Richmond Tape Club
4.14.14 by Mike Haley

With the third RVA Noise Fest going down this weekend, and the release of volumes 5 – 8 tomorrow, it seems like a fitting time to focus a bit on the Richmond Tape Club. A series of cassettes from RVA noise heads, curated by Jonathan Lee.

Lee introduced the series last year with tapes by Negative Gemini, Slow News Day In The Vampire World, Elian, and his own project Anduin in editions of 30 – 70 copies, and available digitally through Morr Music, as a way to exhibit awesome shit going on in his hometown. “When I was growing up” Lee said “every local band put out demo tapes. Following local demos was a way to look at a community. There’s a lot of great sounds coming out of Richmond and this was an affordable way to showcase them. The physical object connects locally. The digital connects globally”.

“Negative Gemini is the solo electronic project of musician Lindsey French. Using various synths and a vocal loop pedal, she layers new wave-inspired melodies and beats underneath brooding lyrics that become, at times, abstracted into canorous trances amongst ambient shimmer. The result is gloomily bewitching pop landing somewhere between Grimes, Laurel Halo, and Zola Jesus. Hallucinatory and powerfully fun.”

“Slow News Day In The Vampire World is the ambient dub project of recording engineer / producer John Morand and his wife, artist Tara Morand. Mainly utilizing a DJX, drum machine, and turntable, this EP also features edited live inputs from acclaimed artist Stephen Vitiello, Molly Berg, Jonathan Lee (Anduin, Souvenir’s Young America), Bobby Donne (Labradford, Cristal, Pan-American), and Miguel Urbiztondo. Some of these tracks also appear in the Irish horror film Portrait of a Zombie.”

“Created between November 2012 and May 2013, these are the first new tracks from Michael Duane Ferrell’s Elian project since 2011. Originally recorded and arranged on computer, each track was then signaled out to external effects and accompanied by synthesizer. This marks a change in technique from his previous releases on labels like Home Normal, providing a much warmer, fuller sound that’s always changing, never still, and heavily dark. Huge, engrossing dronescapes.”

“Developed from some of the sounds and themes used in a series of installation performances titled “Sketches of the Lesser Death,” these are the first new tracks from Jonathan Lee’s Anduin since 2012’s Stolen Years LP. It’s the beginning of a dream narrative where each song is a chapter, every sound a character in motion. Includes contributions from Stolen Years and Lesser Death collaborator Jimmy Ghaphery on saxophone along with former Souvenir’s Young America mates Graham Scala and Noah Saval on guitar and harmonica respectively.”

The Jcards and system for signifying which volume of the series you’re looking at is pretty sweet. Every Jcard is black with RICHMOND TAPE CLUB on the spine and a snippet of map on the cover. The first four tapes have red squares silk screened on the front, the number of squares being the volume number of that jam. So one square = volume one. Two squares = volume two. You see where this is going, right? Good. The next four modify the theme a touch, stuffing black squares into red squares to get the particular volume number. One large red square with four smaller black squares in it for the fifth in line. Number seven has two red squares, one with a four black squares and the other with one in it. Four red squares, each with it’s own black square is number eight. Good idea, looks dope. I like it.

Volumes 5 – 8, all of which you can order up right now and preview below, will be from Stephen Vitiello, Brandon Hurtado, Mutwawa, and Matt Boettke. The first four, including a 4B addendum by Andiun, are still available. Each cassette in the series will set ya back an measly $5.50 (aka: no brainer). Grip em at SMTG Limited. You also have the option (this week only) to grab the whole digital shebang for a $25 donation to RVA Noise Fest III. Whatever floats your boat, get to work!

 

Jerry Paper And Andy Boay To Split A Cassette
4.10.14 by Mike Haley

April is gonna be a busy month for everyone. With Easter, Record Store Day, and 4/20 all happening in a 48 hour period, who has the time to dick around? One must hide eggs, smoke weed, try to find those eggs, buy an LP reissue you didn’t need, smoke weed, sell that LP reissue on eBay, try to find those eggs, give up on ever finding those eggs, and smoke weed. Plus it’s Confederate History Month AND National Arab American Heritage Month so there’s gonna be a lot of action going on there.

