“Texas is a landlocked state” once mused an individual who was so wrong, that they now have 21 million Spotify listeners and social media run by “management”. But as the days go on, you do have to wonder if yes, on some metaphysical level, the state of Texas is indeed landlocked in its own woes and rough and rowdy ways. But that does not stop the entire state, itself a giant interconnected series of tubes and dive bars and stray stages, from concocting its own vicious brand of noise that with which the tape underground can find stray whimsy from.
Thus we turn out attention today towards San Antonio-based Ethan “Coach” Campa. Coach Campa is a frequent San Antonio drummer turned collaborator, that seems hellbent on finding peace of mind in a middle zone between Astral Spirits free noise, early 00s NYC noisenik shenanigans, and 70s Electronic Deutschland Musiks. Partnering with tactical synthesizer warfare guru Aaron Arguello, and their Weekend Satanists cassette on Already Dead Records (a return for Campa and introduction for Arguello) happens to present a complete psychedelic kaleidoscopic vision of jazzy speculative fiction for the hi-fi. It’s a rainbow blast of punk as much as a throwback to early Astral Spirits when free noise reigned supreme and felt akin to a backyard all ages show, not a jazz club.
A majority of the tracks aren’t in a template per se, but do have a sense of jamming and parallel tracks of thought: Campa finds a furious drum frill, or a cymbal rush that’s gotta be shaken LOOSE; Arguello hunts for 70s synthesizer horror shlock keys or knob twiddling cryptid themes that JUST HAPPEN to repeatedly collide with the spectacle of a demolition derby, but none of the fussy mess. Campa’s drumming is buzzing, close in spirit to the buzz of a fly who found itself saved from a spider web. It shines through and beckons to the noise freak while Arguello can often pursue a reserved mode of droning or quick bleep sensations. In the tape’s finest moments, like Santana Shoes Stay On, you can end up with the punkier, krautrock indebted sibling to Nala Sinephro’s Space 6.
Yet, it is side B’s A. Enter Sandman Pt. 2/B. Nothing Else Matters that truly captures the Campa x Arguello spirit. For both, it feels as if they’ve swapped roles. with Arguello making a most insect-esque drone buzz akin to a chainsaw as Campa’s cymbal rushes feel akin to flow state bleep sensations, finessed and bristling with radiance, not pummeling or rushing. When it finally bows out for that back half, it’s terraforms into blistering frills searching for a way out amongst a blackened drone morphing into arcade noises coming to swallow it whole. Within the 8 tracks across the tape, it’s the welcome longform that doesn’t overstay its welcome, engrossing adventure and trial for the two that suggests that they themselves may have a real match in heaven.
Edition of 100 Tapes Now Available at the Already Dead Bandcamp Page
I was on the Tabs Out Cassette Podcast a couple of weeks ago as a guest (I have to work on preparing material ahead of time it seems) during the Marc Masters interview segment about his book, High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape. I received this honor because Marc used some quotes of mine in his book (thank you, thank you, self-plug). But the tragedy of the event was that a good chunk of the interview, and any content that I contributed, was lost forever in a recording snafu – i.e., the Zoom call drifted into the ether instead of encoding itself in an audio file. So we tried a do over, but it just wasn’t the same. The energy was different. Plus I had to leave right when everything got sorted.
Imagine, then, an experimental duo, in this instance Rachel and Grant Evans, proprietors of the tape label Hooker Vision, playing a show for the first time since 2009 in April 2023 and not recording it, despite it being a triumphant success and a total vibe masterpiece surely inspiring the audience to go out and jam likewise. And while I wasn’t there to confirm, it’s hard not to imagine the truth of the show’s success because the Lamps decided they wanted to hit the studio, months later, and record what they did for posterity. I mean, isn’t that crazy? Wouldn’t distance and time have totally altered the feel of the pieces and rendered them completely unrecognizable from the original venture? Was this even a good idea – would it even sound OK? Would somebody have the wherewithal, the grit, the tenacity to hit the record button?
The answer to all those questions, surprisingly, is yes. First of all, we should probably not doubt the Hooker Vision folks in any way – Rachel and Grant have been letting the label cook for a long time, but they did go on hiatus for a bit, from November 2014 to October 2021, when they dropped a Modern Lamps / Motion Sickness of Time Travel (Rachel’s excellent solo gig) release, igniting the fuse on their triumphant return. (In fact, Twitter/X user Gremlins 2 Official responded to a “present listening” pic I took of Ruby Throated Wind with “great to see hooker vision in 2023,” typing out loud what we were all thinking.)
Second, somebody did hit record, though it likely wasn’t Tabs Out’s own Jamie Orlando. (Sorry, Jamie.)
And third – who cares if they did the exact same performance that they cranked out live? “Everything has changed but that’s OK!” they declare, as they blow into their clay flutes and whistles, the same ones (probably) they used for their performance. Rachel does her thing on bass, electric piano, and synthesizers. Grant zones a daunting clarinet, adding to the atmosphere with percussion and electronics. You feel like you’re in the room with them throughout Ruby Throated Wind.
