Do yourself a favor and find yourself the time to put yourself in a room–virtual, imagined, or real–with M. Geddes Gengras. It’s a known fact that Ged’s a voracious zoner, but he also carries a PhD in “talking and dub fun facts.” I had a chance to sit down with Ged where a story of a life lived and seeped in scene histories, label ascendancy, modular synthesizers, and DUUUUBBBBB all interconnect. Ged’s probably told this one dozens of times. It’s a known fact that it is a story worth thousands of words and well worth a listen. Nevertheless, I could not have been more thankful.
Ged’s been with Hausu Mountain for the last few years, an institution that’s seen him albums release at a slower, more time-relaxed pace. That does not mean ideas are not spur of the moment, rapid-fire permutations, as Times Makes Nothing Happen made abundantly clear. It was Geddes’ hardest rapid-fire GAMER music put to ferric tape in a hot second; a strong slab of IDEA-core music. Yet, there’s always room for a hard pivot back. Expressed, I Noticed Silence is a series of six strangely beautiful and isolated zones that do not reset his work at the label. I am the Last of That Green and Warm Hued-World, alongside Ishi (on Leaving Records) may have been a world apart so long ago, but they’re still starting points to this string of bliss. Yet, what Expressed, I Noticed Silence makes a big leap in is how Geddes has been tinkering with the “zone as an expedition.” There’s a greater sense of domestic life and companionship embellished within.
Really, that’s just a fancy way for me to say there’s a special guest strumming and thrumming throughout these wildly quirky bliss arenas: Cyrus Gengras, of Kevin Morby’s backing band. The Brothers Gengras are in lockstep here. For both brothers, there’s a sense of playfulness within this approach (and not just because the track titles are rather funny). It’s easy to imagine both the brothers in a canoe: Ged navigating us downstream, through a thick fog, with his Moog Sub-Phatty and Waldorf Microwave XT acting as radar and sonar, as Cyrus strums a cocooned chord, reverb’d out and keeping the pace gentle. If you know your 2003 shoegaze (a landmark year for digital guitar integration into electronics), then you’re going to quite enjoy your time with the chaps. Together, they’ll follow a zone out to where it lands.
“Discovered Endstate Always” is a precise, practical opener that really lets them sink their teeth into their respective strengths. Together, the two create a near-ambient house chill out, where synth waves and samples act as otherworldly choruses of birdsong and ethereal voices. This is to say, these zones have the immediacy of a lush paradise as much as the chill out room. “The Harmony and Also I Became Square Movements” is another poignant examination of this process, featuring Geddes’ percussive amalgamations of banshee beats stoned out, bobbing and weaving over its six minutes. Finally, closer “Deadly, Holy, Rough” brilliantly traverses three different zones in one track. With reverent synthesizers, we might as well be starting in Dracula’s castle, yet the duo quickly find themselves in a valley at dusk, with synthesizer twinkles radiating the energy of fireflies. But by the last two minutes, whatever dusk’d energy we thought we had settles into a deep breathing rhythm. The bass drone sounds of two hearts beating, as if we’ve been in a sensory deprivation status all along.
Limited edition C38 orange cassette with black imprints. 2-sided 3-panel JCard with artwork from HausMo Max available at the Hausu Mountain Bandcamp Page
About a month ago I headed up to Pasadena for a Floating showcase. I’ve deeply enjoyed these events–although you must understand that I can rarely afford to go up in this economy due to gas/lack of transportation. Each one is a luxury to revel in.
Anyways, one of the preludes was a breathing exercise. And as someone that has tried desperately to find the proper q-zone for flawless breathing (and who claims to have “entered a sober trance state listening to the KLF’s Chill Out”), this was revelatory. Deep, thoughtful listening is intrinsically tied to deep, thoughtful breathing; it’s not a practice to be taken lightly and when performed perfectly it elicits compounding second-level effects. Take a breath from your stomach and let in more air through your diaphragm and out; repeat ad infinitely.
If you’re in the market for a listening companion to better instill this in you, then Atlantic Rhythms has you covered. The DC stalwart’s omnibus sounds have been known to teeter between the ambient (Dura) and the post-hardcore (the EXCEPTIONAL reissue of blacks myths is still available!). It’s always a good time, but now with Shoeb Ahmad’s Breather Loops, we’re taking things to the trance-level.