So I wont waste anyone’s time explaining how the Jerry Paper / Andy Boay split C30 (slated for 4/22) is going to be an epic ride or how these two Brooklyn artists are doing something that very few individuals are doing. I wont point out the salt & pepper juxtaposition of their shut-in soundtracks on this sucker. “He seemed so quiet and nice” the neighbors will say. I wont bother you with the details of why they were asked.

And that artwork? I’m not going to gush about that amazing artwork (by Amanda Siegel), not with Earth Day hanging over your shoulders. We just don’t have the time to figure out what the fuck those things are and what they are doing. Dancing? Fighting? I can’t tell and it’s making me feel awkward analyzing it. So just forget about this incredible cassette coming soon from the fine folks at Hausu Mountain. Don’t even bother streaming the preview tracks below. Just get some sleep so you are super fresh for Thai New Year this weekend. I hear shit at The Songkran Festival is gonna be CRAZY, ya’ll’s!

 

Oh, and I just publicly made this pledge. I already regret it.

I promise not to make any Paperboy puns when talking about the Jerry Paper / Andy Boay split, but I wont like it.

— Tabs Out Podcast (@tabsout) April 10, 2014

What A Load Of Shit
4.5.14 by Mike Haley

Internet comments are the heart of the world wide web. Reading the articles then moving on? Watching the videos and enjoying the rest of your day? Ha! I laugh directly into your face, because you, my friend, are a grade A empty head. The comments, you sad fool! The comments is where the honey is. That sweet, golden nectar of the anonymous gods. One of the only places left on this Earth where you can be called a faggot AND a Nazi by the same person for the high crime of posting “I remember this movie when I was a kid” under a Muppets Take Manhattan clip. Oh, the comments. Your rules don’t apply there. No, sir. In the comments the “N” word is currency. The allegation of being sheeple float about like leaves in a spring breeze. Yes. The comments.

It is from that literary utopia that Charles Barabé mined 126 gems left under a video for John Cage’s 62 year old composition 4′33″. He then converted those comments to audio with text-to-speech software and pasted it over ambiance that morphs into churning progressive electronics for his latest track Insultes (hommage à John Cage).  The 19 minute piece (that’s, like, 4x more than Cage pulled off. Suck it, dude) was released late last month on Barabé’s own La Cohu imprint on a split tape with Black Givre in an edition of 24 now sold out copies. If you didn’t have the fast draw necessary to snag a copy of the cassette, the cut is now on bandcamp.

Like all comments left on the net these are great. Some are very basic reactions to Cage’s silence like “Whatever was that, he is an idiot. Fuck you!” and “This is not music” and “What the fuck is this crap” while other commentators spent a little more time and brain power on the subject. Case in point: “This is so fucking gay, what kind of dumb pretentious nerd would like this video. Faggots!”

Ya burnt!

Here is a list of all the comments included on the track. Enjoy!

This is retarded, if I wanted to listen to nothing I would stay home.

Pseudo intellectual hipsters tell me it’s just art with some deep meaning that I don’t comprehend.

People pay money for this?

If you think this is art, you are beyond help.

Complete silence? This is so fucking stupid. I can’t believe people consider this to be masterpiece. LOL.

The same people who revere this stupid shit are the same people who think a blue circle on a yellow background is an Art Masterpiece.

If there really was a God, at 4 :32 he would have killed every single person in that room.

It’s an insult to composers who actually did have their shit together, such as Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, as well as contemporary composers like Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff.

Whatever was that, he is an idiot. Fuck you!

I got the concept in 33 seconds and the rest wasted 4 minutes of life.

This is the most pretentious and stupid thing I’ve ever seen.

Pseudo-intellectual masturbation!

