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Space Age Pressure Pad #1: The Iowa Cassette Caucuses
3.17.18 by Scott Scholz

Welcome to the first edition of Space Age Pressure Pad! I’m your host, Scott Scholz, and I hope to bring you this free-form column on a weekly-ish basis. Expect a mix of reviews (both new jams and tapes from the last few years that deserve more attention), interviews, newsy bits, retrogrouchy recommendations, and who knows what else? The Tabs Out crew has given me a virtually unlimited budget (thanks again!), so perhaps we’ll include some audio and video elements in the proceedings when it makes sense.

Our first voyage together, dear readers, begins in Iowa. As a Nebraska native, I’ve long looked up to my neighbor-to-the-East as a sort of older sibling, culturally speaking: we have largely the same climate and agricultural leanings, but there are more big-ish cities in Iowa, and a few more outlets for avant-weirdo aural adventures. And it feels like Iowa is sometimes ahead of the curve, at least as Midwestern/Plains states go. They’re the presidential election tastemakers, for example, holding the earliest caucuses for both major political parties, and that has to count for something. And did you know the first computer was developed in Iowa? Because it was.

On the cassette front, the legendary mostly-tape label Night People was first launched in Iowa City, and there are a number of great labels based there now, including 5cm Recordings, Centipede Farm, and Sassbologna Records. This week, both my mailbox and my inbox have been burning up with great new releases from Iowa labels, and you’re not gonna want to miss out on these:

 

The always-reliable Field Hymns is set to drop their next batch on my favorite holiday, April Fools day, but no fooling: these are three of the most fun tapes you’re likely to hear all year. As always, these tapes feature visionary art by Tiny Little Hammers, and they’re sexy pro-dubbed affairs that look as good as they sound.

Proceeding in catalog number order, Oxykitten makes his return to the cassette world after some time off for good behavior (his last pair of tapes dropped in early 2016 on Rotifer). The solo project of San Diego expatriate Justin Case, Oxy has recently settled into the Toronto area and has begun spinning synth-fueled soundscapes again. As one might expect from Oxykitten, “Gleeking the Cube” is a playful affair that splits the difference between a speculative sexploitation soundtrack and vintage video game audio. But having listened to this music for many hours over the last year (full disclosure: I did the mastering for this music), there is also a more serious kosmische undercurrent to this album. The Oxy tapes on Rotifer had a certain gravitas, too, but “Gleeking” displays a new level of compositional ambition and confidence, sliding toward the cinematic analog heaviness of labelmate Yves Malone.

Next, Larry Wish turns in his weirdest album yet, “How More Can You Need?” It must be said up front that your tape deck is fine–this music, which Larry (Adam Wervan) performs live as a sort of pantomime, fussing with cables and lights, intentionally drifts out of tune in a manner that made me worry that my belts or idler wheel were slipping. But it’s part of the gig. Musically, this is a somewhat different affair than the more prog-affected Larry Wish jams on Orange Milk, and it’s entirely instrumental. But once you adjust to the occasional LFO pitch drift, the music is intricate and very satisfying as it outlines a sort of abstract narrative, highlighting human creativity and mechanical fallibility. An aural Dada manifesto for the Post-Information Age.

As a huge fan of the “Males in Harmony” tape last year, I was especially excited to hear the sophomore Lips & Ribs album in this batch. Full of complex but funky MIDI melodramas, this solo project of multimedia maniac artist Jay Winebrenner was recorded some years back, but has now been safely cassette-ified for the public by Field Hymns. The pieces on “Battle in Nagoya” are generally a little shorter than the Lips & Ribs debut, but every bit as intense and fun. High-velocity sections like the title track and “Ending in Amiens” are redolent of old video game music, and there are surreal moments I especially dig, like the synthetic Morricone western vibes of “Woman is Here.” Overall, “Battle in Nagoya” has an especially visual kind of flair, and every riff practically causes an off-kilter low budget film scene to materialize somewhere in front of your speakers. It’s no wonder that Winebrenner is responsible for his own share of seriously wild videos like this.

 

Bob Bucko Jr is a man of diverse tastes, just the sort of fellow we love to hang with around the Pressure Pad, and his Personal Archives label reflects his wide-ranging appreciation for all kinds of music. The latest batch of tapes on Personal Archives will only set you back a Hamilton (unlike, you know, Hamilton), and here’s what you’ll be cranking:

Matthew As More gets some well-deserved reissue treatment, this tape having first appeared in CD format on its creator Matt Dake’s label Nova Labs. “Apocalypse Never” is a great collection of tunes whose low- and mid-fi recordings reveal a sophisticated musical mind. There are some rock/pop anthems here, but the weird song forms and complicated riffs often remind me of the heyday of the Chicago Touch & Go scene, too. My favorite moment here is near the center of the album, where “Shroom Dust (edit)” somehow manages to bridge a heretofore prohibitive gap between Big Black and Apple Venus-era XTC. Recommended.