And while that room is in Athens, Georgia, likely a humid one, sweltering in the summertime, Modern Lamps kick up a bit of a dust storm with side A, a cosmic pastiche of nighttime desert ambiance as sands shift and stars fall, the playing reverent to the universe as time and space zoom closer to the point of physical contact. Then the bass kicks in and the shamanic undulations ensue, a ritualistic otherworldly hoe-down whose rhythm, while abrupt at first, melts into the night and forms a spiritual core.
The Evanses contemplate the stars on side B, drifting in and out of meditation. The clarinet and piano flit seamlessly about each other, accentuating the most incredible moments with delightful interplay. The track fades out on an odd sing-songy choral sample – not sure of the source, but it’s weathered and (sounds) pitched, but it’s deceptively stirring. The whole thing probably serves to render that original performance moot. Well, probably not, especially for those who were there, but my imagination of what I’ve never heard pales in comparison to Ruby Throated Wind. This one’s a keeper.
The tape comes in an edition of 40 and is still available!
“Workers assuage their resentment of laboring for our “corporations” with the belief that we (the worker) are “good” and rise above “evil” (the corporation) spiritually. Economic stoicism loses all importance when you eliminate the temptation of an “afterlife”. Corporations never die, they just rebrand…”
That’s an excerpt from the thick j-card liner notes of Truculent’s latest, A Worker’s Guide to Transfiguration; not a tweet or excerpt of a thread left in the wake of the (likely full) gutting of Bandcamp Daily from yesterday’s news. It called to me through the evening as one tweet or discord ping after another signaled a new breaking point for this centralized network of left-of-center, curiosity-oriented music writing being taken away. Platforming under that banner and the legitimacy of the Daily blogging machine meant something to the long tail niche audience that I’d be damn surprised if it didn’t include anyone currently reading this. People want this stuff and it’s the only way to document an omnibus of sounds that never will cease to come.
Dan Timlin’s dense j-card package struck a nerve with me while on the hi-fi yesterday. Itself a small (socialist-leaning) manifesto, a personal treatise based around “the four imprints” (Eagle, Lion, Bull, Angel). Itself seeking to codify 4 species to correspond to hostile or friendly anger and strength, and present a theory on “living insiding them, while simultaneously being centrally detached from them” towards healing, mindful human interaction. It’s denser than your typical call to action in a cassette.
Yet, within one based around American Primitivism guitar pieces that feature a strong roots-oriented calling card to their swaggering sound, the treatise matches to the music. It’s a sound that itself embodies living within anger and strength on hostile or friendly terms. Cut names reference the animals as much as images of either blight or boon, religion and mythology, amongst the dallies of increasingly absurd life. Many tracks prioritize brevity, snapshots of these 4 co-existing in a mindful balance, where this MO could theoretically play out. As much as recalling spaces of communion, from railyards and backroom bars to the streets of South Philly’s Point Breeze. Amongst caterwauling finger picking and devious dirges, there is a white hot intensity even in Tomlin’s restrain over these 16 tracks.
Strange Mono, a benefit record label, founded in 2021, out of Philadelphia, has been prioritizing these kinds of “bespoke” limited run cassettes and unlimited digitals. There is still work to be done on a mastering level for the format, with Timlin’s delicate finger at an ever-steady presence in the red, it’s tempo slightly run up from the digital’s more clarity-oriented master, lending a jank and zippy character; all courtesy of a Sony CCP-2300 being utilized and pushed to its limit. Yet, there’s a warming quality that comes from such accidents, giving Timlin’s cassette release an unkempt level of quality akin to unpolished Smithsonian Folkaways materials. It’s the kind of crate digging that still calls to me and reminds me that at heart, the blogging never dies, the sounds never die, we just pack up and begin the begin once more. And if there’s any time for a Transfiguration, well Dan Timlin’s tape is right on the money.
Edition of 50 C40s. Clear Shells, Extended J-Card With Liner Notes, Dubbed on a Sony CCP-2300. Now Sold Out at Source
Tongue Depressor/John McCowen – Blame Tuning & Old Saw – Country Tropics
10.5.23 by Matty McPherson
For longer than I’ve realized I’ve been thinking about Henry Birdsey. The Vermont recording engineer that has quite the capacity for taking the lap steel out of blues and folk zones towards new dispatches of noise. Sometimes this is akin to home composition, like with 2021’s Half Dragged that approached creating texture with the lap steel that were somewhere between disintegrating sound and harmonious silence. Other times it imbues itself in the most open-armed ways, as his work under with the Old Saw collective. I’ve spent the last 6 weeks chewing on a digital of that 2021 Old Saw tape, Country Tropics; it was regretfully never reviewed on the blog and yet now two years later I’m coming to it on recommendation as one of the underground’s most upstanding works of “cosmic americana”. And oh goodness, how this collective’s compositions dazzled, dismantling all tension into long drawn out sighs of lap/pedal steel, banjo, pipe organ, resonator/nylon string guitar, fiddle, and bells.