Learning about John Cage at my $30,000+ per-year college, and how the professors just loved his “thinking”, made me seriously question the value of my chosen liberal-arts degree path. Now, being older and wiser, I still feel exactly the same way. Better to learn how to fix air-conditioners than to become this type of “intellectual” navel-gazer, reusing cheap tricks like “listen to the silence” as if he were the first to have the idea.

ANYONE could have created this without training.

FUCK YOU.

Mother of stupidity!

They should boo him.

This is not music; it is a disrespect to all the people who actually love music.

What a real fucking disgraceful piece of shit.

I cant believe people pay to watch this

You sound like a huge pretentious hipster, hope you are proud.

Guess people like you will kiss the butt of any famous faggot out there.

This isn’t art, it’s crap, he just decided to cop out of doing any actual work and crap out some silence on stage and call it a ‘piece’. It’s a piece alright, a piece of crap.

What the fuck is this shit?

Everywhere you go there’s some pretentious bitch trying to defend everything as art.

That felt like modern art… stupid as fuck

The word “pretentious” gets tossed around a lot but this is, without a doubt, the most arrogant, pointless contribution to the 20th century.

Artistic hipster bullshit !

Pretentious bullshit.

People get suckered into all sorts of crap like this and abstract art.

Compose a good piece of music and paint me a picture you avant-garde con men.

The more people accept things like this as artistic, the more crap and money they will make.

This is Shit.

I have nothing but hatred for this man and his so called music.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse.

He had no talent so he resorted to gimmicks like this.

John Cage is laughing in his grave right now that people are taking this seriously

Pretentious faggot !

This is dumb ! It is not music !

This is bullshit !

This is fucking retarded.

All this is unnecessary and pretentious

This is just shit.

The only thing it has going for it is originality and that’s because everyone who thought of it before realised it’s a fucking moronic idea and didn’t do it.

If you think this is good you are a pretentious nood.

The stupidest thing I’ve ever seen

This is one of the most retarded things I’ve ever seen.

This is the worst thing ever composed.

Anyone can do it.

You can say whatever you want, this is just fucking ridiculous.

This is pretentious garbage at it’s worst. This is like someone putting up a blank canvas and calling it art, or a book of 1000 empty pages and calling it poetry.

This is one of the most RIDICULOUS thing I have ever seen in my entire life.

Anyone complimenting this piece of crap is just eating up the BULLSHIT of this performance.

This is pretentious crap.

Worst piece of modern art ever.

4 minutes and 33 seconds of my life wasted.

Fuck this shit, it doesn’t have any sense. Who the fuck would do that?

How this can be considered a piece of art? Anyone can make this.

Fuck this shit.

Did they have to pay to watch this shit ?

This is not music, this is not a composition.

If you think this has any merit whatsoever, you should not be able to breed.

What a waste of fucking time.

This is total crap.

A lack of art is simply not art. Anyone could put there name to silence.

It is shit like this which gives a bad name to modern art and makes people unwilling to explore the good stuff which is hidden under mountains of uninspired nonsense.

I know that, ultimately, these ridiculous creations are supposed to raise the question of what Art is, but whatever it is, it is not this. I don’t expect all music to be along the lines of Tchaikovsky’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ overture, nor do I expect all paintings to be in the same vein of Picasso, but this just pisses me off. The audience is applauding nothing!

Stupidest thing I have every seen.

Hope the audience didn’t have to pay to hear silence.

This was shit.

I’d rather watch grass grow.

Even I could’ve played that.

John Cage was the greatest troll in the history of man.

What a pretentious douche.

Fuck it. Waste of time.

Dude. Fuck you

This is not music.

That’s America. It’s all about reputation. They destroy the integrity and authenticity of art.

If I did a song like that it would be “crap”, “boring” and “sums you up”.

One of the points of the composition is telling that music is sound, and sound has nothing to do with art.

What a waste of fucking time.

John Cage: The troll of the classical world.

This is not music, c’mon !

I’ve taken shits with more meaning than this.

I won’t try to give this a meaning. To me it’s totally bullshit.

