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Corsica Annex – Fluid Electric
1.2.18 by Ryan Masteller

Yeah, this is stupid, but we’ve only gotten around to writing about Corsica Annex AFTER the posting of the only year-end extravaganza in town, the gloriously complete and not nearly hyped enough Tabs Out “Top 200 Tapes of 2017.” But hey, when life hands you lemons, you punch life in the face and scream, “I don’t like lemons!” Corsica Annex’s “Fluid Electric” clocks in at number 121, and if I had anything to say about it, it would’ve been a lot higher. But I’m just a hired monkey, so here I go clicky-clacking about the “blurst of times” while you scratch your head trying to figure out what a “Cabo Boing” is. (Don’t scratch too long, you should actually go find out – it’s pretty great stuff.)

Proving every scientist in the world wrong, Corsica Annex combines the two most dangerous things to mix together, electricity and water – even more dangerous than gasoline and an igniting signal flare – and not only survives the encounter but actually produces one of the more compelling musical recordings documenting said unholy interaction. As any sane person knows, we like our tapes around here to be full of burbling synthesizer, and it feels like old Corsica took a bucket of water and dumped it all over his synth rig, resulting in a viscous slime bubbling from the smoldering remains. That slime cools, calms itself, turns blue, continues to burble, becomes sentient, leaves Earth. Just like the prophecies foretold.

This dream I’m having while being engulfed by “Fluid Electric” is impossible to pin down. I’m either a whale passing through tropical ocean shallows or a whale passing through a nebula birthing a million stars. Either way I’m a whale, I think. Nope, can’t pin it down. It’s like I’m passing through my own mind, a weird space-whale tourist on vacation from whatever reality weird space-whales inhabit when their minds aren’t pumped full of hallucinogens. Or is it my reality? Hey, space-whale, are you you or me? What would you do if I gave you some lemons right now?

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DJ Balli and Giacomo Balla – Svelto
12.13.17 by Ryan Masteller

Is this for me? I mean, sure, I’m an absolute master at stacking a dishwasher with Tetris-like precision. Any unmaximized space is certain to cause the vein in my temple to throb uncontrollably as I try to suppress the rage triggered by a misplaced bowl or coffee cup. (My wife, god love her, would just roll her eyes at my internal meltdown.) “Svelto,” by DJ Balli and Giacomo Balla (the collaboration is “telepathic” between Balli and “the famous futurist”), is one of two recent releases by ArteTetra (the label based in Potenza Picena, Italy) in collaboration with Islandsexp that focuses on creating a “pleasing acoustic experience … for … more productive and functional house-working.” “Svelto,” which translates to “brisk” in English, focuses on dishwashing, as does the other initial tape in this run, Shit and Shine’s MUSICA LAVAPIATTI (which I wrote about somewhere else, recycling a conceit in the process).

So is this for me? Being an all-star dishwasher stacker doesn’t mean I’m also an all-star dish scrubber, but maybe that’s the point – maybe “Svelto” exists to draw out the hidden skills I don’t necessarily know I have, in the process reducing the unrelenting stress of poor dishwasher space management weighing on me like I was hauling a lead backpack around the kitchen. Yeah, “Svelto” is nimble, and its speed and energy are absolutely intoxicating and contagious. It makes me feel like I’ve just entered the Trance state in FINAL FANTASY IX or something. I look at the dishwasher in disdain, and, with the pulsing gabber electronics blaring on my stereo, I tackle the mound of dishes in the sink with just a scrub brush and my intuition. In a blur, both hands and water fly, and I become the machine. Only when I finish do I realize that the mound of dirty dishes has now become a mound of broken crockery, but I do not feel defeated. I’m still high from the adrenaline shot through my bloodstream by DJ Balli.

FYI: “Dishwasher cycle #1: Gabber Pyramid” utilizes the tune my dryer makes when it’s done, so I can only assume a Samsung dishwasher does the same thing… It freaked me out for a second when I first heard it, like some MORTAL KOMBAT portal had opened up in my laundry room or whatever.

Grab a tape from ArteTetra or Lowe’s or Home Depot or your local appliance retailer. No, wait, just from ArteTetra.

Yves Malone / Grapefruit – split
12.7.17 by Ryan Masteller

Don’t look now, but Tandem Tapes is at it again, everybody! This time it’s Field Hymns (among others) alumni Yves Malone and Grapefruit lending their dastardly psychedelic synth scores to … what is that, a moon rover? Sure, Yves Malone and Grapefruit are on the moon. Probably isn’t the first time.

Yves’s half is a further platform for that John Carpenter vibe he’s perfected better than Carpenter himself, as if he wandered into some comic/sci-fi convention where Carpenter was addressing a crowd from a podium and he walked up and grabbed the mic and was all like, “I’m your John Carpenter now.” The crowd of course would go wild because Yves doesn’t go anywhere without a keytar strapped on and angular futuristic shades, and he’d totally melt hearts and brains at the first riff blasted through the auditorium’s PA system. Yeah, imagine all that happening on side A, because it totally just did in my head. Or was it a premonition of things to come? I have been known to be psychic from time to time, like those kids in “Village of the Damned.” Who directed the remake of that again?