Over 37 minutes, Birdsey, Bob Driftwood, Ira Dorset, Rev. Clarence Lewis, Harper Reed, and Ann Rowlis enact their own creation of a particular kind of rural, pastoral zone. It’s somewhere between dusk and dawn, perhaps, a most bright and vivid sense of reverent harmony underpins all the instrumental decision. Yet, it’s the limited sonic scales, the necessity of repetition–from guitar finger picking to organ harmonies–beget what is essentially a dense trance. You can sit and take apart all the folk trimmings and cross-intersections of style that happen to come through, but Birdsey does find a particular space to bring out these dimensions to his steel that yearn and drone into the stars. The 4 compositions are amongst the most romantic in Birdsey’s catalog that has often been on the flip side in other collaborations and appearances.
That with which earlier this year I happened to stumble into with Birdsey & double bassist Zach Rowden’s work as Tongue Depressor, which seemed to cull its sonic identity from centuries past as much as immediate happenings in the stretching of the americana term. If there was a flip side to the cosmic americana Birdsey has found himself entangled within Old Saw, Tongue Depressor is the apt project of choice. Perhaps others would option Birdsey’s collaborations with Turner Williams Jr. as Trespass Field, itself an onomatopoeic, psychedelic sensual overload taking the lap/pedal steel towards feedback-laden stoned drone metal; itself leaning towards a more opening trance akin to Old Saw. But Tongue Depressor is in step as Birdsey’s Half Dragged and the world of Crazy Doberman that both he and Rowden too have come from. Both aren’t just the “autechre of a ‘shared sonic language that references western swing, gothic americana, and the spectralist avant-garde'”, they’re reliable collaborators that beckon to bring others fellow travelers into their world and run amok.
For Blame Tuning, their April 2023 c46 release on land art cassette mecca Full Spectrum Records, the duo bring contrabass clarinetist, John McCowen, into the fray for a 1/4 inch reel-to-reel session. Mustered on the moment, without much rehearsal, it’s a dense kind of under-the-knife listen. Caught between dark ambient raga, blues inversions, and straight punk noise, the trio create that particular kind of visceral, cathartic noise. Always in a lockstep buffalo stance, though, the trio prove they’re smooth operators.
Side A sways and shimmies, turning into a the saw blades of a lumber mill amongst a compost compactor with its frequencies. Spectral drone is the piece’s underbelly, a dense ocean built to buoy the duo’s capacity for raw noise (a biproduct of Rowden’s bass) and McCowen’s reserved contrabass clarinet. That this is “organic” comes off as disarmingly alien. Their sound lurches like tree branches in the wind, but as if it was as if the tree branch’s were steel lightposts clawing against the side of a building. It often gives it’s own wicked images and impluses to the sonic space. There’s a sense of industry, humid with tension, being documented and summoned within this noise. Side B ups the claustrophobia, starting with and staring down at a reserved drone in bird’s eye view as if it was…well, a drone. It’s lumbering and glacial, beaming down at first before quickly upping its swells and low listening hums into a cryptid’s call or snarling set of teeth that quickly takes the bulk of the sonic space. There’s a series of swift guillotine stabs acting as a tumultuous percussion. Then there’s that aching back half, the kind of drone noise sounding cross-eyed and chilled, drenched in dread beating down on it. It’s where the elements of raga & the sense of blues tradition, completely warped to a crisp, create a most “inviting”, or lively, frequency on the hi-fi. An omnibus, overpowering kind of noise, mirroring and bouncing off of the clarinet to an almost vocal dimension. Granted a sultry character by the playing of the bass, almost towards a sense of bastard chamber music that Birdsey’s pedal steel suddenly finds a ghostly melody to ride off with. It’s an engrossing climax to the B side as its swift detente settles in and packs up. To where Tongue Depressor goes next one can only follow.
Country Tropics & Blame Tuning are both sold out at their sources. Digital reigns supreme, in the mean time.
Midway through The Elephant 6 Recording Co., the documentary focusing on the titular DIY artist collective based out of Louisiana and Georgia, one of the members of Neutral Milk Hotel (or The Gerbils, it starts to all run together at some point) discusses the potlucks the group would host. The gatherings were about more than just food – they were places where loosely employed touring musicians could smoke weed and just talk. Thirty freaks would hang out in someone’s yard, enjoying vegetarian chili and playing each other tapes full of homespun fuzz-folk. The musician in question ascribed the scene’s hypercreativity and intense cross pollination directly to the fact that they had the space for large, uninterrupted gatherings. The geography and cheap rent directly influenced the music itself. “Some records just can’t be made in New York City,” he says, beaming and full of pride.
Hartle Road is a band that couldn’t exist anywhere else on Earth. I say this as someone who has been attending Hartle Road shows (even when they weren’t called Hartle Road) for over a decade now. I actually got a chance to film a Hartle Road set earlier this year, marking the first time I had seen the band since the pandemic. I loved it, but I could sense that the audience was confused. They opened with “Feel Me,” the Feelies-inspired opener on their upcoming record MAXX II (following the precedent set by MAXX, which opens with a Neu! sendup titled “New”). Most expect openers to be tone setters. Attendees expecting a set of propulsive, jangly rock with overdriven bass were probably a little disappointed. The set had some of that, sure, but it was mixed in with songs that sounded like the Viva Las Vegas soundtrack and moody, synthesizer-heavy pieces plucked from 80s crime dramas. The set was 41 minutes long. Right around four of that actually ended up on MAXX II.