What the fuck is this crap.

It’s definitely not music.

Fuck me, I have wasted precious minutes just to watch this shit!

This is not music that is cultural poverty.

What a load of shit.

Just self indulgence

This is a man sitting at a piano doing nothing for 4 1/2 minutes. Him trying to justify his pretention by saying that music is all around us we just have to listen is insulting to peoples intelligence, he pretended he was the only person on planet earth to have that thought.

Anyone could do this.

I’m pretty sure you’re one of those types of hipster that would consider a lump of steaming shit ‘art’ if John Cage took one in front of you.

And of course YOUR intelligence is automatically correct simply because someone convinced you of bullshit. Meanwhile, I’m sitting here watching you say that DOING NOTHING is a sign of intelligence, asking myself exactly what kind of brain damage you must have to come to that stellar conclusion. Don’t expect to convince me you’re anything MORE than some dumb cultist with that kind of “logic”. I don’t have to doubt my intelligence when I have fuckwits like you to compare it to.

What’s offensive to me is the navel-gazing full-of-themselves-itude that’s driving these art snobs to jerk each other off and call the absence of something to be art.

Now bow down and suck my dick in the face of that artistic application of pure Logic.

He’s basically ‘challenging’ the idea of art by not doing shit, because he knows that people will kiss his ass for doing so.

This is so fucking gay, what kind of dumb pretentious nerd would like this video. Faggots!

John cage is an ass hole.

Artists decide what art is, and if you disagree, you don’t understand art. Perfect incestuous circular argumentation. The solution is to break the circle: self-proclaimed artists don’t decide what art is.

This shit is RIDICILOUS there are people on this planet who have nothing and are starving and then there is people like this weirdo claiming that this is music or art.

We are just as sad as him for wasting precious minutes watching and commenting on this crap when those minutes could be spent appreciating what we have or enjoying every second of this privileged life that we have. Life is worth so much more than 4 minutes and 33 seconds of utter fucking shit.

Pretentious motherfuckers.

I am a fairly open minded guy but in my opinion this is just bullshit.

Seriously, this is total crap.

Probably the most retarded thing I’ve ever came across.

The emperor has no clothes. You’re telling me that the emperor’s wonderful new attire, visible only by connoisseurs of Art, is sparking a debate. The guy is fucking NAKED. It isn’t cynicism, it’s me reacting correctly and justifiably in the face of outright stupidity. No music is not music. Not collecting stamps isn’t a goddamn hobby. Defending this guy’s do-nothing composition is just art snobs jerking each other off. Which part of this is too difficult to understand?

What the fuck is this?

I’ve wasted 5 minutes of my life.

Tell me, how is it art?

Nothing cannot equal something. Mathematically, logically, not-being-a-pretentious-fuckwit-cultist-ally: four and a half minutes of silence is not art, and the universe doesn’t bend over backwards and sodomize itself with its tongue merely because some guy called John Cage won some prizes. You guys are drunk on bullshit.

What a pretentious prick.

This is no music you fucking retard; its the worst shit I’ve ever listened to.

What the fuck is this. Is it serious? This is NOT music; this is “recording the ambient noise”. In no way this is a song. You can use those sounds to create a song, but this guy is not. It’s noise, not music.

It is simply a test to see how freaking pretentious you are.

Big piece of Crap. Nonsense.

Guys like this and Jackson Pollock are a bunch of posers who get gratification from the fact that idiots will fawn over what ever crap they pull out of their asses.

This is so retarded. And the worst part is that they teach this in colleges around the country. If john cage was in front of me, I’d punch his hipster-pioneering face in.

Is this supposed to be funny?

Nihilist garbage.

This is for dumb people who think they’re smart.

I am a fan of classical music, but this piece sucks balls.

Clearly a case for the asylum.

When did silence become art? Don’t you have to actually have some skill to be an artist?

What is the point?

Absolutely pathetic load of rubbish.

Am I missing something?

Yes you are asshole!

