Natural Dice – s/t

11.4.22 by Matty McPherson

Dan Melchoir is a phenomenally busy type of guitarist. Releases of any and all calibers have popped up across an underground network with striking consistency on the annual. Yet, Melchoir’s most accomplished releases of the decade have been time-aversive ruminations. Cudighi’s one-two knockout of Odes and (the even more warped) Other Odes presented an image of a guitarist decades into his career contemplating and grieving with guitar and 4-track lo-fi karaoke machine recording offered candlelit, insular paeans. That he opted to let the pieces linger and simmer for years, avowing them of one context and thrsuting them towards another, suggested a new process of songwriting that could be fleshed out in the future. A year of instrumental guitar tape trading with Jason Henn presented such an opportunity with their self-titled tape under the Natural Dice moniker back in March, released on Radical Documents.

The tape j-card doesn’t tell you name of these cuts across the C36. The Bandcamp legitimately just separates the tracks as two side long pieces with 5 songs for the front side, 4 for the back. But I don’t really think we need to know names here. For, the process of the overdub is really quite simple. One gentleman graces one style of guitar chugging and the other gentleman responds with his style of choice accordingly. For both individuals, the goal is both to either maintain a drawling, lucid rhythm OR entertain the possibility of upending their partner’s riff with their own slick left-turns (noise, organ, angular guitar chord). For both, this presents itself with a myriad of possibilities that do not quite stick to one definitive style. As a result, Natural Dice has a gracious, personable characteristic. We really are just hearing two guitar brethren send each other messages and try to see what might be referenced or contemplated, and from there what is “realized.” The tape may be dated back to early spring, but it’s carries with it the gusto of a low-winter-sun that’s so appealing right now.

It’s a style of playing that probably evokes a greater realm of sounds somewhere between 90s New Zealand guitar tinkering (think Roy Montgomery’s Kranky releases or Drag City’s essential I Hear the Devil Calling Me 7″) and doom metal. It only takes a few minutes of Side A (Inorganic Shuttlecock) for this approach to unleash a drone folk and noise jam freakout that proves that rather well. Wisps meanwhile, hushes down to a just Mark Hollis’ “play one note well” approach as one of the duo loops a singular chord that sounds of Runeii in acetate demo formation. “Convenient Amnesia” is borderline Labradfordian, with a droning organ invoking wide desolations as one chord being strung producing an affect akin to hearing a train cross the tracks. Schweik, which closes Side A, in particular captures both guitarists chewing on a classic doom-laden drone that gives a metallic bent to the dusty folk.

Side B’s more precocious and graceful. Underneath a low-end stuttered rhythm, edges of reverb produce melodic, sun-drenched tones through “The Genesis Restaurant.” All the while, a spoken word sample flickers as if its coming from a nitrate film print one room over. Definitive highlight “Dailies -> Song for Snacks” follows next, a raucous, bluesy 75 Dollar Bill-style guitar piece of two mavericks clashing. Each taking their respective halves to construct an exponential realization that ruminates and chews the scenery when it’s not in the nitty gritty downtime. It’s that middle spot that suddenly sees saloon piano keys enter across the edges of the mix and the drone become stretched to jumbo size, evoking High Aura’d. Final closer, “The Speed Bag Bible” legit could have closed Gonerfest 19, a perfect jam and victory capper to the litany of sounds offered up.

Edition of 100 Limited Edition Cassettes available at the Radical Documents Bandcamp Page

Cole Pulice – Scry

11.2.22 by Matty McPherson

I am still most fascinated about Cole Pulice’s approach to an oatmeal breakfast. Whereas many of us look at the template and decree “Sweeten it! Throw down chocolate or brown sugar!” Cole instead considers how a savory mending of flavors (kale and garlic cloves) can open a new pathway from a rigidity set tradition. It’s the same base but a whole new class of thinking.