Shoeb Ahmad has been crafting sounds for over fifteen years. She’s got a knack for drone and misty soundscapes, but a punk ethos and quality is intrinsic to her work. Breather Loops is her music at its most didactic. Ahmad had developed these loops out of a lockdown necessity; meditative sleights that offered an open hand to anyone that’d listen. When Ahmad was given a grant, she started taking from her surroundings, crafting simple-10 second videos that could function as infinite loops.
It’s why I’ve likely looped these cuts repeatedly in various contexts; it’s an aggressively varied set of sounds that encompasses a range of sounds between fringe jazz, neo-classical slowcore, and illbient; an inadvertent soundtrack for the lulls and downtime one finds between a frothy pint or a bowl of hash and just need to zip out of existence. The zones Ahmad surmounts are not innately focused on movement; she was aiming for the “ambient as wallpaper” aesthetic. Things often move on the periphery, like within the zitters and zippers of opener 2.7 or the fourth-world music building of 2.3. At most, maybe 2.9 (or 2.1) can soundtrack a giant golden sun rising in the east. Big deep breath ditties here, aching over the hi-fi.
Though, Side B often features loops that operate as almost-ambient pop. 2.6’s synth and drum edge the energy of a run through a bombed New Mombasa in Halo 3: ODST, as a simple mantra is repeates. 2.5’s down deep with a sine tone and synth harmonies, just bellowing for a deep listen as it loops an impeccable tone around and around. 2.4 is practically the intro to Pearl Jam’s Ten, just spaced out. Closer 2.10’s loop brings out guitar and dubbed out drums, for a somber, sobering close to complete our breathing exercise, leaving us equipped for the task at hand.
Limited edition cassette available at the Atlantic Rhythms bandcamp page
New loops that are strange attempts at noise pop songs that were slowed down via reel to reel and fed into the dub zone, even though this is not a dub record. Fuck that’s a stupid sentence of nothingness, isn’t it? A tape that wouldn’t find itself out of place in the Chocolate Monk or Mang Disc catalogs is presented by FTAM Productions, a process of sound that is abrupt, raw, comic industrial cut up record loops that keeps delivering grooves one could hear on a Violent Onsen Geisha album. Even with all these name checks I made to give you an idea of where this album is coming from sonically, it’s not another supermarket level sonic irritant. Hot Singles in Your Area is the real good shit you get in an alleyway in the dark.
Second side has some toasting vocals over records skipping for a song or two. Another song has deteriorated mechanical rustiness at the forefront of the sound. The pause button gets used to full effect on another song as balloon rubbing sounds interact with tape scratching off awkward time signatures. This one made my dog turn her head several times and that’s a good sign, folks. Styrofoam and glass shards making a stinging salad of tense pull and push anti music. Some sounds recorded from the next room over, jumping around different acoustic spaces from one phrase to another. A repeat listener for me. One of the best things I’ve heard this year. Grip it, ya goons.
It’d been six months since the booster rooster bit me on my cute little butt, and next thing I knew I had a tickle in my throat and couldn’t sleep. Then came the hot sweats, the chills, and the fatigue. Look, I’m young and this whole virus is kept at bay via one(1) Gatorade a day (I like the cucumber melon green flavor best but sometimes you gotta settle for blue; blue never fails). Nevertheless, it’s a small and welcome bout from clerk work that offers enough time to offset the neverending backlog of great batshit music from around the globe. Some of these tapes have been sitting out for half a year. Some of these are practically old friends I listen to on my government mandated work breaks. Some are new challengers. I thought you should have a quick glimpse into what I’ve been listening to.
Alex Cunningham – Two for Olivia
OH ALEX! The midwestern violin maestro of unending tension and unnerved unease, always reliable for cassette releases under the 30 minute marker. He respects our time in this economy. Two for Olivia has a strong “straight to tape no fuck up” approach that differs from his previous two releases back in 2021. Here, two pieces for the one known as Olivia, “the resident dog of Bird Cloud Recording, who has slept through the recording of almost every album [Cunningham has] ever made” saunter and waggle. Side A’s piece (Olivia) is tenacious. It features rollicking syncopation–made out of either actual violin chords or Cunningham’s masterclass chopped and screwed approach to the violin. It casually subverts the violin solo with blistering gusto. Side B’s performance (Amps for Olivia) starts with classic “Cunningham Concrete”–low quippy noises that practically bleep and bloop better than any glitch recording. Although, its not without its sudden shockwave noise blasts that hijack the stately affairs for a noise solo that quickly becomes the whole enchilada of this side of the tape. It’s a technicolor delight, bopping and weaving out tidal storm wave level blasts of freakazoid noise. You WANT to do backflips and parkour moves to this. You’ll be so moved you will call up Harmonix and tell them “GET THIS IN THE NEW ROCK BAND NOW!” because this solo makes Wolf Eyes look too wimpy.