 

note: comments here have been disabled

Introducing Mope Lounge
4.3.14 by Mike Haley

Self released split cassettes in editions of 50 are a dime a dozen (10 dimes to Canada, 25 dimes worldwide). This split cassette in an edition of 50 copies is well worth your coinage. “Introducing Mope Lounge” is a shared C32 between former First-Stater / current Big Apple dweller Mike Nigro, appearing here as Nigro, and Philly fella Zak Krone, doing things as Endless Bummer.

The Nigro track “Shallow Pools” is a surge of processed synth toeing the line between vitriol and harmony. One of those jams where most of the wav form probably looks like a block a cheese but the sounds are still way engaging. Sort of like an aged gouda. Mike’s also got some grapes and crackers on the plate, and not just some Wheat Thins. The good shit. It’s a cordial spread. Eat up:

Endless Bummer serves up a contrasted hors d’oeuvre. Sometimes it’s surf rock, but for the surfing Snake Plissken does in Escape From LA. It’s raw. It’s got an eye patch. Fucking Steve Buscemi can’t believe it. A mollifying ambiance and Charles Manson soundbites are threaded throughout. Makes for an interesting 16 minutes and a pleasurable partner to the A side.

Head over to either Nigro or Endless Bummer‘s Bandcamp to grab a copy for $7.00. That is 70 dimes for you math fanatics out there.

Laser Focus #5: Mistake By The Lake
4.1.14 by Tabs Out

With heavy hometown pride Mistake By The Lake has been a Cleveland noise staple for over seven years now. Their releases have mainly been by local heads like Skin Graft, Tusco Terror, Rot Ton Bone, and Relentless Corpse and nearby Midwestern jammers like Wolf Eyes and Andrew Coltrane. We caught up with label head Andrew Kirschner and talked about MBTL’s early days, his mind/body/soul hiatus from the imprint, and recent return to the dedication or pumping out bleak, rust belt (and now worldwide) sounds. Find out where the label is headed, if Kirschner needs to poop in a bag for the rest of his life, and how he ruins everyone’s chill times at the Hanson Records store. Plus some tapes!

The tapes we played:

Andrew Kirschner from split C20 w/ Oneohtrix Point Never (2008)
Oneohtrix Point Never from split C20 w/ Andrew Kirschner (2008)
David Russell from “Catholic Guilt” C20 (2010)
Reluctance “Weary Souls On Troubled Soil” C30 (2013)
Aaron Dilloway from “All Of Them Spies” C30 (2013)
Moltar “Oval Encounters” C40 (2014)

LISTEN AT TINY MIX TAPES!

Spring Action From Los Discos Enfantasmes
4.1.14 by Ian Franklin

Things exist in the smallest minutiae we can’t imagine. Little scuzzy organisms are crawling around your insides and that’s a good thing! Hidden universes are created and destroyed everyday in our simple, breathing bodies. We create and observe our own minutiae of universal destruction. In the four new releases from Montreal based Los Discos Enfantasmes, the artists expertly capture their own unique micro-universes for us to observe.

“The Mind Is An Ancient Capital” (C65) is the first in a trilogy of releases from Italian noise veteran Maurizio Bianchi and UK’s Roadside Picnic, diving deep into our microscopic mind ooze. Webs of breathy static drones permeate through outlying crops of nerve impulses and broken synapses. Cautious currents drift through the maleable tension as we fall deeper into our own unknown. (C-65 premium BASF – Emtec Chrome tape, white shell. Pro dubbed, in real time. Professionally printed j-card with front die-cut. Edition of 120. Includes a download code.)

 

Bob Bellerue is no stranger to combing the recesses of the mind. Having recorded and released music for the past 20+ years he is a seasoned voyager of the head space and a frequent destroyer of worlds. “Cure the Antidote” (C39) is a collection of previously released and new material scourged from all manner of recordable objects. Blinding static walls are cut together with fractional interjections of textual imagery only to be dismissed by raging mid-level burning hiss. An entropic collection of displaced images. (C-39 premium BASF – Emtec Chrome tape, lavender . Pro dubbed, in real time. Two professionally printed j-cards with front die-cut in editions of 60 each . Includes a download code.)