Grapefruit’s a little more reverent toward their lunar location (yeah, I’m still going with the musicians on the moon thing), as their snarly synth and guitar lines sound eternally stuck in a planetarium. Or, no, not planetarium – actual moon. I’m confusing my own narratives here. Maybe it’s the secondhand space dust I’m ingesting from this tape, or maybe it’s the firsthand space dust I’m ingesting while I’m hanging out on the moon with Grapefruit and Yves Malone, because I don’t know what’s up or down or where I even am. The best guess is that I’m probably under the blanket I’ve propped into a tent on top of my bed and that I’m just hallucinating this whole day. My wife is going to be really weirded out by all this when she gets home.

As you know, Tandem Tapes sell out faster than moon rocks on the black market, and this one’s no different – 7 left of the original 25! That initial run seems like a joke, what with all the disposable income we middle-class Americans have due to our favorable tax environment. (Oh, right…)

The Eargoggle – The Beautiful Creatures Really Are So Cruel
12.1.17 by Ryan Masteller

This tape dropped a Kerry Wood reference within the first minute of its first song, and you guys know I was hooked from there. I mean, c’mon, what other songs do baseball right, Fogerty’s “Centerfield”? No way – “Centerfield” is bad and Fogerty should FEEL bad about ever writing it. Ezra Gale’s “TSFW,” the leadoff track to “The Beautiful Creatures Really Are So Cruel,” is good, but it gets knocked a couple of points for not referencing Philly greats like Cole Hamels or Cliff Lee or Doc himself, Roy Halladay (RIP). I guess he needed to rhyme something with “good,” and the rest is Chicago Cubs history. (Plus, just TRY rhyming anything with “Bedrosian” – it’s like the “orange” of last names.)

You’re not here to read me going off on perceived MLB slights, but you ARE here to read about another good old-fashioned American institution, cassette tapes. Specifically today The Eargoggle’s sprawling new monolithic nineteen-song suite just released on November 17, exactly within a week of my birthday, so I’ll consider this an early present from Mr. Gale. Where do you start with Ezra? He’s got fingers in so many pies, and all of them seep into the Eargoggle sound: he’s the proprietor of the wildly eclectic Very Special Recordings, founding member of “legendary afrobeat band Aphrodesia,” and member of other drastically different musical projects, like ska-fuckers Super Hi-Fi and Zep-lovers Benninghove’s Hangmen. There is no pinning him down. I mean, just take a look at the guy – he’s got his hands full of so many instruments that he doesn’t even know where to begin half the time! (And they took this picture BEFORE he climbed a grand piano stacked with Neil Peart’s drumkit, then stood atop it with his arms raised like he just scaled Everest. Oh, and he’d added a tuba to the array of instruments you see here, just to make it “a little more challenging.”)

Yeah, I did say nineteen songs, so stuffed was Ezra’s mind with melodies and ideas that he couldn’t stop, even when he tried, even when others tried to stop him, tried to wrench open his spasming fingers from the neck of his guitar at 3:00 am in the “studio” (meaning his 4-track at home). But it was no use, and we’re so much the better for it. “The Beautiful Creatures” is filled with endless grooves that burrow in your mind like parasites, but instead of having to annoyingly treat parasites you just have to listen to another song to move on and continue the cycle. And speaking of parasites, I can’t help but wonder how many parasites the bird on the (admittedly absolutely wonderful) cover of “The Beautiful Creatures” has crawling all over it. Does this make you feel itchy? It should! Ezra Gale makes super itchy music as the Eargoggle, meaning it’s a butt-wiggling mélange of danceable rock action and experimental pop goodness. That should be enough for you.

This tape is limited to 100, but there is SO MUCH MUSIC on it, $8 seems like a steal. Score it from Very Special Recordings, meaning pretty much Ezra himself.

Liz Roberts & Henry Ross – Death Knell
11.27.17 by Ryan Masteller

Liz Roberts and Henry Ross are living the dream. Well, my dream anyway – a dream of getting to dismantle a car, piece by piece, leng t’che via rotary saw and sledgehammer. Total destruction, for fun! And for art. Mostly for fun. Long have I desired to get my hands dirty and just shred whatever vehicle I could get my hands on – there’s just something about the slow carnage of ripping apart an automobile piece by piece that just gets me up in the morning. Is it the allegory to modern life and convenience that the deconstruction of such a symbol represents, the commentary on consumerism and capitalism that invites critical appraisal on such an act? Haha, not for me. For Roberts and Ross, sure. I just like the smashy smashy–ness of it.