Woof indeed.
Cyanide Tooth – Tentative Identity
Erick Bradshaw, aka Creamo Coyl of Spin Age Blasters on WFMU, has been in my pile of tapes for a while. I refuse to classify or file away his Cyanide Tooth project, the kind of weirdo music that seeks to continually shift and expand its horizons. Tentative Identity is big brain hours for Bradshaw. Caught between mis-jangled drum loops bops (Slow Dance the Abyss’ pulsing frenzy is one for the ages and clubs), library synthesizers from hell (Banishment Park), and free-flowing debris (Are We Here Yet?), every track here is a chance to revel. Bradshaw’s biggest strength to match and dial in these disparate ideas is via the edits. Many of these cuts are accentuated by brief interludes that help to push one idea to the next. It’s club ready, which I haven’t been able to say about other Cyanide Tooth or Maximum Ernst releases before.
Jeff Zeigler & Dash Lewis – Eraserhood
I miss bike riding. Naturally, I understood how necessary it can be as a mode of transportation for urbanites of all stripes. So, when the opportunity arose to help Dash Lewis with repairs in exchange for tapes I was quite ecstatic at the chance to visit different incantations of his work as Gardener. There’s an impassioned, ever-shifting energy to his works, with his Trouble in Mind explorers series tape hitting a specific batch of bliss.
However, perhaps the most exciting tape to dive into was Eraserhood, a collaboration between him and Jeff Zeigler, released at the end of 2020 for Atlantic Rhythms. Zeigler and Lewis recorded the tape as one of the last projects at the old incarnation of Zeigler’s Uniform Recording studio, itself in the Callowhill (or “Eraserhood”) neighborhood of Philadelphia, where gentrification has eroded the post-industrial aura that became a framework for Eraserhead. The tape is split into 4 mongo longforms (it’s the heaviest tape in terms of weight Im talking shop on here) evoking deep listening practices. They also draw out their crescendos. Quite a value!
Truly though, the tape really just boils down to motorik rhythms and synthesizer noise–the two are besties that go hand in hand when it comes to invoking trance states and longform listening. On Side A, I give the edge to Popcorn Ceiling. Minimal drum machine and wailing synthesizer alarm noise glisten around the edge. Yet, the guitar tuning, what I can only describe as dreamy yet longing, practically defines it as a lost Cocteau Twins piece. It would’ve been an excellent bridge between Victorialand and the Moon and the Melodies had it arrived on 4AD in January ‘86. When it pops the fuck off on the final third, it pushes the reverb and drum machine stomp to full blown trance mode, while bringing in delicate synthetic strings. Was this made for deep listening or the chill out lounge?
For Side B, it’s a genuine bloodbath to choose the designated favorite. Observatories has strong “late 00s Kranky” energy that fits between an Atlas Sound demo that never got off the blogspot (with EXTRA lazer guided drum melodies) and a Cloudland Canyon bliss journey. It’s an urban beat that swells and swells its way to a triumphant transcendence (never quite hitting the red but definitely crushing). To say it is begging for a TikTok dance would be an understatement. It needs a whole festival and ceremony. Rumored Jazz may be too out there for Astral Spirits, but Zeigler and Lewis follow a synthesizer drone thoughtline to its conclusion. Along the way, they traverse a wilderness that grows more foreign and calming, without ever becoming hushed. There’s always a sense of movement within these accomplished pieces.
Late Night Cardigan – Life is Bleak and It’s My Cheat Day
I have talked to Zach about music and beer a lot. He is a “talented drummer” in Gonerfest certified Big Clown, and an unwieldy good archivist when it comes to Memphis punk. He made me an excellent mixtape of Memphis Punk and sent me Late Night Cardigan, a quartet he drums in. Their 2022 self-released debut, Life is Bleak…is one of the best slabs of timelessly great sounding indie pop I’ve heard in a hot second. The kind of release you’d find trolling the Captured Tracks discography in 2012 and say “damn this shit is effortless.” Because well damn, the 10 tracks on the cassette are damn near effortless.
The instrumentation is sugar sweet, with Stephen Turner (also of Big Clown) conjuring up a cuddly twang, Jesse Mansfield goes groove mode on bass, and Zach well uh…Zach does cymbal rushes and tempo touchdowns (these are made up phrases to counteract me not knowing how to say anything more than “drums real good”). Seriously you hear this instrumentation and find yourself wondering why this isn’t on Sirius XMU.