 

“Defects of a Crystal Lattice” (C24) from Ames Sanglantes explores the illusory structure of a system while exploiting it’s flaws. This brewing cauldron of digital undergrowth boils over and over itself continuously flowing in the never ending structure of the formula. White-noise blasts flow next to distorted low frequencies. Pulsating rumbles dance with bubbling hills and valleys of surging electrons. (C-24:30 premium BASF – Emtec Chrome tape, black shell. Pro dubbed, in real time. Professionally printed j-card with front die-cut. Edition of 120. Includes a download code.)

 

Anton Mobin’s “Silniejszym Od Bomb” (C65) presents two sides of Mobin’s auditory memories while traveling from his native country of France to Warsaw, Poland in 2013. Featuring spliced together sound fragments from a micro-cassette recorder, musical ideas, spoken phrases, wildlife calls, and the reverberations of different locations along the journey establish a journalistic collection of experience. A mystifying collage of personal exploration. (C-65:30 premium BASF – Emtec Chrome tape, white shell. Pro dubbed, in real time. Professionally printed j-card with front die-cut. Edition of 120. Includes a download code.)

 

These are all available right now from the label individually or in a discounted batch deal. Reissues on the horizon from Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Drainolith, Les momies de Palermes, and Le fruit vert.

 

Once, Twice, Three Times A Bromp Treb
3.31.14 by Mike Haley

Neil Young Cloaca has been greasing the weird wheels for about a dozen years now under the Bromp Treb name, releasing a respectable amount of jams and bouncing about playing gigs. He actually just wrapped up a tour, The Spring Tickles Tour to be exact, which had the best ever promo trailer vid made up for it in the history of promo trailer vids. Brompie did up three cassettes before leaving for said trip, all now available to stream / purchase.

Warning: These are true mutant sounds. Tape collages, battered objects, jello gardens wiggling sound about. It tends to get weird in there in the best possible ways. All three lil’ buggers were dubbed in real time on chrome tapes in editions of 50 copies. Go go go go go go go go get em!!!

Tranquility To Help You Thaw Out
3.10.14 by Ian Franklin

If you’re anything like me, the past few months have been tough ones.  It’s been a long winter.  Here in Delaware, the third highest snowfall totals ever recorded have helped keep this season packed in tight among the icy snow dunes and hibernating in the arctic chill.  But fear not! The good people at Tranquility Tapes know our burdens and have heard our cries for help, dropping a fresh new batch of winter warmers to carry you through the last fleeting dregs of Jack Frost’s icy grip.

First up is Andreas Brandal’s new offering “Hidden Rooms”, a heavy dose C40 of shifting synth and guitar textures combining acoustic and electric sources along with terrific effects processing.  Producing a really well-balanced and varied total, these tracks flow along with assured direction, seamlessly blending in electronic timbral changes that enhance the ever moving ebb and flow.  Incredibly strong release from this ambient veteran.

Up next is Glass House’s “Keeping To The Void” C44, the group’s first solo exploration for Tranquility after a split last year with Even The Dew Is Porous.  I honestly don’t know if this is a group or a single person project, but I’m assuming it’s a group because the depth and scope of these tracks are larger than I would expect one person to bring forth.  Huge flowing curtains of resonating synth cascade over endless lapis colored oceans, shimmering brilliant in the afternoon setting sun.  Beautifully transcendent channels of open expanse.

Halfway thawed out, we arrive at the next release with Bedroom’s new C44 “Shade & System”, this synth explorer’s 4th release for Tranquillity.  Brimming over with evolving analog synth shimmer and drift, these pieces unfold and reflect like gleaming prisms illuminating a dark room.  Added to the mix are wonderfully interspersed vocal elements, arpeggiated flourishes, and moments of focused percussion, giving full 3d life to these blissed out sonic journeys.