That’s what’s made Hartle Road such a compelling band over the years. The band is made up of two brothers, their cousin, and their friend that just happens to be one of the greatest guitar players on the planet. The familial trio live together in Columbus, Mississippi. I grew up in Starkville, home of the Mississippi State Bulldogs. These two cities, along with West Point, make up the Golden Triangle. Each city is about 20 minutes from the others and just about nothing happens in any of them.
Hartle Road is one of anywhere between two and four “alternative” rock bands working in the Golden Triangle at any given time. It’s sad, honestly. There’s always been a smattering of high school and college kids with a genuine interest in independent art, but they’re evenly matched by frat dudes and normal bar patrons. Every show in a real “venue” is filled with a mix of people who want to be inspired and people who wish you hadn’t shown up. There’s just no real money or support for it in the area outside of a handful of bars no one likes playing. Still, there’s been a persistent chip-on-your-shoulder spirit that’s prevailed in creatives beaten down by the Mississippi sun. I was recently interviewed for a lightly embarrassing documentary about my own band’s relationship with playing music in Mississippi and what I learned from it. I could tell that the documentarian was trying to elicit some sort of “you have to work on your chops to keep up with the blues!” type of down-home folk wisdom but all I could tell her was that playing noise rock to swaths of dads and grads walking out of The Blind Pig bar on Ole Miss’ graduation day really toughened me up. That’s a common feeling down here; everyone has a phase where they get bitter about it and then they get creative.
Here’s the loose Hartle Road story up until now – Toby Hartleroad (older brother), Max Hartleroad (younger brother), and Miles Jordan (cousin) start playing music together from a young age. They start an angsty kind of band you’d expect kids to start. They link up with two other guys and start listening to a lot of Springsteen and power pop. They do that for a while, drop the other two guys, pick up Tyler Carter (not related), and start honing in on some sort of vague mix of garage and 60s pop rock. There’s an EP with a Fat Possum subsidiary no one cares about and a 7” with no sleeve and sharpie on the labels. They write songs and scrap them. They morph every time their record collection changes, with krautrock and punk records intermingling with a burgeoning interest in dance music. Calvin Johnson somehow hears them and akes a liking to them. They go on tour with Calvin. They cut a 7” together. They write songs and scrap them. They become a staple of the late 10s Memphis punk scene despite not being punk. MAXX drops and they play songs from MAXX II while promoting it. They write songs and scrap them. They record an entire album as a band called “Zuul” that never sees the light of day (I can verify it exists). They write a “college rock” album and scrap it, though that may have actually just been parts of MAXX II in retrospect. Sometime in there I end up playing two shows with another fucking side band called Sloth, which is a punk band devoted to The Goonies. They’re incredible. The pandemic happens and they hunker down even more in their home. Calvin Johnson swings by to record an entire record with them and it comes out earlier this year. They play confusing music in Memphis that was described to me as “vaguely mariachi.” Then, finally, MAXX II, recorded in spurts between 2016 and 2020, releases on K Records.
I have heard more Hartle Road songs than are recorded. A lot more. Especially when you start considering the side bands – Zuul, Sloth, that time I saw Max open for Wreckless Eric (who also has an affinity for the band) and play a set that was just him yelling over the loudest drum machine conceivable, etc. I think this puts me in the prime position to declare that MAXX II is the best selection of songs this band could’ve made for a second record. I’m biased, sure, but I also feel like the expectations were set sky high. MAXX was released in 2016 and seven years is a long time to wait for a follow up. The second Hartle Road album is the stuff of Mississippi indie rock legend. No one knew what the titles of “Rear Projection” and “ICU” even were but we could hum every bar. The fact that it’s here and it rules is tantamount to a blessing.
MAXX II is a sprawling, borderless record. Hartle Road became punk show favorites with tracks like the buoyant “Rear Projection” but calling this a punk record would betray it a bit. MAXX II doesn’t genre hop as much as it presents small slices of the same artistic mindset. The tracks feel like selections from a record collection without dipping into the dreaded waters of being “record collector rock.” There’s hooks, there’s jams, there’s grooves, and the throughline through all of it is the unwavering DIY spirit that can only come from psychic familial bonds.
Take the standout single “ICU,” with its circular, sawing guitar riff coalescing around a dance beat. This gives way to a chiming post-punk guitar solo and a mutant disco bassline. The song is over just as it lays all of its ideas out. A less intentioned band would let it linger, but Hartle Road’s entire MO is intention. Their biggest strength across MAXX II is their ability to keep the listener guessing. Why shouldn’t “ICU” cut to the organ lullabye “Catch the Cradle?” Why shouldn’t “Wall of Moog,” a pop song from another dimension, come right before the Tom Verlaine-esque guitar workout “Real Projection Pt. 2?” I love MAXX enjoyed the attention it paid to more straight forward rockers like “Blank Check” and “Lonely,” but the band’s expanded sonic palette on MAXX II has made the wait worth it. Even the lead vocal duties have shifted around, with Jordan taking on more songs than either of the titular Hartleroads.