They’re also a precise buffer for Kacee Russell’s punchdrunk gobsmacked vocal delivery. She holds no bars and takes no prisoners. SIde A and de-facto album closers–B-Movie and Slow Motion, respectively–are the definitive highlights of the output here. The former’s tenderness is a trojan horse to whip smart lyrics of self-doubt of being perceived as a super villain (“Can you imagine a girl 5 foot 2 dealing PAPERcuts?!”). The latter’s slow balladry is a wistful admission of once living life like it’s a movie; suddenly though, a turn-on-the-dime tempo change that kick-starts a cathartic capper to the album.
Oh yeah and there’s a riveting cover of Pixies’ Gigantic exclusive to the tape.
Peter Kris – No Vision
Eventually, we will as a society realize just how giving the German Army/Peter Kris/Germ Class releases truly were. I’m a latecomer to the whole spectrum of releases, only knowing an occasional nugget here or whiff there. Yet, just a whiff of the mile wide catalog brings new depth to the ambivalence brought upon by late stage life as well as what it means when I say you’re “being industrious”. Because the German Army will not stop recording and we should be so thankful they do not. Peter Kris’ No Vision tape for Never Anything (the 4th Peter Kris release for the label!) continues a Durruti Column by way of Labradfordian jangled-out hunt for any signs of life in snake oil desert towns and derelict gallows. At times it is a sublime masterstroke, just the kind of aching beauty you WANT out of shimmering jangle guitar work. Side B does subvert the outright jangle though, letting unfathomable noise and jangle inversions blur out the radiance of Side A. Yet more or less, this is a steady slab of bliss.
Seth Kasselman – Analogous Fools
It’s been a joy to watch Seth continue to shift over the past two tapes (themselves encompassing the end of the 2010s right up to the pandemic); lowkey favorites of mine from the past two years. Well, the Kasselman is back, with his most “this is what I’ve been up to” set of recordings to date! Analogous Fools (recorded late 2020-2021) finds himself building off of the aquatic synths and musique concrete approaches that comprised his previous efforts. The recordings here are tighter, less on the longform side. They’re employ a newfound brevity and inquisitiveness that were not always apparent in his previous works. Ambient soundscapes evoke the eerie but never quite mend with the weird; these are zones that you wander through via your own routinized living conditions. The liminal spaces where unwinding is often a double edged sword.
Analogous Fools is Kasselman’s most single/track driven recording to date. It’s a cohesive longform listen, but I feel as if for the first time I have single cuts I WANT to return to. The Governors’ bubbled out pulses take the ambient synth piece to a new zone that calls into question how time and space function. How Did You Get Into This Line of Work? goes “gamer mode”, with each blip and haptic “bap” platforming its way through secret collect, as pastoral synths illustrate blue skies. Breaking in Real Time’s invocation of domesticity (via a life recording) is taken to a blissful extreme, as slightly nerved synths scatter about like polka dots–until a sudden intruder present themselves and turns this into a horror film. Ambition Can Bleed Your Soul is a chilling finale, worthy of a desert dust storm. Josh Kasselman provides a blistering harmonica as Seth wanders the ambient wastes, with just a bell chiming and a lurching drone. A career highlight in my eyes.
White Suns – Dead Time
I’ve been out of the Orange Milk loop for a bit–it’s more a me thing than a Seth/Keith thing. The curation is popping and the fashion is high-class. I just haven’t found a release in my q-zone recently. Thankfully though, they put out White Suns’ Dead TIme EP. It’s not everyday that Orange Milk HQ is going to bat for a noise-damaged synthpunk release like this, but White Suns are clearly worthy of the patronage. The trio’s 13 odd releases straddle that fine line of unclassifiable and “oh I know this way too well”. What you realize listening to the 4 tracks making up this C-20 is that the lads can’t stop “being industrious”. Dead Time has been in rotation besides Cabaret Voltaire’s Live at the Lyceum and TG’s Mission of Dead Souls–two essential live documents of genre forefathers who could weaponize noise into any shape necessary.