Last, but certainly not least, a self titled C91 from Cask, a group made up of UK all stars in the ambient/drone dimension: Chris Gowers (of Signals, and Rome Pays Off), Alex Smalley and Simon Bainton (both in Pausal, as well as extensive solo careers), and Katie English (Isnaj Dui).  Right off the bat you know this one is going to be good, and lemme tell you, it doesn’t disappoint.  Over a huge amount of material, these 4 musicians weave a brilliant tapestry of gorgeous color and texture,  producing ultimately sublime drone which blooms into the brightest radiance.   Begging repeated listens to grasp the full scope, these tracks glow and radiate like massive boulders that have soaked up a day of bright sunlight, retaining their bright glow through the advance of the dark and chilly night.

But the morning will come.  And the sun will rise and rise again till a new season takes it’s hold.  Luckily we’ll have these auditory harbingers to help us see our way through.  Stream selections from all four releases below, and watch a short preview clip for Glass House’s release, and look for all of these on sale from Tranquility tomorrow (Tuesday, March 11th).

Tranquility Tapes Bandcamp
Tranquility Tapes Blogspot
Tranquility Tapes on Twitter

Soundtrack For A Non-Existing Medical Film
3.9.14 by Mike Haley

Every wonder what it would sound like if the pink slime from Ghostbuster 2 got into musique concrète? No? You’ve NEVER wondered that? Not even in the wake of Harold Ramis’ death?! Okay, I suppose some of us just have more respect for the dead than others. Either way, it seems like you’ll get a good taste of what that may have sounded like from this upcoming collaboration on Jehu And Chinaman. Due out March 17th on J&C is a cassette by Tanner Garza and Pharmakustik called “Pleuraraum”. Garza, a member of Black Leather Jesus, released a killer collection of tape loops called “Lucid” not that long ago. You can read some of my thoughts about it on Ad Hoc. Siegmar Fricke, aka Pharmakustik, has been manipulating sound since the early 80’s in solo form and collabs with Maurizio Bianchi and others. Garza hooked up Fricke with some of his unreleased loops. From there Fricke “tried to realize a mix of constantly morphing sound-events within the microscopic ambiance” creating what he refers to as “a kind of soundtrack for a non-existing medical film”. Judging by the lurching, sopping sample (below) I think that goal was achieved.

Find out a bit about both artists, and this project, in the Jehu And Chinaman Artist Interview Series after scoping a video preview of the tape here:

 

Preorder Obsolete Unit’s First Offerings Of 2014
3.5.14 by Mike Haley

So most of the emails I get are about P1lls to Enlerge my P3nis, which is cool. I’m totally cool with that. But today came an electronic correspondence of a different nature. It had nothing to do with enlerging my p3nis, though the subject line did feature words that I assumed were also misspelled. Yek Koo? Guzo? Zaïmph? Bro, can you even enlerge a zaïmph?!

The email was from Oakland’s Obsolete Units informing the world that it could pr3order their first tapes of 2014. Those tapes are as follows:

A collaboration C30 between Marcia Bassett and Helga Fassonaki’s projects Zaïmph & Yek Koo titled “L’interieur De La Vue” (Google Translate: Interior Of View).

Another collaboration between Smegma side orders The Tenses (Jackie Stewart & Ju Suk Reet Meate) and Guzo (Madelyn Villano). That one is a 48 minute rager called “Full-On Rager”.

And last but not least a C20 from Canadian mellow harsher K.M. Toepfer called “Instigate”. No samples for this tape are on the OU site, but you can check out KM’s Soundcloud for some jamage. When I played some my three year old threw up all over the place. Was it caused by Toepfer’s shrill, choppy noise blasts or the fact that Tabitha skipped lunch and chugged a hot chocolate? I’m just Dad Of The Year, not a fucking pediatrician, so I have no clue. Just check it out.

All tapes are $7.00 ppd (more if you live in a lesser nation than Jesus’ favorite USA) and ship March 11th. Get to work!