Pulice’s music has a variety of tags and eccentricities that as well, expand our ways of thinking. The kinds that lightfully tease and playfully stretch the ways in which one can approach their digitally processed saxophone recordings. We’ve seen their work in two labels and one consistent collaborator (Lynn Avery, aka Iceblink) that seems to be fostering these sounds with a curious open heart: Orange Milk and Moon Glyph. For the former label, the LCM Signal Quest tape of fall 2020 is perhaps the greatest introductory text into the world of “goo core”: noise being approached like bright, malleable plato instead of crushing, carbon-black steel. For the latter label, Pulice has been tied to “ambient jazz,” a moniker that moonlights more as a non-de-plume for people who need a shorthand to easily establish more free-form, textured recordings that just happen to be based around synthesizers and brass instrumentation.

That isn’t to say that the work Pulice has been doing over the past 2.5+ years, which has slowly teeterd out at the behest of delays or other discrepancies, does not intersect with a jazz context. Their CV on the Moon Glyph label–features on Lynn Avery’s 2020 Iceblink LP, their blissed out duo tape from February, and Pulice’s previous solo album, all albums that timespend and pitch shift reliable jazz contexts into personable, warped adventures. All of these releases have been quite exceptional in their ability to “zone”. Yet Pulice’s latest, Scry, is the first release where I feel as if the Oakland/Minneapolis artist has hit a tremendous stride in capturing the blissful quirks of digitally processed saxophone and (wind) synthesizer that imagines a true open world.

Scry’s near-three year development, articulated into the C28’s 8 cuts, willfully invokes 20th century electroacoustic mavericks. Hassell, Behrman, Oliveros, Budd, Brown, & Payne are all alluded to as points of interest. Pulice’s fascination with the mending of hardware and software found in these maverick’s projects inspired themself to create their own pedal board set-up where they are able to control the signal processing in-real time. Even still, Pulice’s approach is deeply playful and jubilant, not merely attuned to just perfoming a tribute as a stock classicist would. Within this approach Pulice parallels the nativity and utilitarian awe of those electroacoustic pioneers, capturing lightning in a bottle experiments and balladry that eclipses kankyō ongaku.

One humongous factor that simultaneously separates Pulice from the classics and advances their own electroacoustic vision is their devout adherence to a “gamer logic”, as it could be dubbed. The lad carries a knowledge base and dedication to the run of 90s Square SNES and PS1 RPGs. I would not be surprised if they have spent time in video game worlds just in awe of the pixels. The quips of Square’s detailed sound design are reflected in Cole’s own, sometimes within the brief sleights that occupy 4 tracks or as a feature of a main piece. The titles of side A opener HP / MP and side B opener Moon Gate Rune are not jargons but bristlings and twinkly baroque stage setters. Their brevity carries the speed and fluidity of scrolling through a video game menu screen, loading up and customizing all the options. Another brevitous cut, Driftglass warps one out of wherever they are to a hilltop of delicate spirally, minimal textures. Spool is as gaseous and droney as the tape functions at, still inquisitive and carrying all the hallmarks of traversing an open-air bazaar in a port district. These four shorter pieces are not interludes though, moreso earnestly cunning improvisations that gesture towards the thrill of being lost in role-playing.

There are still, mesmerizing songs and goodness! These compositions are akin to a fall vacation in any futuristically fictive way or fact-laden nostalgic past. Astral Cowpoke is defined by its steady drum machine track as Pulice’s saxophone squiggles around into unwieldy sound tornadoes–all the while, small flickers of gurgling bass or chipper “secret collect!” noises reflect the most brilliant serendipitous moments of finding yourself in a strange place. City in a City rivals Patrick Shiroishi at his most revelrous. Stripping back the digital processing, Pulice lets a simple piano loop and bassline be the framework as their saxophone strikes up a watercolor still life of domestic bliss: quiet kitchen cooking, frivolous boyish activities, and a sapphire blue sky are all images one could deduce from the Fuubutsushi-adjacent recording. Glitterdark subtracts the saxophone (or purposely warps one looping sound out of it) in lieu of pushing forth a synthesizer at its most revenant. It can recall grandiose cathedrals as much as time scanning Forerunner databases.