“Hell Hole” sums up a lot of this record. Hartle Road knows how to mix humor and earnestness, and what could be a better place to do that than on a song about how your Mississippi town sucks? This is no pop punk whinefest either; take it from me, the idea of watching the whole place “burn to the ground”, literally burn, is a relatable fantasy. And remember, this is Hartle Road, so Jordan’s fantasy is accompanied by shrieking synthesizers and an absolutely ripping guitar solo. I had seen this song performed as a borderline comedy routine years ago, an almost cabaret showcase of southern angst and small town loneliness. It comes off as a defeated sigh on MAXX II, complete with the pragmatic plainness of someone who you know really means it.
MAXX II is not a straightforward record. It’s not even an inviting record. It’s confusing, twisting, and sometimes you can’t tell if you’re the butt of the joke or laughing along with the band. That’s the kind of confrontational, creative spirit you have to foster if you’re going to survive as an artist in Mississippi. It’s the same kind of spirit I saw onstage as the band ripped into song after song that didn’t even show up on this record. It’s the same kind of spirit that I’ve admired for years and am very happy to have as a physical release in my hands. This is not a band that could exist anywhere else, but I’m very glad they exist here in this time and place.
Jollies, the Brooklyn “mostly electronic” tape label, which has slowly shown curatorial prowess and a defiant streak of consistent left-turn in honing in on its sound that’s begun to show off a display of engrossing techno sounds and sleights for those deep in the bleeps. With a new EP, Xigubo, from Nandele & A-Tweed having arrived at the start of summer, the label might have just released their most esteemed release yet that’s worth the hi-fi listen as much as one heavy in the headphones.
You may recall, Nandele Maguni the star of a terrific early 2022 Already Dead release as a part of a trio, Muave. The Imaginary experience was a tripped out textures, often coming back to trap as a raditating baseline and connecting to a lineage of electronic forms as much as a “colonial resistant” spirit and warrior energy. Xigubo is an even stronger, more blunt dosage. Dialing back the sprawl (and a bit of the trap), Nadele’s work with A-Tweed this go around is a sees both continuation of what Muave’s synths and ambience suggested, amongst rawer industrial catharsis.
In fact, the EP opens practically en media as such: blasting ndustrial techno mutates towards with underwater reverb reverberations and 90s computer synth alleyway chase outIt’s always a thrilling set of left turns that give a sense of real space. A perfect pop loop, jarring string noise akin to close calls with brick walls. “Floresta”, the piece’s name, is a true 8 minute distillation of their best foot forward, as much as revealing just how easily the following pieces can slip through forms.
In fact, it might make Nandele’s current work such a perfect distillation of illbient spirit as well–no genre, just a DJ, ever moving through their sound. Naja and Machava, rounding out Side A, both argue this via skill synth production and a supreme low end. Naja’s a quick wham-bam!, a frantic, rattling jitter that imagines tight-wire movement across treetops. Machava twitches amongst the blunt impact of its gunpowder beat. It summons a reverberating drone that almost gives it a conga characteristic, amongst a real sense of alien dread, the kind a Metroid handheld specializes in. It feels of a kind of alien hieroglyphic, a music that you can decode into a playful dance (for the legs as much the mind).
If Side A’s trio of tracks was anti-sprawl, then Side B’s Intensidade returns for an hair-raising slow burn. It’d be amusing to dub this a 180 inversion of a chill out room, but it’s closer to be on the bridge of a spaceship on the fritz of terminal nuclear implosing. This piece deconstructs itself into complete smoke and mirrors, via a hair-raising, sizzling synth line that suggest complete all-encompassing spectral dread that dominates the piece. Haptic quips and ghostly echoes find a home here, almost acting like a computer system desperate to save itself and fight for a future. This is not a build that completely overtakes the system or implodes into crashing beauty. In that final minute, it finds a solace and rescues itself.
Professionally dubbed red cassette with white body print available now at Jollies.
Beauty Parlour – King of Love (Sgarah Tapes) Feast of the Epiphany – Significance (Strategy of Tension) Torture Agenda – Catalyst for the New Homo Sapien (Swimming Faith) Besta Quadrada – The First Four Weeks (Swimming Faith) Burning Plastic Blues Band – Spiritual Latency (Metaphysical Barbeque) Quintelium – Moonwaves (Ephem Aural) Chinese Cigarettes – 700 (100% Bootleg Cassette Tape Company) Id M Theft Able – The Candy Keeps Melting (Mang Disc) Dr Slimer – Slimerhuasca (self released) Problems That Fix Themselves – V/A Honk If You’re Already Dead comp (Already Dead)
M. Sage/Liven Martens – Riding Fences, Zander Raymond – To Have Several Lives, & M. Sage/Z. Raymond – Parayellowgram
9.26.23 by Matty McPherson
When my brother visited last month, he was coming to finally partake in the LA Art Book Festival; such an endeavor required a day off, a token of support as much as a vacation for myself. From my view, the LA Art Book festival happened to be a triumphant celebration of cassette as much as FeelsLikeFloating. If you were on the floor you would have been able to pick up a kinetic variety of radio mixtapes, works from kranky alum Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, rare collectables from Masahiro Takahasi, amongst a collection of punk VHS tapes and zines. It sent a shock to my system, a certain realization that the LA Book Art Fair catered to just about any interest, including my own. Alas, there is no zine covering rare titles or connecting the dots on happenings across labels. “There is always a place for your voice to insert itself”, I realized over a bowl of ramen after leaving the event, hopefully destined to one day offer my own print documentation beyond the digital glow.
