It’s the middle of November as I type this and yet again I’ve been on a fly killing spree. I wish I could just make a device as potent as a flyswatter that hits with the same force as Asymmetrical Head’s latest here, Unruly Souvenir. The San Diego based electronic wunderkind and Bonding Tapes label boss has been a stalwart dating back to 2k5 — the era of Myspace! He thankfully and recently hopped back in the saddle of the tape game after a few year hiatus with the moniker and label, in the process offering 3 tapes across Bonding Tapes’ 2021 output.
Unruly Souvenir is the third of this return trilogy, a devious set of snacky booms, claps, and even the occasional stomp — all entangled into rhythmic pulsing that comprises techno music akin to racking up fly swatting kill combos. No, no I’m serious! Listening to a track like Nuova and it’s just full BPM fury that ain’t got nothing to prove but just how much it hates the little critters! I sense that Asymmetrical Head is a big combo raker, with Lyn_C creating pit-patter drumming that begins to devolve and introduce sudden one-two effects, popping with synthetic flourishes and trash-can gongs all the while.
Of course though, a full-fledged tape of heavy hitters might be a little too much fly overkill here. It’s the tape’s downtempo, spatial cuts that are the meat n’ potatoes here. This is where the real shocks come out, navigating the majesty of making “cool fucking noises that sound like a really powerful flyswatter” with immense finesse. MX Cap XM bops and weaves, using rhythmic pulses and an underlying synth to concoct an image of classic marine layer-tinged bumper-to-bumper traffic. Spatium Loop follows the same process, introducing sudden “clanks” and whiplash “blanks” through a wave of synthesizer pulsing that bobs and weaves like fireflies. Meanwhile, Qasira finds beauty, looping a litany of vocal soul shrieks, amidst all of this turmoil. Even as we move into the b-side of Unruly Souvenir, Asymmetrical Head kinda stops making cool flyswatter sounds–it’s all about those sick ass laser rifles noises on “057,” and the pure ethereal red tide nightswimming of “XIIAM.” Cohesion triumphs!
Yet, Unruly Souvenir still relishes in full force on a knockout trilogy to close up shop. “XWN” is all snickering rhythms and deep-seeded tension, while “Fat Clinic II” features a dark bass and that reverberated rat-a-tat THUMP that would land any fly on its ass; the kind of alternative boom-bap beat deserving of an MC of the highest caliber. “OUTX” naturally reflects and recasts “INTX” with the lessons learned from this tape, a mending of the synthesizer ambience that has bound this tape to all those drum patterns and propulsive fly killing mechanisms — at least that’s what I was feeling.
Limited Edition Cassette in Jcard, Norelco Case and Blue Shells with labels available from the Bonding Tapes Bandcamp Page!
So what’s that I’m hearing?! You want a found sound odyssey of drum n’ bass ditties “but for the arcade room at 3pm, not the chillout room 3am”? Well guess? I think Cool Hans Luetke has your fix. C. Hans Luetke is a newcomer, as far as I can tell, with a couple of transient, atonal electronics having hit the 5CM and Personal Archives Bandcamp pages over summer. Here on “Dianetic Diabetic!” (for Personal Archives), Luetke pilfers a series of ambient, yet glitzy n’ glitched vapory synthscapes alongside the latest in downtempo jazzy drum n’ bass.
Imagine, if you will, the kaleidoscopic menagerie of an arcade: The blurred faces; the half-remembered, possibly half-gouged carbohydrates; racing games that only make you remember you will never wake up in a Bugatti; the anchoring stock of quarters that slowly dwindles and frees your britches. C. Hans Luetke has a tantalizing focus on those types of wild nights, and both the in-the-moment flow state blur and out-of-the-moment melancholy. This C75 (containing 22 quite considerately titled tracks) here is spliced as such, providing a full sensory zone as we engage from one game to the other. It’s continually slinking, allowing it to strike constructivist, disengaged bops that can suddenly hit max velocity when the drumming hits the floor or absolute dejection, drifting in a delirious fatigued state.
Hand-stamped rice paper C75 cassette, 2-sided/3-panel Jcard in Norelco case in an Edition of 50 available at the Personal Archives Bandcamp page.