That brings us to the closing title track. At once its Pulice’s most meat n’ potatoes composition, the one that could distinctly have fit on a previous of their Moon Glyph endeavors. It moves hypnotically, teasing out small tantalizing quips within the sound design while allowing the quiet, personal warmth of their saxophone to foreground the track in a bliss state. About halfway, a lulling, softly wonky loop creates a percussive beat that every element seems to respond and move to, if not outright…yearn for. It’s rare that an amalgamation of sound, stripped back and analyzed part by part, reveals each sound fitting like puzzle pieces. They do not just quite ache to be pieced together, but to amount to a paean for seeing a future. And Scry really do be crystalline gazing into a future.

Pro-dubbed cassette, imprint, sticker, full color artwork available from the Moon Glyph Bandcamp

Muave – IMAGINARY

It’s nearing another big number (400 to be precise), and Already Dead remains a most dedicated (domestic) label when it comes to a consistent barrage of new sounds; from whatever is happening anywhere at any time, really. It’s a bonafide minor league where the beauty of its variety keeps my eyes opened. Anything can catch me. Case in point: the label opened 2022 with an immediate leftfield and most welcome zoner that captured a real slice of a moment. Muave’s Imaginary. Returning alum, Nandele Maguni, finds himself in a trio with Chris Born and João Roxo during a live performance at the Gala Gala Festival in Maputo, just a little more than a year ago.

Maguni’s been developing beats for an era; earliest I’ve seen of his uploaded them to Bandcamp dating back to 2013. He’s worked in and around the coastal capitol of Moçambique, Maputo, and its scene of electronic music, with a speciality pushed towards tactical refinements of trap. He’s denoted trap as a “warrior sound” The pulse of the Africa. Interviews with Maguni reflect a person who has a dedicated ear and pulse to the modern sounds of Maputo–traffic and coal carts, industrialization and street culture. It’s a dedicated, craft for Maguni that he brings a swiftly resilient and consistent process to. In one interview, he claimed that once a beat is done, after a few tweaks he moves on. This can make for bonafide bangers, but his under praised Plafonddeinst tape for Already Dead back in 2020 revealed his capacity for ambience and transitory affairs. The Muave trio actively twerk with that vision, adding in an extra laptop and a whiff of ambient keys that present delirious, multifaceted soundscapes.

Perhaps this is because the trio are able to squeeze a lot of finesse and push them into time-bending loops out of their four main pieces on the tape. Each one is a sort of quadrant this sound can tackle, all built around trap’s mechanics, but now pitched shifted and warped into ambient big bass chill out, acid techno gone wonky, street-level dub of a most industrial accord, and longform club DJ bangers. Opening fourteen minute cut, S701 Noise, brings around late 80s synth bass (enough to recall Massive Attack’s Five Man Army), glitched out space electronics, and just a pulsing trap line that’s swinging and grounding all of those elements. The cut’s pulse is sinister and riveting even as it harkens to a chill out room. Born and Roxo slowly tease out soundscapes and let them, confidently evolve into a pervasive dub fog. Ambient trap can be a detailed listen.

It can also just be a fun as hell one; Nalombo is a steady 7 minute absolute pout of amped up boppin’ bliss. The video linked below of Maguni is absolutely wonderful; a euphoria and ecstatic charisma hangs over his face of what shenanigans the trio just cracked themselves into. The whole thing looks considerably “hype,” recalling his rooftop sampling and display of FRESH beats in you can find online. 09 00 24 builds from the ground up, with nature samples and wind instruments setting a stage for those lime green tasty synths from before with a slick low end of trap rhythm that hit with a punching bag knockout. It’s sounds like a flowing trance state for the trio. Enough to knock psychedelic void energy on knockout “final boss” of a closer. Motorcycles, static electricity, whistles, alarms; all tied together by dub texture. The immediacy of the tantalizingly metallic trap percussive sounds come out on the laptop, but the tape listen over speakers continued in that ambient-esque lineage. Truly a blessed release.