Meanwhile, noted wiz-kid/tactical event planning guru, Noah Klein, had taken Friday (amongst the weekend) to assemble a smattering of individuals tied to the FeelsLikeFLoating, exemplifying and displaying just how far the series has come in two years. “Cameos appearances” from Dustin Wong and Jordan of Mutual Benefit on the floor grounds were cherries on top, it humbled me to say hello to two individuals of deft compositional prowess. Yet, it was terrific work from Takahasi (a US Live debut if we’re getting the facts right), Diatom Deli, and even M. Sage, who’s role and connections to Klein have traveled over several labels and states. Sage was present early, cooped up at the merch table. He offered ample ear to my conversation while unstuck in time with goods from the past, present, and future of everything he’d slowly worked up to. “Ambient Americana” tropes was on my mind, but I contend that Sage was unstuck in time, having played a long game with a recent string of collaborations and curatorial endeavors. He’d seen the cycles and was just another in a long line of American Mavericks continuing a dialogue that was started decades ago. Only now it was being codified into something that folks like Sage weren’t aiming for, but just happy to keep carving out their own path within. What Sage told me was akin to what the great 18th letter had once emphasized: “Don’t Sweat the Technique”, more or less.
And really why would you sweat the technique? Time hasn’t caught up with Sage, only now it seems to finally understand where he’s been traveling towards. Sage’s 2020s era work has been ever-kinetic. On one side you have Fuubutsushi’s LPs that reveal his potency for digital connection within blissful jazz textures that had been percolating within him. Meanwhile, his LPs for Geographic North and RVNG have seen him skillfully warping the vapor trails and “ghosts” of synthesizer works from before towards a chamber palette akin to Town & Country for hearty celebrations of boating, creek paradises, and the duality of Western living amongst becoming a domestic father. It’s still essentially M. Sage mightily mustering Patient Sounds, but composed to soaring, dizzying heights. “Here’s three and a half minutes of wiggling air. Maybe it’ll tell you a story” is what Sage told me back in 2021, and he’s truly never departed from this open-hearted MO of exploration.
In his collaborative tape from last year with the Belgian Lieven Martens entitled, Riding Fences, Sage perhaps offered his finest entry point to the duality that comes with exploration. That is, where exploration becomes replication of tropes “more truthful than the actual”. Riding Fences’ sense of Western is one teetering on Full Spectrum land art, amongst almost-Hank and Slim desolation from the places Hali Palombo draws out, and with a dash of Steve Roachian Dust to Dust for good measure. The west out here is is comforting as much as it is dissonant, riding on acid logic as the recreation devolves into fogged out mood maps or science experiments. The tape’s titles are like prop directions or movie script locales, kinds that you would find in Monte Hellman films shot in Utah at the bottom of an artificial lake. Except everything has been preserved, waiting for a golden sunrise to light up the floorboard with quantum properties. Low synth drones close to an organ gospel. Piano keys that echo in a barroom. Field recordings & sample that Sage has continued to move to the forefront of the palette. Martens is a crucial partner to the endeavor, himself coming to terms with what it means to explore “western” by way of replication and performance, defusing the exoticism in the process. Nothing to fear, nothing to doubt.
Sage had let it slip that he did have a new collaborative tape, closer to Paradise Crick, coming with Chicago-based Zander Raymond. Raymond had been a cached.media alum all the way back in 2020, but it wasn’t until I was cleaning my tapes that I had properly remembered his debut on Sound as Language from last year. Raymond works with modular synthesizers, focusing around ambient textures that ebb and flow naturally. Last year’s To Have Several Lives, isn’t a series of epiphanies from this process, more or less following in an archtype of “indoor plant life” style pieces that defuse a space or seek to push the attention away from the music, but towards the space. Pieces stretch to five or six minutes, or appear as a flickering neon for just a couple minutes. It makes for aggressively focused room cleaning room as much as a gentle reprieve from the early morning sleepies or rain storm. It also warranted a beat, a collaborator, a direction to tie itself to outside just being well crafted tones. One that arrives on Moon Glyph in the form of Parayellowgram.
Parayellowgram is the kind of platonic cassette release that you’d hope from Sage, Raymond, and Moon Glyph. Its a C40 composed of four 10ish minute pieces, continuing a streak of Moon Glyph erring towards longform adventures and deep zoning on their curation (a wise move giving the label’s releases their own sense of character and liveliness off each other). The two’s pieces haven’t stretched like this outside live performances, and the recordings more or less mend Raymond’s ear for non-linear texture patterns and Sage’s “anything goes” exploration towards a most verdant flavor. The kind closing towards a lost strain of early 00s max/msp-aided post-rock as much as the latest iteration of minimal ambient texture magic between americana and “is that ECM enough for ya?” I wouldn’t be shocked if Sage and/or had been looking back at Claire Rousay’s haptic adventures, which itself is another space that the duo find themselves building off of in ample spades.
