Nina Guo – Blauch Räusch

12.6.21 by Matty McPherson

As soon as I plopped the half-listened side B of Blauch Rausch into the player, I felt that sublime feeling–the one that teeters the line between “this really the pinnacle of what ferric tape has to offer” and “wow this is insanely rudimentary vocal argle bargle.” It’s a magical feeling because if the chips stay on the table and the bet pays off, then I likely have myself a tape I’ll be gloating over. It is with a light heart that I can confirm Nina Guo is leaps and bounds a genuine talent. The Berlin based Guo’s debut, Blauch Räusch, on the burgeoning Unknown Tapes imprint is one of the more colloquial and startling tapes I’ve heard across 2021. The sound of someone letting loose and going hog wild in the good way. It left me with a litany of questions and unspeakable, uncategorized quips that I suppose I’ll be left scraping for an answer to with no avail.

One question I know I want to ask is just how much funding do libraries have for onomatopoeia story hour? And if they do have funding, then why isn’t Nina Guo being tapped for a world tour of library reading rooms for her semantics and antics? Blauch Räusch is a heavy piece of vocal games that would absolutely floor a group of kids as much as it might give their parents who use a library to check out classic orchestra CDs a run for their money. 

Most of the pieces are really not that long here and they recall David Moscovich’s Dada Centennials for Tymbal Tapes or Ka Baird’s own Vocal Games; both utilized a lack of formal cohesion to answer and pose quandaries that stock instrumentation just could not provide. Guo follows suit, with a (literal) page ripping level of dada to these compositions. After being ushered and shushed into the “listening commons”, the laugh riot “25” throws us for a loop. Meanwhile, a piece like “Bud Burst” sees Guo turning her voice into a bonafide modular synth–a mini orchestra that sputters and spits until it arrives at a terminal impasse; it’s only a minute but good god is that an exciting minute. “detest” builds up a crescendo style flow that is clearly arching for that opening spot at a 75 Dollar Bill show. After the laugh riot of 25 comes the stoner babbling in tongues/burst spray frenzy of “26!” It came as a surprise, especially after being told 24 is the highest number.

Side B is ruled by one of the year’s best singles/longforms/grant applications for library programming, “aristocats”. And yes, this is a full-blown re-enactment/synopsis/borderline-zonked out performance of the 1972 Disney film, the Aristocats. Complete with a full rogue’s gallery of voices, plenty of mumbles and tumbles, and some fantastically laugh off loud quips about the film’s not-so-subtle racism, the sheer majesty of this execution had me salivating. I could only imagine how Guo would throw her arms around or run up and down…like I say this is a wildly imaginative kind of tape. Hell, it even ends with three minutes of screaming like a door creaking and creaking like a door screaming that gives any Hallmark Halloween tape a run for its money.

First run of 50 copies only available at the Unknown Tapes Bandcamp!

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Derek Monypeny – Unjust Intonation

11.29.21 by Matty McPherson

There really isn’t anything to the desert snapshots I took back in January when I passed through Joshua Tree with my family. When I look at them, I’m filled with a sense of awe as much as isolation, the vastness that fills the film from this disposable camera. It’s an environment that welcomes someone like Derek Monypeny and the hypnagogic fiddling he brings to a guitar and some reverb and time effect pedals here on Unjust Intonation. For the uninitiated, Monypeny has played around with a litany of cool cats (and he’ll even being touring the cool out-of-the-way spots across the West Coast in January), all the while traversing through a form of minimalism that evokes ambient house while evading the chill out zones. It’s environmental music well suited to the natural architecture of Joshua Tree.

Unjust Intonation a four part suite (also subtitled the Poorly Tuned Guitar) that sees Monypeny concocting a pleasant chord with his guitar, turning it into drone and then allowing it full reign. It works as a piece of functionatory music where Monypeny is allowed to be at once an observer to the machinations on shorter parts as much as a manipulator in longer ones. In part one, it feels like sun spots sparkling off of desert canyons, while part two could function as a field recording of an underground cave and groundwater flowing–until Monypeny lets a jarring rip shingle across the stately affairs. Different textures plop through part two, pushing towards a reverent kind of abyss (one that also can be heightened via combining a hit of indica and using a book to feel gravitys pull).

Part Three steams and vents its way deep into the dirt, turning the soundscape into a type of meta-recording of a medicine bowl. It snarls and drones, losing that initial focus until it seizes itself as a kind of internal alarm that fades into black. And then that brings us to the infinite star crossed sky that part 4 brings to mind. Here, you kinda feel all the previous 20ish minutes weave themselves into a more omnibus kind of cohesion. Much to my pleasure, it is here where Monypeny really evokes Hali Palombo, albeit by staying and weaving this out to ten minutes of drifting, not just highlighting a snippet of a cylinder.