This is exactly why Dead Time fucking rules and is a welcome introduction to White Suns. All 4 tracks present are en media res zones that each allude to a different strength or territory this act can occupy. “xenobiotics” really puts the “now” in “no wave” by amping up the guitar feedback and synth blips into a carousel of clown pain and bad-acid detritus until being swallowed whole by the noise. “palermo catacombs” gave me a whiff of early Pop. 1280, but its stripped any of that act’s libido. Cavernous drums (rewarding good speakers) are the star of this track, until they take a backseat to the slow, steady build atop their noise-coaster. Is there a drop? You’ll have to find out for yourself! “night pours in” is the closest to a rocker we find ourselves with on the tape, as the trio find themselves in lock-step summoning a 747 jet engine for the ages. Finally, we end with “melnais balzams”, the gothic atmospheric track that relays a dream state worthy of Ministry’s own dream song. Bells toll, pistons wheeze, and guitars slash themselves into a fury. Needless to say, I’m all in hook, line, and sinkler for the White Suns.
Four track loops utilizing acoustic fragments and deft tape manipulation from one half of Tongue Depressor.
Stereo fields are utilized to their utmost potential.
Bells ringing down the hallways of memory, tape clicking adding it’s own time signature in call and response form.
Elements slowly swirl around the mix, congealing on different themes of tiny significance, these short terse loops revolving around one another.
Side A slowly builds itself up into a homespun mess of interrupted, tension-buildin’ chimes and overtone harmonies while the tape machine’s take up reel spins out in real time in non-treated fashion. I’m especially drawn to the sounds of the tape machine itself that Zach is working with here. An ambient hissing dysfunction that adds to the mix of four track fuckery that Rowden excels at in leaps and bounds on this. Taking minimal amounts of source material and mining out interactions of incorrect tape responses, slowly fading into silently shuddering loops of degradations to the source material resembling a grey oxide stew with flecks of warbling tape phrases popping up at odd intervals. Rewind function enters the mix eventually, erasing the older information slowly with each repeating cycle of the combined loop phrasing. This is patient, inhuman music deeply tied to the material at hand and a singular vision for building moods that sustain themselves across both sides of this tape.
Synodus Horrenda on No Rent Records is my first exposure to this project by Lexi C.M.K Turner. A sound that I heard a lot from tape trading friends in the ’00s is on display here: amplifiers mic’d up and feeding back in unruly tormented fashion. Sustained intensity approaching a meeting of Mathausen Orchestra and mid-period Ramleh guitar feedback, although I don’t feel here a guitar sound as much as a harsh noise rotten tone. Some tapes just get you from the beginning and this one did it for me. Bear witness to a real monolithic crushing sound that builds patiently and never relents in intensity for sustained periods of time, fuzz baths for days of filthy feedbacking, bludgeoning tones.
Harsh harsh harsh noise, in every sense of the term. Play loud on headphones while drunk late at night. Almost starts to drone for a second before relapsing back into shrieking fuzz swells that are intoxicating in rich texture. Side B’s beginning is a bass tone buried beneath stereo fucking ugly crashing demented filth that wouldn’t be out of place on a David Gilden tape. In your face and intense shit that doesn’t let you have any breathing room. It fills up all the space without becoming a constant wall, rather things are always shifting under the surface in dimensional relationship in the muck. This tape has won me back over to a style of harsh noise I thought I’d grown tired of. If you like brash ugly burly harsh noise that’s unrelenting this will be right up your alley. Sold out already. Wah!!!!
Out in Orlando, FL, Body Shop’s punk flurry is a sight to behold. You’ll have to bypass a few different Body Shops out in the Bandcamp barrens to find their angular, never-out-of-style artisan style punk that debuted on last year’s FL3SH WORLD. That’s a tickler of a punk EP, itself the byproduct of pandemic hiatuses and a need to push out ideas into the wild. This year though, the band’s partnered with Miami, FL based Crass Lips, itself a local DIY institution that’s quickly mainlined continental connections and booking prowess around the country. Both Body Shop and Crass Lips are a keen fit.
Hissy Hits LIve at Pulp Arts is a raw-throw down of a live in-studio. Six nitty n’ gritty tracks that pretty much run the gamut from any dance-keen rhythm sound from ‘78-’84. Heavy on the dub bass, edging bits of the Police’s Zenyatta era pop prowess, with vocalist Kat’s sing-a-long lyricism itself imparts quite a performance. Times like this when I hear releases this strong I have to wonder if punk is all mathematics and not passion and performance.
Perhaps a combo of both? While it didn’t appear on FL3SH WORLD, the grooved out bliss of Searchers is practically my answer to that quandary. For a whopping seven minutes, Body Shop lay down dub rhythms as Kat saunters through the scene, wailing with gusto. Even with those rhythms holding us to the floor, its not hard for Kat to quickly burst for the ceiling or cause a bash of whiplash when their sound hits the red. Endlessly addictive, easy to latch on to. No matter why Crass Lips was thrilled to run a quick batch of tapes available at their Bandcamp.