VERY Limited Cassette & VHS, as well as a Bundle of the two are available at the Already Dead Bandcamp & Already Dead Tapes Webstore

Ian MacPhee – Everything

10.7.22 by Matty McPherson

Ventura art space show with a five band bill can put you in contact with a lot of chaps. Had a moment to catch up with my two favorite Cal Arts oriented Flenser-core acts: Sprain (LP2 one day in another dimension) and Drowse (who is currently working on a doctorate there in performing arts; rock on sir). Both continuing to evolve as humans and refine their own documentations of 2020s era decrepit mindsets and botched pathways to human transcendence; alright that’s just a fancy way for me to say “I think their doom-laden sounds hit the q-zone for what DIY can provide at the moment.” Anyways, one of the chaps on the bill was Ian MacPhee. He’s done an ample job keeping one ear tethered to the world of Moon Glyph, Aural Canyon, HausMo, Orange Milk, and other ambience in Simi Valley, a special kind of suburban dystopia.

Everything is MacPhee’s C20ish demo release (2 tracks on Bandcamp, with a third bonus on the tape), likely the first sounds he’s decided to amply share with the world. “Line 6 DL4, Yamaha Portasound, the sounds outside my house [in Simi Valley, CA].” that’s the template he’s serving on. It likely deserves a home in your collection if you have a heart for “freeway ambience” and “subterranean overpass rave.” Seriously, that’s the best way I can describe the longforms and the surprisingly detailed short rave single that interludes between them. The title track lands somewhere between whatever maverick energy Jefre Cantu-Ledesma found himself nestled with on the radiant longform work of Tracing Back the Radiance. Seriously, just imagine a gargantuan six lane interstate carrying you out of the SFV by moonlight. MacPhee might as well have, taking a mix of chill out room ambience (from small electronic squiggles to field recordings) and pouring it into a soft yet powerfully radiating guitar drone. It’s the whole framework of the Side A longform, those chords played out like a series of deep breaths, longing to glide off towards somewhere far away.

Meanwhile, “LEAVING” opens side 2 as a rather enigmatic ethereal near-rave soundscape. Guitar reverb mended by murky drum machines that sound like they were captured from one flooded basement over; all the while the edges of the sound frizzle and fry. It’s a memory of an energy flash more than a snapshot of a rave outright, a fantastic proof of concept for where MacPhee could well end up on his next release. Shame it can only sustain itself for three-ish minutes, as that frizzle sudden deteriorates the ferric until it just swallows itself whole, but then again that’s what makes it such a potent track. Spring pt. 2 appears to close at the tape; it’s the most straightfoward ambient cut as well as a bit of a ghostly sound hunt. MacPhee teases small glimmers of feedback while a strange, squiggly aberration tip toes across the frequencies. It ebbs and flows, using small impasses of noise as if to suggest a tension. Although its quick fade out perhaps leaves the track as is, more a suggestion of what’s to come than a full blown assault.

Limited run of hand dubbed cassettes, design by Jeremy Colegrove, available at the Ian MacPhee Bandcamp page

Invertebrates – Demo

10.3.22 by Matty McPherson

If my brother is sending me a punk tape and I really haven’t a proper clue of what Im to do with it, I let it sizzle. I’d dub this an act of tender love and affection, but the truth is I should of had six minutes sooner! if you have six minutes, you should just do the right thing and take every tape as a study break from real work–enough to study those differences between the shades of hardcore punk; this is real scholarly activity that puts you on the level of Zorn! Such was the case with my excursion listening to Invertebrates, a Richmond, VA based punk quartet that my brother happened to make posters for and somehow knew to save me a tape. Thanks brother, I dearly appreciated this.