I missed out the Saxquatch & Bridge Band debut on Already Dead last year, but upon hearing their new “Apogee” jams in the Personal Archives batch, I’ll be keeping my eyes on these folks from now on. Here you’ll find the Bridge Band, a tight power trio that specializes in jazz- and soul-infused blues, with Saxquatch (Jarad Selner) at center stage, playing saxes and occasionally taking on some vocals. Three out of four of these musicians share the same last name, and indeed this band has that kind of subconsciously-tight interplay one would expect from a family band that’s been jamming for years. It’s a little more stylistically straightforward than my usual listening, but it’s heartfelt, beautifully performed, and the recordings really pop. Tasty.

Rounding (or I guess triangulating?) out this batch, Wilmoth Axel has turned in another excellent album for Personal Archives. Their previous albums have spent some time in my decks, often reminding me of a more acid/psych lo-fi take on instrumental post-everything music like the Fucking Champs. This time, “Resonation” digs further into the psychedelic garage vibes, and the trio has expanded to a quartet, with very effective vocals by Donna Kay Yarborough. This is a clearer recording than some of their previous PA efforts, and the subtler details of their work are easier to hear with a little more “fi.” As one might expect, the inclusion of vocals here has somewhat tempered the songwriting for “Resonation,” focusing some of the group’s wildest moments into more structured, balanced forms, but it all comes together like they were meant to be a quartet all along.

 

There is a familiar, cared-for look you can expect with tapes on Warm Gospel: label proprietor Trey Reis makes gorgeous collages that adorn many j-card covers, dubs small runs by hand, and uses a real typewriter to prepare his labels and track listings. This month, he brings us five new tapes from the heartland and a bit of the globe:

Igondeau, a haunting quartet from Belarus, starts us off with “Stefania am Rande der Nacht,” a sprawling beat-driven piece in five movements that manages to be propulsive and a little frightening at times. The piece is dedicated to a 90s Swiss film, “Stefanie’s Geschenk,” and though I’m not familiar with the movie, I’d safely wager that it’s an intense, dark affair to have inspired this music. Although dancefloor-worthy beats assert themselves throughout the majority of the album, my focus is mostly drawn to the synth-dominant music throughout, which veers from ambient, textural ideas to early industrial gear-grinding.

I’m not previously familiar with the work of Goatfoam, but if “*toHeatedWomb*to” is an indication, they are mad scientists developing new ways to combine 60s psychedelia and the more experimental edges of early 90s shoegaze. These tunes have an overall calming effect, and the melodies of tunes like “Hermit in a Happy Place” or “Hidden Gems” have a way of resurfacing in your head just when you need them later.

Nicholas Naioti’s work is new to me, too, but his “Watery Grave” is a great C40 of solace and reflection. On the surface, perhaps, it’s simply great ambient music, gentle waves of sound gradually drifting into one another, anchored by percussion that tries not to draw too much attention to itself. However, you’ll soon find this music reaching from the background into the foreground, as the melodies prove to be too insistent, the guitars too plaintive, and the arrangements too clever.

Stewardesses turns in a weird EDM audio travelogue of sorts with “Bliss is This.” This tape could almost be a document of a dance club set, save for surprising juxtapositions and unusual transitions that frequently turn listening attention toward the inner textures of the music: the subtle body within “body music,” if you will. At times I’m reminded of the ecstatic pinnacles of electronic bliss in the music of Dugout Canoe, while other passages seem to reach back toward that weird period when industrial bands started to coalesce around pop forms. Bliss is this, indeed.

Finally, Huxley Maxwell turns in the most purely ambient set of this batch in “Across the Cartoon Smoke.” With little reliance on percussion other than a few small sections on side A, this pair of pieces unfold patiently, with gentle fades between major sections and delicate blending of elements that could be jarring in different hands (is that didgeridoo sneaking in underneath soulful piano toward the end of side A, for example?) I especially dug the opening section of “Lavender,” the B-side piece, as what sounds like koto and locomotive samples press into one another to unexpectedly melancholy effect, eventually dissolving into some subtle watery textures. World music for the otherworldly.

Here’s hoping you’ll find something to dig in this year’s later winter crops of Iowa!