This isn’t a huge departure from the other tape I’ve heard by this project: lots of quick dynamic edits, unique crackling and popping textures in some parts, generally a fractured take on ambient textures mixed with music concrete editing takes this into some very good zones. Most of the songs on this tape are under four minutes, which means a couple blinks and you missed 50 different sound objects. What I like is there isn’t an over reliance on one type of editing or playing technique, but it’s consistently messing with your attention span by purposeful asymmetry.
I would one to see this project perform live, but they apparently live in Antarctica, so the folk lore goes these days. Well Stapleton me to the wall of a painting, but this gets into a little dark surrealist territory that is all it’s own slimy tendril bath of purring synths and looping acoustic field recordings. Things are filthy and weird enough for my liking on this one much more than “The Ganser Syndrome,” which I like for different reasons than this one.
There’s some intense tape fuckery going on during the second half of this tape, dissolving into fluttering bells and back into acoustic looping awkwardness. Bewildered ears ponder sound sources and are left guessing and grasping at fragments of ultimate cut up goodness that I haven’t heard since the last Id M Theft Able tape I listened to. Repeat listener, I’ve listened to this at least four times and will go back for more later this year, highly recommended release from this baffled buffoon.
Reclaimed cassette tapes, dubbed in real time with j cards assembled from salvaged craft paper, and cut up art from a diy guide to energy alternatives. Each cassette has unique album art.
Ramp Local, the label/PR workhorse of Jake Saunders, has been steadily cranking out titles for over seven years. You check that back catalog – Stice, Godcaster, Lily (Konigsberg) & Horn Horse, Palberta (also lily konigsberg)… there’s a clear pattern here of “whimsically batshit and dead-eyed, but not fussy” pop that finds you, more than you find it. As a result, every now and again you expect to find yourself with a strange set of mavericky nuggets that you can’t quite detach yourself from, nor know how to exactly pin down for folks. You worry if you go to stump for this kind of stuff, you might be booed out of the indie night or have tomatoes thrown at you.
Of course, that’s not the case with Tomato Flower. They’re a Baltimore start-up that spent about 18 or so months writing and testing each other’s wits with what they could pull together. They rather casually dropped a sub-13 minute digital EP, Gold Arc, back in early February. It’s the kind of release that requires both a minimal amount of words to describe and yet insists on an essay-level treatise of why THIS sound is so goddamn potent. If you know your early Slumberland, your decade-old Captured Tracks rarities, you like to go “Sam Prekop mode,” or have been tuned to the working of the Paisley Shirt label, then you likely will resonate with Tomato Flower’s second-mover level pop ditties. Their spunky and quippy style of playing emphasizes rhythms first, then builds illustrious sound design that rewards endless listens. And none of the songs on Gold Arc passed the three minute mark; itself the truest indicator of a band with immense pop wit. It practically radiated bioluminescence.
So, it’s with a light heart that Gold Arc is being collected with Tomato Flower’s next, equally rewarding EP followup, Construction, here on August 5th as Gold Arc / Construction. Note the artwork, a combination of both digital EPs artwork. Whereas Gold Arc was the “utopic,” free-thinking EP, Construction is being touted as a more earthly batch of songs, tethered to the daily grind and endless shockwaves that rupture from its wake. Just from the tropicalia-inflected opener, Bug, you garner a sense that the humidity is way-up and a storm lies ahead. Construction’s other ditties are slower and more ponderous, although sudden whiplash from sonic epiphanies practically threaten to burst at any moment. And yes, three of the tracks now either flirt or outright bomp past the three minute mark! 😮
One such case is Construction, our title track! There’s a sense of legitimate whimsy that evokes Omni’s nervy pace-changes–we literally jump into chorus without much of a warning! Yet, Tomato Flower is denser, flooding the sound with synths in the vein of a trip to Super Mario Sunshine and Austyn Wohlers’ earnest lyricism of day-to-day bygones and adventures. Meanwhile, Fancy (nearly hitting five minutes), is the closest Tomato Flower has come to channeling latter day slowcore. By that I mean it is a spaced-out lounge track on a wavelength between Crumb and Horse Jumper of Love, a suggestive track that suggests symptomatic undercurrents in indie writ large.
