Quak’s tones burble like ghosts in corners and flit around the rafters and skylights, moving with ease from one level to the next and back. Quak’s exploring these empty spaces and imagining the concept of absence within them. Sometimes he rides the escalators to see what sounds he can coax from the different levels.

Just don’t let in the zombies! Too scary. (So are ghosts.)

Edition of 30.

Chosen Evil – Suffocation Ritual

1.27.20 by Ryan Masteller

Now that the holidays are over, I can start writing again. You’d think that some time off from work would be relaxing, but you’d be wrong. All those Christmas presents that you have to buy, and then wrap? That’s really stressful! But now that all the Nintendos and LEGO men and Matchbox cars have been unveiled and kids are back at school and the ol’ inbox is all cleaned out (not to mention that there’s no traveling in the immediate future), I can focus again, turn my mind toward creative endeavors. Like writing.

About something called “Suffocation Ritual” by Chosen Evil.

That features a prominently screamed vocal “Mutilate me!” on its first track.

What am I getting myself into here? This is either an appropriate primal response to pent-up anxiety or a white-knuckled thrill ride on a runaway mining car (the Indiana Jones kind) that I’m not ready for. I teeter in the middle, breathing quickly but feeling a modicum of relief. Chosen Evil – a suggestion that a decision has actively been made! – square up the synth-damaged post-punk fastball and knock it to hell with spiked Louisville Sluggers, detonating the uranium-laced electronics within it in a static mushroom cloud of dense hatred. Tabs Out readers, this is not one for kids, so put them to bed first! The sicko(s) wallows in disgust for a full fifty minutes before even letting up, and that’s only probably because the tape ran out. Who knows how much heaving destruction they’ve backed up on those hard drives?

There are only two of these disgusting green things (tape shells, not whatever bile-coated horror you’ve dreamed up) available at the moment from NULLZ0NE, so you better act fast!

Laura Luna Castillo / Lensk – split

1.24.20 by Ryan Masteller

It’s cold out there folks! It’s cold in here too, on this split tape, the one divided between Laura Luna Castillo (probably a real name) and Lensk (probably not one). The latest in the Display split series sees these two artists try to out-scope each other, try to one-up the other by crafting sound in grand scale, a “cinematic” scale if the descriptive copy is to be believed. (It is.) Both seem to be vying for the chilliest composer title. Both seem to view glaciers as musical inspiration. This is good for us.

On “Things Have Started to Float,” Castillo slowly pieces together atoms until she has constructed a monolith of hovering material, the massive structure barely resolving from its stasis. Electronic tones flit through it like shockwaves, but it’s a menacingly solid, unbelievably frigid construction. It’s like she’s attempting to take over the world through freezing it, like this person, or this one, or this one. Is that what they all do? I can’t be bothered to check.

Lensk gets obvious with “Light (As It Shone Through Cracking Ice),” maybe the most appropriate titling of a track to reflect its inspiration as there ever was. Fractal tones interact with crystalline structures; universes open up in the geometry. Like Castillo, Lensk is going for the full freeze effect on world domination (or the full domination effect on world freezing – if there’s even a difference), synths boring into the ice like drills. Maybe Lensk is like this person, or this one, or this one.

Either side, you can’t lose. Grab a warm blanket, because you’ll need one by the end of this split. The deets: Clear C30 / Ink Imprint / Printed O-Card / Clear Norelco case / Labeled Black Bag / Sticker Included / Edition of 40.

The Gate – House of Snuzz

1.16.20 by Ryan Masteller

I had a friend in college who played the tuba, and it made me question everything: my life, my choices, my direction. See, had I known how cool the tuba ACTUALLY was, instead of thinking that it was just for fat kids in marching band, I may have tried to pick that thing up instead of – BORING – guitar or piano. Now, I have no idea how popular Dan Peck, tuba extraordinaire in The Gate, was in high school or college (or is now), but he’s reminding me with this here tape “House of Snuzz” that tuba is, indeed, a wickedly cool instrument. Now, who’s picking up a bassoon?

The Gate, a trio also featuring Tom Blancarte on upright electric bass and Brian Osborne on drums, has two tracks, “Dark Echoes” and “Psychedelic Rays,” and both are pitch-black rainbows of delusion-inducing free-skronk. Obviously, with tuba and bass, The Gate registers on the murky low end of the timbral spectrum, but you may be surprised to learn that you don’t wallow in a swampy morass with this crew. Rather, the rumble and churn is deliberately agile, anchored by Osborne, and tuba/bass interplay hits enough mid-range frequencies to keep you focused. In fact, Peck often distorts his tuba, so it doesn’t even sound like a brass instrument. It sounds like an additional frazzled bass, really – one that’s often used for hideously atmospheric effect. 

OK, maybe it does get a little morassy sometimes, but that’s all part of the fun!

