3.29.22 by Jacob DeRaadt

Record loops, intentional or not, are one of my favorite elements in experimental music. The first time I heard NON’s Pagan Muzak on YouTube, I was hooked. Other discoveries like Gum, Ironing, and AMK solidified my love for this facet of repurposed consumer goods. I even flirted with aspirations of becoming a hip hop DJ scratcher in my early twenties. So going into this tape I wasn’t a newcomer to this corner of the sound universe.

The opaline keyboard textures of “Pygmalion” collide with short loops that cut in and out of the mix in a disorienting fashion before the listener is pounded by short rhythmic loops on top of an A.M. static salad (Anyone remember that project A.M. Salad?). “Styled” has a lot of old fashioned stylus abuse going on and flanged snapshots of bygone eras. Lots of movement, asymmetry, and outsider art scratching. 

The personality on the second side, “Out of Vogue,” is much closer to my experience with Wolfgang Voigt’s project Gas, where reverb drenched loops hover unchanging for long periods of time. This one really gets me in the zone.

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3.22.22 by Jacob DeRaadt

Okay, let’s make one thing clear: I love field recordings coupled with synthesis, whether they contrast or compliment one another. So it was no surprise that I found most of the tracks on this tape (a benefit for ending violence/incarceration against Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people) to be right up my alley. One of the cliched criticisms leveled at this genre is that “it’s just background music,” to which I’d reply that I use harsh noise and death metal as background music for cooking or working out, so stuff it.

This is one of the best compilations I’ve heard of modern ambient. Come to think of it, it doesn’t seem like compilations are much of a thing in ambient music. While there might not be much new ground being broken here, where tracks by OVRSCN resemble something from a dramatic scene in Stranger Things (I know, lame reference), there are no filler tracks on this one. MP Hawkins’ track, “Shells,” is my favorites on here. A diary entry of melancholic depth resembling a more nuanced version of Alleypisser. And there’s enough sonic variety for my taste. There’s processed instruments and voice on many tracks (raven’s use of cello on “another naive playthrough”) as well as the synth pads that you’d expect. It’s a bit strange how short most of the tracks are, for a genre where most tracks are longer than ten minutes, and some of the tracks feel like excerpts rather than full pieces, but that’s a pithy complaint. Better to be left wanting more, I suppose.

3.6.22 by Matty McPherson

James Searfoss is everywhere, all over the floor of your local noise labels; in the liner notes, under a gaggle of names, almost always hoarding the electronics in search of whatever adventure it might bring. The sounds and loops are versatile enough to bounce from Orb Tapes to FTAM and Already Dead, pushing listeners down a breadcrumb trail of various genre spots in search of cosmic gumbo. I didn’t anticipate that I’d ordered such a slab of cosmic gumbo and would soon be into Searfoss’ orbit until I happened to connect the dots with Nancy Bigfoot’s Polyester Honey (ADT364) and a split with Women Under the Pore under Searfoss’ Moth Bucket alias.

The Polyester Honey C36 finds the Nancy Bigfoot seven-piece free jazz ensemble trying to pass between electronic-aided-jazz longforms and scrupulous interludes. The action can turn psychotic or unfathomably chill depending on the side and minute you are attuned to, thus begetting a full listen. Side A’s Mustelid Jabberjaw is a hulking mass much psychotic, actively breaking and tossing everything down in sight, yet twiddling and quivering in brief spurts. It crackles! It tackles! It it-well yeah it electroshocks. Searfoss’ contribution involving tape loops and electronics is a welcomely visceral low end to tango to.