In the EPs most gobstopping moments, Tomato Flower channels a realm of Stereolab-core that hasn’t been completely given its proper due. I’m specifically alluding to tracks Blue and Aparecida. The former’s polyrhythmic strut n’ step puts it in line with present day indie, but when the song hits its halfway point, it suddenly turns into an ambient synth lullaby–its a technique Cibo Matto pulled off brilliantly on their longforms back in the day, but Tomato Flower update with precocious wit. The latter’s only running with enough gas in the tank to last 100 seconds, and each one counts. The tropicalia-tinged track practically unleashes a new synth whoop, chord change, or cymbal wink with every second.
Needless to say, Construction’s compilation and track pacing are a varnished introductory report of where Tomato Flower is at. Perhaps though, the truest knowledge of where their minds are at will be garnered when out on the road with Animal Collective this summer. Goodness what a time to be alive!
Edition of 500 available from the Ramp Local Bandcamp Page
Perhaps the only time I ever truly made a mogul move was when I was 15. January 2014. Taking a call from my brother while I sat in a hot tub. I belted into the phone “get me the longbox.” I don’t think Amoeba LA ever carried another Longbox Option Package again. The $70 it sold for is now a bargain. For teenage me, Longmont Potion Castle was the umpteenth piece of comedy ephemera in a long line–right after Space Ghost Coast to Coast and just before David Thorne’s late-00s blog emails; before Mr. Show but way after Homestar Runner. It felt like a secret handshake needed to navigate the world, an armor of its own accord.
Back in spring 2011, his cult-celebrity finally landed him a prime-time spot at 4:05 AM on [adult swim]’s Off the Air. I quickly found LPC 4 at a record shop in Portland, OR on vacation during Thanksgiving 2011. I never gave a second look at the complimentary Sub Pop CD comp, I was reveling in the excitement of Tandy. Since then, I’ve had an open policy of leading the charge on acquiring any and all Longmont possible. This is somewhat of an annual activity, made possible by the seasonal LPC online mega storefronts. Longmont Potion Castle 19 is LPC’s 21st studio album in 34 years, if you can appreciate that.
The 2019 “Where in the Hell is the Lavender House” documentary implied that Mr. LPC has no intention to stop making phone calls, as it is still an activity he enjoys. He even started doing live calls for audiences at screenings and collected the most workable calls into a single compilation. His methods since late-career highlight Longmont Potion Castle 8 (where calls were done on Skype and with a new voice, the result of a nose injury or something) really haven’t changed much. Longmont Potion Castle calls local businesses, the celebs, and assholes on the edge. He usually corroborate two hours of worthy material. If you know this, then you either really like it, or you are T*m Th*rnt*n and think he stopped being good after LPC 5 (this is wrong).
When Bono asserted the idea that their very good song “the Fly” was about “that of a phone call from someone in Hell who enjoys being there and telling the person on the other end of the line what he has learned,” he inadvertently provided the clearest image of Longmont Potion Castle’s discography. LPC has crafted a timeline of weird and eerie dispatches over phone lines, letting us eavesdrop on the unsuspecting, unraveling, and/or unhinged . We almost never know how many times, or for how many months LPC has been calling these people, just that on the calls put to tape, we know they want to murder him with guns and knives and fists. And the entire time, LPC maintains insane composure. This is not trolling. Something more akin to a sincere surveying of the American id, pinpointing what riles people up to the point they declare they will “put a bullet in [his] ass” and murder him. His requests are often incoherently genuine or genuinely illogical; things that purposely push people out of their comfort zone and into the hissy ether of our phone lines. It’s a decidedly unhuman world out there.
I have to stress to people that LPC is not prank calls; the objective(s) of DU Records’ highest-profile artist do not align with crass over-the-top antics. The John Cena spam call and Dunkey’s pranks, themselves some of the more noticed/notable prank calls of the 2010s, are crass and lack establishing a dialogue with the individual on the other end. They torment and berate, negating any possibility of ascending to phone art. LPC’s phone art has always been based in two distinct MOs: rhetorical standardization and contextual bafflement.