“House of Snuzz” is a din of black magic boiling in some sort of cauldron hung over some sort of infernal flame at some sort of sadistic ritual. It toys with you, batting you around like a cat with a stuffed mouse or a terrified beetle. It’s at once sinister and playful. How have we not all discovered the secret joys of the tuba before now? 

Well, I guess if we had, stuff like “House of Snuzz” wouldn’t be so enthralling. It would be “just another tuba record.” No one wants that.

This “high-bias yellow tint sonic cassette with direct shell imprint” is available in an edition of 100 from Tubapede Records. (Awesome label name, you guys!)

Prayer Generator – Eleutheromania

1.15.20 by Ryan Masteller

I feel like we’ve been eulogizing Patient Sounds for a while now, but it’s something that shouldn’t be taken lightly, and “Eleutheromania” feels like a nice appendix to the whole operation (even though three other tapes came out after this one before the label ceased operations). And it’s maybe even doubly appropriate that something called “Prayer Generator” was enlisted to at the beginning (or middle, or middle-end, or one-third of the way through) the end, as the human beings who make up this duo – Libi Rose and D. Brigman, of Denver – are nothing if not reverent in their sound-making. Maybe their supplications can be heard by a higher power who will then grant us humans the miracle of more Patient Sounds cassette tapes. #Bless

But I wouldn’t hold my breath.

The opposite could also hold in this situation: “eleutheromania” means “a mania or a frantic zeal for freedom,” and such endings could possibly have only occurred following a buildup of intense stress and pressure until the strain became too much. Hopefully this is not what happened to Patient Sounds, but Prayer Generator’s here to help just in case. The melancholy ambient echoes of the duo’s interaction smooth that passage into oblivion, the electricity generated acting as a conduit for physical transformation. Or maybe it’s mental. You definitely need a good new mindset when you’re transitioning from one state of being to the next. At times placid, at others hostile (Jesus, those static eruptions in the middle of “Ochlesis” scared the crap out of me!), “Eleutheromania” is both the sandblaster and the sandblasted, prepping the individual through various stages of upheaval and mental cleansing before allowing the new entity on the other end of all that to awake, arise, and ambulate toward the next destination.

At any rate, Prayer Generator holds the key to their new mechanism of self-discovery, and they’ll crank that sucker in a mad fit of eleutheromania till the lock gives and the doors bust wide open, allowing access to that new sense of freedom you never knew was building up inside until we called attention to that pressure RIGHT NOW and gave you the tools to do something about it. Those tools were the tracks of “Eleutheromania.” That pressure was LIFE. That freedom was a NEW CAR.* Drive off into the sunset.

*This tape is brought to you by Toyota.**

**Just kidding.

QOHELETH – Mark It Well, All Roads End in Death

1.13.20 by Ryan Masteller

This “meditation on life and death” (duh, look at the title) came together “by accident,” and sometimes that’s the best way things come together, especially meditations on life and death. Case in point: I’m sitting right here, drinking a beer, typing on my computer about music, and I happen to grab QOHELETH’s “Mark It Well, All Roads End in Death.” While playing it, I’m prompted to meditate on life and death, just like I’m supposed to. Accident? You betcha!

QOHELETH is nominally a noise rock outfit, but here, perhaps in thrall to the meditation, they are in experimental mode, finding their way around their instruments as if scrabbling for sustenance like woodland creatures on the forest floor, trying to stay out of claw-, beak-, or mawshot of predators. What does that mean? The instruments of “These Exquisitely Dressed Trees” don’t allow us easy purchase, and as such we’re left to fend for ourselves to perceive and attain the beauty hinted at by organic process. Compost and such; fertilizer. Giving of our bodies to sustain another. Sounds noble, but in actuality it’s just a philosophically garbed poop joke. We’re just scrabbling and eating and crapping until something meaningful happens in our lives. It is an existential crisis! 

It’s here that I gave up the ghost and crossed over to the other plane. Well, OK, not really, but the melancholy uplift of the solitary piano and ambient haze of the room (Liz Harris eat your heart out) of “The Clearing at the End Is the Path,” over almost ten full minutes, surely felt like it. (Not to mention it’s a nod to Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, in which the crossing into death is referred to the exact same way.) It’s the perfect counterpoint to “These Exquisitely Dressed Trees,” a metaphysical response that elevates life beyond the baseness of our animalistic tendencies. The transcendental drift of “The Clearing” encapsulates perfectly the duality of the life/death divide. 

Also, here’s a spooky thought: these two pieces were recorded over a decade apart! How on earth did they find each other?

Accident.* Of course.

“Cassette with original art by Caiden Withey. Includes mini print with liner notes. Hand-drawn art and text on the tape itself. Limited to 20 copies.” On Philip K. Discs!

*Eh, not really.