Anyways, with limited promotion, Raleigh, NC-based label Sorry State Records and Invertebrates seemed to quickly and quietly sell out of two runs of tapes for this demo. Exactly what was the fuss? Well Chubb, Merm, Jerry, and Minx–some of which are members of Public Aid and “NC punk legends WRIGGLE”–hashed out a bonafide burst of hardcore, pristine ’82 vintage energy; any SST tape hound who thinks “Spot-handshake deal” production is the pinnacle of guitar music will find joy in these 4 cuts. They screen printed the tapes, with slight deviations between the covers. It’s a power move that genuinely indicates “this ain’t no crapshoot, but a quality product that is one of a kind and yours to cherish.”

Over the course of nearly six minutes, the quartet hit the ground with mad-capper energy, power chords, and an unwieldy good time. It’s not so much that this does extend quite well to the pits of Gonerfest or the pages of Maximum Rock n’ Roll, but that these little energy burst is primed and directed with finesse. Clearly, these 4 tracks are explosive, but its a precise “carpet-bomb” type of explosion they burst out. Even while all the cuts are kept to the red (with vocals delivered over a collect call line from hell), there’s a significant push-and-pull melody that keeps a zany, unkempt swagger; the kind that ebbs and flows enough to tell that even if the guitar is slashing and going “AWOOGA,” its the drums who run the tempo and dictate the direction. Such is in particular on Shit Pit’s devious breakdown and shotgun rush blast beats that practically kick the tempo up high enough to force the guitar solo to speed up.

Demo sold out at all sources, although it remains name your price, with all proceeds going to the Richmond Reproductive Freedom Project. Chip in, won’t you?

Yes Selma – Dulce en Rune

9.21.22 by Matty McPherson

Chad Beattie’s Yes Selma project is self-described as “the musical vehicle of expression.” Recorded near the start of the year, the multi-instrumentalist creates his own, jubilant one-man orchestras. It’s a joyous ruckus that layers and loops these swap meet sorts of worlds; beautiful treasures hidden amongst the junkers. It’s music that feels as out of time as Dead Can Dance or the folk traditions Power/Rollins and other collaborators nestle into.

An opening field recording is practically a red herring, masking what is a wicked round of hammered dulcimer or glockenspiel driven music. It has that feeling that can summon fall festivities–like Heron’s increasingly radiant instrumentation (and synthesizer usage), or go deep into reminiscents of gothic cathedrals and graveyards, like on Crow. There, the clank of a ritualistic percussive and salon piano eat the world whole. One Red Bird twinkles whilst an alto sax solo from what sounds of an underground cave throws in a rustic quality to the recently designated ambient jazz buzz. But even this song’s spirit is not wallpaper, but horse! Side A closes with Dix Creek Blues, featuring a lovely, fluid performance from the only other musician on this tape, one Creek.

Side A’s amalgamation of ideas does give way to the utter beauty and simplicity of Side B. Snow is Falling is Asheville is simply that, a delicate dance of the hammered dulcimer and twinkling glockenspiel that fulfills a pastoral fantasy. A motorik, droned impulse channels through the piece that puts it in line as a spiritual cousin to Bulbis’ masterful paeans to lockdown. However, Beattie truly comes into their own with Blue Ridge. Here, the hammered dulcimer’s tuning gives it an imagined regionality to its sound as a few key keys of a piano are repeated as if to invoke a stately presence. It rattles with a regenerative spirit, the energy of a blessed fall harvest being celebrated with dance and bountiful feast. Needless to say, I hadn’t anticipated such an otherworldly yet plainspoken affair to find its way into my walkman. But as it goes.

Dulce en Rune is available in the ever-useful cassette format. Layout by David Van designs. Chrome tape is forever. Limited Edition