When I say “LPC has set rhetorical standards”, what I mean is that his capacity for carrying on a conversation is rhythmic. It in its vigor there’s rhyme and flow, amongst sudden left turns; it never ceasing to enact new colloquial quips or turn of phrases. And somehow, people on the line keep trying to decipher or find themselves roped in. So few are the humorists that actually make their sleights of phrase worthy of leaning in (Tim Robinson is currently one of the few who’ve most achieved rhetorical standardization via ITYSL). For the latter, the contextual bafflement, that’s been LPC’s whole bread and butter–since the beginning when the answering machine would beep every ten seconds. The phone is a miracle, one that synchronously connects two spatially diverse voices. People HATE when that is called into question. LPC has often destroyed that synchronicity–accomplished either with batshit noise and feedback, three-waying the phone lines to truly create temporal uncertainty, or by curating the calls that end up on these compilations to be the freewheeling and unbound. Early LPC releases were just dozens of calls under a minute. It was supposed to consume and overwhelm. Listening to a tape (not CD) of his work and the lack of immediate returns to that sensation. The seamlessness makes it hard to pinpoint his melodies. One line closes and another immediately opens.
What has become increasingly apparent over LPC’s 30+ years dedicated to calling people just to see what’s up, is a real sense of what the refinement of the decline sounds like. In an era where public trust in institutions has eroded, we’ve failed to truly combat covid and fascism, and we have no prospect of a real communal future (just dipshit survival of the fittest), LPC 19 is basically a tenuous survey of how close we are on the brink. No, LPC calls have never been outright political–even the 2004 highlight Election Blues is more a dead-eyed stare into the world of opinion polling and petty territorialism, than real politics. Yet, even with the usual roster of peeving or phone mayhem, something about this compilation’s squabbles is more unhinged than usual.
Could it be pinpointed to various moments of the LPC 19 Medley 1/2? Dedicated pleas to help with a garage lever (“I got your number from a friend at the DMV”) hit the fritz faster than a bat outta hell. Later, earnest pleas coaxing neighbors to provide a swab, just to confirm they didn’t steal anything from LPC, unleashes some of the pettiest “go fuck yourself” behavior documented on a phone line. “Machete Lottery,” a stately attempt to make a general store garner $200, unleashes new levels of customer service hell, as if being a valued customer over generations doesn’t mean a thing. Somehow lottery people are enraged by the end of this! One LPC’s finest joke threats is recited by the woman over the phone from a call LPC opts not to record; brilliant depth to the story and humor from what’s been left behind. Meanwhile, no one wants to pay ASCAP the hundreds of dollars owed for Taco Comavilla. People just aren’t willing to let their data be destroyed and restored, and let interstate commerce crimes be bygones in the process. Even the cryptozoologist isn’t interested in building a coalition, only furthering his knowledge. Truly, all signs of a society that wants the other fella on the line to fuck off and die.
There’s still these fascinating moments of brevity. Take the new sound effects, like the reverberated siren that randomly shows a la Eric Andrew style, to the baffling twinkles that pop in moments where people are truly being unhuman; they function as breadcrumbs to signify that LPC sorta knows the insanity he’s in as we sit back and eavesdrop. Meanwhile, while dialing up as Dale Pigtail and trying to force a fella to pay a ticket, LPC just lets the fella state he’d been the target of homophobic slander and sincerely express grievance; he hangs up and never hear from him again. For the first time I can recall since Super Nintendo (perhaps LPC’s pinnacle of empathy), LPC sorta just vibes around with a kid with no real harm or irritation. Even a call to a bookstore reveals that people who staff these stores are more amused by the bizarreness and humor of the three-way rhyming quips than actually wanting to kill this man. Truly, a sign that civilization is still alive, at least as long as someone is listening and playing.
While the Alex Trebex calls remain likely finished and all released in the forms they should be, the return to the record store for a semi-sequel to Nash, Buckwild. Here it further teases that those calls that have garnered him a longevity for a new generation. Record store clerks now live to tell tales of LPC. Hell, I met one of the guys on the LPC’s Amoeba Records call from vol. 7. Buckwild’s splicing twists and turns, going well beyond Zia Records’ meta-moment and spreading out. It’s the call that has instilled long-lasting effects on my brain, with LPC’s incessant need for the breakthrough single from a Babylonian group on a “hot imprint” creating massive layups for slam dunk lines. And also, he can’t not sing the song into the phone over and over. All instigates classic LPC pleasure. And of course, there’s the samplepedia ditty, the thrash song, and a whole roster of things I can really only say “you should just hear this.”
I own two copies of it, one on 2xCD and one on 120 minute type II cassette. Both are $25 flat for US buyers, and likely going to be available in physical format when he decides he has the time to offer it/finds more type II tapes. I don’t recommend you play this in anything but a tape deck if you do happen to acquire it. All I can say is at the end of several deep listens in various formats and with various friends, Im deeply thankful this guy just wants to swab some people and keeps doing this shit. It’s important American surveyor work.