Limited Edition Cassette Available from the Trouble in Mind Explorers Series

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Teevee – The Sweats

11.24.21 by Matty McPherson

“WE ARE LOCATED IN RURAL ILLINOIS WITH LIMITED ACCESS TO THE PO. WE SHIP ITEMS ONCE A WEEK” is about all the information you’re gonna find on the Manic Static website page regarding what their mission is or what they release. Bandcamp and other information is thin and I’m not being paid by the word (or at all) so end of sentence. That being said, the label’s decade plus of lo-fi punk and pop majesty speaks for itself. Early Lala Lala, Melkbelly, Control Top, Wednesday, and (of course noted stalwart) The Funs have all passed through and released proof-of-concept tapes that go above and beyond. Details on these releases may be sparse and the art is willfully abstracted that you might mistake it for death metal or death drone. Yet somehow, they have pushed each act towards a seat at second and first tier indies. Whatever is being cultivated, is clearly and inherently of note. By the heads and for the heads.

So, that brings us to today’s half hour of lo-fi punk with pop inclinings, The Sweats. It’s a 2020 album reissued by Manic Static back in March. It was made by a duo credited as Teevee (DH and WM are the only initials provided; although further research brings up Dylan Hyman & Woody Moore). It has enough strum n’ thrummery and K Records throwback to knock your socks off. The formula is genuinely simple: girl-group melodies, warm n’ fuzzy guitar and slight thumping drums (to prove no one is sleeping here), as well as an airing of grievances/listing of dailies. All in an uptempo, syncopated manner that recalls bits of the no-frills production of personal favorites Privacy Issues and Sweeping Promises (who’s 2020 crackerjack effort recently received a tape pressing). It’s here where the emphasis is placed on how minimal elements can really transcend a garage-type showspace into a full-blown vibe. 

And while I’ve never been in a garage at the same time and place as Teevee, it brings me an immense amount of joy at how… familiar yet encompassing these tracks are. “Resolve” is a classic fuzz n’ buzz piece of guitar pop, with syncopated stops that suck all the air out of my ears. “Hologram” has all the sudden-left turns of classic Amps, running through a litany of melodies and tempos that steadily build to a crushing climax. “Pretty People” is all tantalizing guitar swirls recalling the punchdrunk pleasures of house parties AND county fair tilt-a-whirls! “Holidaze” sneaks in a carnivorous bass line to absorb darkness before cutting to black and Side B takes over. Over on that end, Teevee continue pulling out lo-fi nuggets like its tricks out of a bag. “No Good” dances with a phaser effect, while “Taste Blood” mumbles out the pains of existing past ex-friends and fantastical daydreams. And even Resolve returns to close things out, shedding its skin and making the cut as a droney minimal wave!

I know I said earlier I wasn’t being paid by the word (or at all) here, but I kinda need all the words I can to describe this duo because these tracks are totally analog and the Bandcamp page for it is MIA! But man do they know how to bring the heat!

An edition of 100 is up for grabs at Manic Static’s bigcartel page

Tara Jane O’Neil – Dispatches from the Drift

11.23.21 by Matty McPherson

There’s a heavenly sound (Tara Jane O’Neil, improvising on the keys) emanating from the boombox a few rooms over right now; it’s the kind of sound of a still, foggy grey morning. Maybe you’d think it church music or the soundtrack to a cavernous caper on TCM at 7:46. Nevertheless, it’s always the classic thoughtful probings of Tara Jane O’Neil. TJO’s latest, Dispatches from the Drift, follows her 2010s folk odysseys and synth explorations. Yet, Dispatches finds the old folk maverick and bass superstar in a decisively laid back modus operandus. 

Having come to the tape from her Kranky and K records releases, this release is more of a unique outlier than an outright pivot. TJO’s improvisations on the piano lean towards the baroque and while they never betray her intimacy, they do feel smaller, for lack of a better term. “Use them however you like” is TJO’s only request. As such, I turned them into furniture music and went off onto my own blissed out drift. It is a genuine blast letting the music travel from rooms over and let the sounds mutate into ancillary narcotics of their own accord. Not every sound here is clear exactly why its on the tape, yet this act of honesty and openness is a worthy adventure.. With TJO, you are literally hanging out with a musician who has a way of blurring the emotive lines subtly and meticulously–this hour of material is no different, its effects just are more spaced out. Track titles and the overarching differences between pieces were less the focus than just admiring the open-armed melancholy as much as pleasant ambivalence that these pieces saunter through. That’s not to say you shouldn’t read the titles or will even find this tape carrying sounds of dismay. It’s a utilitarian, seamless kind of affair in this droney bliss or drugged down dreams.

200 pro dub Super Ferric(!) tapes in clear, imprinted shells with three color, Risograph-printed photo j-cards packaged in black & white Norelco cases available at the Tara Jane O’Neil bandcamp page