“It Is Isn’t It” opens like a mending of one of the two’s own previous works, plenty of keys and bleeping abound! Then halfway through, it finds a bass melody to loop, a jazzy drum pattern to swing to, and a smattering of baritone guitar, robust and saintly. Yellow Against Blue’s underlying drone pegs it close to a misbegotten loop-finding jazz record instrumental, only then using bass and bleeps to build up a sonic cocoon perfect to guide one to dreamed out bliss. Rhythm/Stipple concocts a haptic revolution accelerating skyward with motion, with a particular texture POP near the end that causes a jumping jolt. Closer, John Emerson’s ‘Parayellowgram’, meanwhile steals the entire tape, and gives both performers a display of their collaborative muscle. They work to stage the clattering bustle of a railroad station or even a cattle auction via percussive traps. Yet, Sage and Raymond always finds themselves pushing towards the synths and keys in the mix, glistening and stretching to the blue horizon with a clarinet and strings for good measure.
The beauty to the compositions mark it as one of the year’s most assured ambient excursions full stop, engrossing and giving to the listener. It might be Sage’s best cassette release arguably since Rife With Typo, his original “effort” for RVNG that found solace within Orange Milk. But make no doubt, the lessons of that vaporous age have found themselves transplanted in these compositions today, but Sage and Raymond’s work feels the most timeless both have achieved for the ferric format.
Riding Fences is Sold Out at Edições CN’s bandcamp (but perhaps M. Sage has a tape or two left?), To Have Several Lives is available at Sound as Language’s Bandcamp, and Parayellowgram is available at Moon Glyph’s Bandcamp.
The lack of **^4##*NULL\\\///ZoN3*##^** … er, \\NULL|Z0NE// … eff it, Null Zone activity over the past couple years has had a cumulative effect on my psyche that I simply did not expect: once weaned from Michael Potter’s Athens, Georgia, label since 2021 or so, I found myself super jacked right back in once his band, the Electric Nature, dropped Old World Die Must earlier this year. It was a hit of free-jazz/fusion/noise madness that sped right into the weirdo centers of my brain and pretty much cooked all my synapses till I wasn’t able to respond to anything properly, such was the overload. Sitting on my couch, drooling and glassy-eyed as the title track, taking up the entirety of side B, fizzed its feedback to a close, I breathed a sigh of relief that I had made it through in one piece, clearly frazzled at my lack of preparation for new Null Zone after a layoff.
So I didn’t know if it was a good thing or not that several months separated Old World Die Must and the first new Null Zone cassette-only releases (Old World exists as a vinyl LP co-released with Feeding Tube) to hit the streets, but I was certainly game, and I was pretty sure the melted parts of my brain had cooled and hardened into protective barriers over the rest of the lobes and cortices I was still using – Potter wasn’t going to take me by surprise this time. Fortunately, On and Off, Potter’s new tape as a duo with Ahleuchatistas’ Shane Parish (no stranger to Null Zone), dispenses with the coiled chaos and heads straight to the warm comfort areas where blankets and cushions (or amniotic floating) serve as the perfect accoutrements/venue for experiencing this tape.
Did it turn out I really needed this? Yeah, it absolutely did.
Over two sidelong tracks on this C32, Potter and Parish layer their guitars over each other, generating entire hemispheres of imagination in their primordial playing. The A side, “On and Off,” fulfills every person’s fantasy of what the soundtrack to the actual formation of the Earth over billions of years should sound like. The duo’s electric guitars establish the firmament, a tectonic drone ceaselessly undergirds the elements bubbling and flitting above it, and the sky I’m seeing behind my eyelids fills with smoke and fire before clearing to mountains, lakes, and valleys, the promise of green fields and fresh air a millennium or so away – but that’s not a long time on the Cosmic Calendar! Their proto-proto-proto blues scratches glyphs on the walls of prehistoric caves; it’s truly not weird at all that Potter’s found himself on the same bill as guitar legend Bill Orcutt.
“Here and There” covers side B and showcases Parish and Potter’s acoustic chops, a set recorded a year removed from “On and Off” but a thematic and sonic cousin nonetheless. Again over a reverberating drone, the duo picks riverine melodies through newly cut valleys as animal and plant life spring into being at their passing, drifting into the expansiveness of evolutionary process. The movement and tactility of the guitar interplay is like blood through veins, a vital process of circulation to ensure all parts of the body (including the brain!) are properly nourished. Overlaying the body’s roadmap on the Earth’s contours ties the concept together, a universality of flesh and soil and the source of connection. It’s like a proto-proto-proto folk outline simmering in the mineral baths. Have either of these guys ever played with William Tyler?
So, it is with great relief that I announce, yes: it’s great to have Null Zone back, and it’s great that the label’s back with such a fantastic bang. And hey, guess what? Now that I’ve re-centered myself and primed myself once again for the “anything goes” mentality Potter and pals routinely bring to their releases, I think I could even take on something a little crazier, a little more extreme if something of the sort comes my way… Hey, speaking of, where’s that Serrater tape?