Meanwhile, Searfoss’ Moth Bucket split alongside Women of the Pore (for the FTAM label) is decisively less free-jazz and more “sick set” free noise. Tape splicing and looping techniques abound through the course of Searfoss’ 15 minute side, radiating a misbegotten Radiophonic / Children’s Electric Company aura. Sometimes it crackles like cicadas or murks like bog water, while other times the feature of a disjointed xylophone keeps a perky, upbeat counter. Of course, as the track continues, it devolves further into noise splices that are less privy to bright melodies and more towards twitchy drumming. It’s a well-warranted complimentary piece to Women of the Pore, the New Brunswick “bunker jazz” project that also has been popping up since 2019 from around Orb Tapes and its ilk. FTAM notes the generally noise piece’s strange sonic qualities akin to Ann Arbor noise musics circa 2003; I was five years old and have never stepped foot in the state. You’d be best to trust Mr. FTAM though, he’s quite the hoot and this tape from summer was a well warranted return to Type I tape.

Polyester Honey is sold out at the source! Moth Bucket / Women of the Pore’s split is currently available at FTAM Production’s Bandcamp.

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3.10.22 by Jacob DeRaadt

The liner notes for this release state: “These tracks are intended as contemporary meditation tools. The frequency of these tunes and the sounds used foster inner exploration for the modern spiritual seeker.”   Definitely relaxing, open-ended soundscapes throughout these six tracks from this prolific Italian artist. 

Warm, airy notes drift through the listeners consciousness on Polveriere, where it feels one is hearing notes floating across a large body of water. Kind of an ironic title, as nothing about this track feels explosive whatsoever. The same holds true for Segnali Distorti, which extends the mood of the precious track. Very little distortion is heard here. This is a trivial complaint. There’s always a gap in between the viewpoint of artist and outside observer.  

The tracks that I don’t get into as much involve arpeggios framed by pitch bent notes, like the title track and Analogico Spleen. That’s just a matter of taste in synth voices, I suppose. Decide for yourself. Color Speranza blends muted textures with hesitant arpeggios in a more successful fashion, evoking the wonder of a cloudless nighttime sky. 

While I’m no aficionado of ambient/new age musics, I found this album to be very soothing and great background music for nighttime reading or meditation.

Edition of 50 available from Orb Tapes.

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3.4.22 by Matty McPherson

God bless the postal workers that have to put up with the label boss who shows up with an arm, leg, and nut’s worth of Luxury Elite cassettes for shipping. Any time the producer decides to log on and team up with a label for a new surprise, shit basically prints cash–as well as hundreds of postal labels (protip: use pirate ship). Naturally, if you blink you will miss the release; she’s been doing this for a decade and clearly has mastered what audience to court. This kind of MO is still running in vaporous circles as far as I know, and that Luxury Elite happens to have a quality control on the hype and her releases find themselves ending up on Crash Symbols (or in this case, Doom Trip), has tantalized me for a bit. It’s a sign of appreciation and trust, as well as a quality label/ethos endorsement. So naturally when blue eyeshadow popped on the feed only a dozen minutes after coming out I knew I’d be making a blind buy on my first luxury elite release.

Blue Eyeshadow finds us a decade into the project laying down mid-80s period synths, drum machines, and brass instruments looped into poptones with a kind of certainty parallel to what was afforded to Green Gartside. This took me out of my initial going-in projections; I had expected a more…glitched and vaped out vibe. Underneath the lushness there are moments as such scratching through the crevices, but it is first and foremost a piece of new golden instrumental dreams. It’s with that sonic language alone that the tape is able to succeed as a lovely pastiche–albeit one meta enough to practically become a perennial 80s pop tape that enacts its own Mandela effect; you know these songs by heart even if you have never heard them. 

Yet, what more is being conveyed underneath these tracks that lyrics cannot warrant?  Big sloppy dopamine rushing instrumentals can seem so one sided, but luxury elite swaggers in ways that perhaps suggests we’re bonded to these sounds and that they can articulate nuances that words might just really detract from. Abstracted and left to the listener, blue eyeshadow can at times be a touching treatise on romance in an abstracted, yet picturesque, aspiringly universal experience.  From the blushing “psychic bond” and sensual “afternoon swim” to the jaded late-day haze of “commercial break” and the crystalline meandering of “empty lobby”; there’s a canvas of images to navigate your own memories within. A well warranted excursion giving me much to think about.

Edition of 200 SOLD OUT at Doom Trip Records (maybe more will show up later? Who knows!)

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