But thanks to Roberts and Ross, I can now vicariously experience the disassembly I so long for without my neighbors calling the cops on me in their driveway. The duo “performed” “Death Knell” in the parking lot outside Transformer Station in Cleveland, in association with the Cleveland Museum of Art, and recorded the proceedings via seventy contact microphones positioned over the car and wired into an audio mixer. The result sounds exactly like you would expect – lots of banging and clanging and whatnot. But as the four sides (this is a double cassette release after all) and two hours unfold, the sounds become disembodied from the activity and take on a life of their own, redefining themselves within the scope of ambient and noise music by shifting the focus to texture and the insidious rhythm that intermittently appears. The further you allow your mind to drift from the central conceit, the less obviously “ripping apart a car” it becomes. That’s a neat trick.

Spoiler alert: the car dies at the end, its mangled metal body lying strewn at the feet of the artists-slash-insane mechanics-slash-proto-industrial musicians. So too does our perception of a lot of things, not least of which is the sense of how far one would go to fish out the change just dropped beneath the driver’s seat. There’s literally no limit anymore.

This double C60 comes in an edition of fifty from Unifactor, and it is al…most…gone. Get busy, or get bent.

Faxes – Human Scale
11.16.17 by Ryan Masteller

I mean, why not, right? You got a drum, you got some circuits and some piano keys, let’s just throw em all at a wall and see what sticks. No, literally, do it. The image is in my head, I wanna see it happen…

This is great news when you’ve got as minimal a setup as Faxes does, because you don’t have a lot of stuff to throw at that wall in the first place, so cleanup will be a breeze. Your instruments may be a little more broken, a little more worn, but I’m here to tell you that that’s the whole point with these guys, these Faxes, this PDX duo that clearly owns some Suicide and some Devo and some equally post-punk and new wave records. So yeah, that synth sound is super gritty, and whether they’re banging real drums or banging on a drum machine (just whacking it with a stick, which I’m probably making up) or programming the somewhat battered drum machine, the beats heave like seasick ponies on the ferry from Assateague. They have to get to the mainland somehow, and they have Nationals tickets! (Boo Nationals.)

Perhaps obviously, Faxes make music like fax machines transmit data – the end result may be blurrier than the original, but there’s a positive aesthetic you just can’t deny. (Well, unless you’re faxing me tax documents or something, in which case I need those to be pretty clear. Actually, I’ll go pick those up at my CPA’s office.) There are even vocals here and there, but since you can’t transmit vocals via fax … oh wait, you probably can, that would be a phone line. Anyway, Faxes songs usually introduce a melody, some squiggly shit, maybe some internet dialup texture, the ever-present rhythmic pulse, and then they spiral off into wherever they happen to be heading at any given time. The ride is the payoff – although be warned, that ride often feels like the audio equivalent of frantically throwing your rusted 1979 Chevette into reverse to escape the meat-grinder you’re caught in. That sounds all right to me, sure, but you have to be prepared. Those ponies are NOT gonna help pull you out of here, no matter how off-kilter you get.

Head on over to your friendly SDM Records (aka SadoDaMascus) internet website and pony up the dough (GET IT?) for one of the 100 of these pups in existence. Or all 100, I don’t care – what do I know how much you make.

Regattas – Garudas
11.13.17 by Ryan Masteller

I first encountered the mighty Garuda in Final Fantasy IX, because where the hell else is that gonna happen? Sure, you may have played FFIII or FFVII (and I played VII, OK?), but I remember vividly those encounters in Oeilvert and Esto Gaza where I wasn’t sure if I had enough HP to take on the flying bastards or if I was gonna have to dip into my inventory for an Elixir or a Hi-Potion. (I was always OK.) Now, looking back on it, I wonder if the Garuda shrieked a sound like a strangled saxophone before engaging in battle.

There’s the connection! “Garudas,” besides being the plural form of the name of a terrifying bird monster, is also the title of Sam Hillmer’s first solo tenor saxophone collection, a 2007 release under the name Regattas (which doesn’t really have anything to do with anything else – “regatta” means “a series of boat races). You might recognize Sam from his long-running experimental NYC project Zs, or you might know his work as Diamond Terrifier (and if you don’t, check out “Kill the Self That Wants to Kill Yourself” on Northern Spy, which, ahem, I wrote about once upon a time). “Garudas” even features the debut of the “Diamond Terrifier” concept, as that’s the name of track B3. Does that make this release his Mount Eerie? I don’t even know what that means.

If you’re going anywhere for Hillmer-related business, you’re going for the saxomophone, and “Garudas” is filled to overflowing with brassy goodness. Even back in oh-seven Hillmer was predicting the cornucopia of avant-jazz experimentation that we’re #blessed with today, from Astral Spirits to … Astral Spirits and beyond! (God I love Astral Spirits.) There’s no one with a more tightly controlled grasp on his horn than Hillmer (that came out wrong), and he wields it like a magic weapon, poised to take down in a series of turn-based blows any monstrous fantasy creature that steps out of a forest. Possibly while in Trance. To say that Hillmer is triumphant is as obvious as that saying about bears and the woods and … there’s something they do there … it’s on the tip of my tongue, I don’t quite have it.

So we thank the gods at Shinkoyo that they deemed it necessary to re-release a cassette version of “Garudas” on its tenth anniversary. Snatch one up before they’re gone for good! Or only available digitally! Which nobody wants!