Recently “slowcore” found itself on my mind. It’s a personally loathed term for genre, especially when bands purposely find themselves rigidly seeking to fit the codification. As a “sonic context” used to explain and document certain sonic phenomena, it actually becomes an incredibly valuable tool. Basically, the question imo should never be “is it playing slow to this set of rigors” but “why is it playing slow? who caused this and for what?” Resulting, this summer, I’ve seen myself taking a greater joy in the Blue Nile’s Hats! and Meshell Ndegocello’s Bitter. Neither of these albums would ever get shaken down as slowcore releases, unless you came looking at a larger context willing to accept that artists working in adult contemporary sonic modes also…could write flatlined, heartbroken compositions that resonated with the day to day mundanity. On some level, slowcore is about chewing the scenery and the effective disconnects between yourself and things around you. These artists could do that and probably deserve greater dialogue at the table, or more actual acknowledgement for providing new ways to bring new resonance out of the slow. Perhaps that’s why so Ethel Cain did so well.
Anyways, Westelaken is a four piece in Toronto, Canada. They’re not adult contemporary. They happen to write extremely knotty, twisted country rock compositions; the kind where everything is dependent on the red wheelbarrow filled with water. It has ancillaries in 90s post-rock to certain degrees and Drive By-Truckers to other degrees. Although, certain strains of folk songwriters that aim for this music inadvertently wander into making music that hits the slowcore marks but really finds a joy and energy in chewing the scenery with a steady upbeat midtempo. The pace can be glacial, but it’s the serendipitous joy of the lulls and the come to transcendent moments that make the music so much more situated, personable, and (powerfully) relistenable. About a handful of people have heard their music. If you are reading this, you’re probably one of them or about to be.
This is all a long way to say I am Steaming Mushrooms their 3rd and latest long playing cassette, is utterly terrific. It immediately reminded me of the quirky intimacy nestled within Tenci’s under-sung 2020 effort and the soaring desire to find purpose of Caroline’s 2022 debut. Both records felt lived-in, full of points that invited listeners in to share a common cause or experience, catch up and savor a moment of the world. I am Steaming Mushrooms is doing that too; it feels fit for somewhere between open highways and half-empty barrooms where everyone knows your name.
That sense is immediately enshrined with near-14 minute Ozzy’s Palace. It takes a minute for that open-tuned guitar to crash in with open arms. Backed by barroom piano keys, a lumbering bassline, a def drum beat, and the heaviest of tape fuzz it become apparent immediately that’s it come to pay homage to a one of a kind space the only way it knows how: to sprawl and explode in sudden, charming bursts. The drums’ lack of straight time, more or less hammering on beats that dodge immediate time signatures, and more or less sound like shots knocked back on a mahogany oak bar. Occasionally it crashes into catharsis, but more often than not, it sprawls and beckons you to listen closely to the beat of that drum. It’s one of the year’s most confident opening cuts.
Rob McLay’s drum is essential to understanding how Westelaken keeps such a streak going. Mid-tempo & ruminative, it really guides the album as Jordan Seccareccia perks up his wistful drawl filled with detail and desire keen to these beats. He is a terrific everyperson on this release, and while the lyrics aren’t published, they did arrive on folded postcard; there is serendipity and wonder to this exchange and power. His voice under instrumentals, built atop Lucas Temor’s killer piano and Alex Baigent sly, almost dub-trodden bass, convey and match the reserved performance. Across Side A this all comes in to play. The pit-pat piano rumblings of Pear Tree, that builds to a wry, small epiphany. Fixed Up By an Orange Light finds incredibly potency with guitar, key, and string interplay under absolutely gob-smacked potency in crashing frill breaks; a particular noisy syncopation with backing vocals is so raw, so warm. Annex Clinic & Pharmacy reinforces those queitLOUDquiet synctopations, as well as that grit and balance key to the tape.
In fact, at times I damn well had to clean my ears to confirm this wasn’t some misbegotten blog rock stray or Sub Pop one album wonder that was too witty for its time. It’s too twee, too unkempt, too pertinent and realistic; where cuts are disarmingly heartfelt and still summon a five-alarm warning system off in your head. Side B makes that clear, with Ribcage’s banjo strumming majesty & the bass n’ drum thump of hard knock rocker, Polar Bear. Yet, its the knockout penultimate of Fossilhead and closer I Can Hear the Highway. Both cuts are premiere Westelaken snapshots: Fossilhead stretches for ten minutes, bathing itself clean in piano arpeggios, a low bass hum, and a kick drum that strikes down to a molten level, resulting in a quiet blessing; I Can Hear the Highway sees the band’s foreplay and sonic palette in robust effect. They hit a chorus with the impact of a sledgehammer, amongst the delicacy of an oil painting of sunset in the country; with all the pear trees and rolling hills detailed out. Seccareccia ends humming us out like he’s hitchhiking his way to the next adventure.
It’s remarkable how that works. it’s also just a bloody miracle that in 2023 this album exists, and it’s swaggering confidence and homespun jerks mark it amongst the finest of the year, and a real “eureka!” (some rights reserved) for modern indie folk. All the dead oceans americana could learn a thing or two from these Canadians.
Edition of 100 Tapes available at the Westelaken Page; Comes with a Free Postcard of Lyrics.