Seattle, WA based one-person machine Elliott Hansen has been casually pulling out a unique odyssey of tapes. Their releases are communal as they come, esoteric as one would hope to see, and cover a huge swath of noises circulating from anywhere from a basement under the house to astral heavens. If I’m showering praise like that then it means I really like their tapes. And Elliott’s label and curatorial prowess is one to watch. Since starting Drongo in 2018 with the Wow and Flutter compilation, Elliott has beget us with over 30 releases that continue in real time to expand upon their own influences and little world. Most of the label has found itself through friends and personal relationships, and in 2021 Drongo Tapes even had releases that cracked the Tabs Out top 200!
I caught up with Elliott months ago before meeting them in person at a release show for Eyecandy (who played with Sprain, a band we are rather fond of). This transcript has been edited and modified and includes a handful of reviews at the bottom.
How’d the day been?
It’s been good. I’ve been in the middle of a long series of driving. Currently, I’m in Eugene, OR right now at my partner’s place; although I live and run Drongo out of Seattle. I was planning to go down to Berkeley (they got two baby kittens as a surprise!) Then on top of that, a band I’m working with, Eyecandy, booked a little release show with Sprain in Ventura, CA–and so I’ll be traveling down to the Central Coast for this.
With the amount of travel and regionality presented by Drongo Tapes, I’m wondering how you’ve handled submission or found artists.
It’s mostly just my friends! My partner, who has family in Santa Barbara, has mutual friends who’ve shown me projects I’ve been more than happy to put out on Drongo. Beyond that, it’s very much on a case-by-case basis. Lot’s are my friends! It’s not like the masses are lining up to sign to Drongo, but I’ve found a few email submissions make their way to my inbox.
One of the bands I’ve felt luckiest to work with is “The Big Nest” out of Vermont. They’re the only ones who are definitively “not my friends living down the street”. My bandmate knows Ethan from the Big Nest online. We did a blind collab for one of his other projects called Live Brut–that’s a crazy two and a half hour noise guitar album that’s near and dear to my heart. Me and Cameron hadn’t heard any of it, and we were pretty amazed by what was given to us.
Also, a specific shout out to Kyle from Drowse. We haven’t worked with him directly, but he has connected me with artists like Being Alone from Portland. Kyle also mixed the album of another artist I’m working with, The Exit Bags out of Alberta, Canada. We’re trying to do a co-release of that with Joyless Youth Home Recordings as I exclusively do tapes and Mike wants to put his project into other formats.
Why did you start doing tapes in the first tape? Did it stem from your Skunk Ape project?
I love tapes because… well they are so easy to make! They’re cheap and easy to pick up at random! Even if you lose $5 on a tape, YOU CAN RECORD OVER IT! I discovered when I was 17 I could plug my computer output into an RCA and just record a tape, and it was fucking awesome! I was getting into K records, specifically the well-documented Beat Happening. Now that’s a completely different sound than Drongo, but that idea of “You can just make tapes. You don’t need that budget and you can just buy and make tapes for your friends/give them away for free.”
I messed around with a couple of pronto drongo tapes; it’s just me and my friends dicking around on Voice Memos in High School in a basement. I decided to take it a little more seriously in 2018 when I moved to college and made the first comp tape (“X”–I imagined it would be more tracks, but 9 tracks was impressive)! I like compilation tapes and with that idea I just wanted to make something cheap where if you didn’t like the first band…well, I got other bands on here! It was my way to put my foot in the door and start working with a litany of people and possible avenues to explore. Yeah, no one had heard the label or who I was hyping up.
How many artists did you continue to work with from that release?
3 originally, although I cut ties with one artist. Thus I work with two artists from that comp–myself and my partner! The rest are friends.
Sonically, Drongo’s been potent enough to host Serpent Season AND Layanah, two diametrical ends of the label’s sound. How do you contemplate the sound?
I didn’t go into Drongo with an idea of a sound. Now, I do have an internalized idea of the Drongo Sound®, but I don’t think about it super actively. I think it kind of creates itself–people who want to release on Drongo do have a consistency. Generally, the tie-in is “hazy, messy, and ambient”. It’s a catch-all, and that’s really a personal tie-in to the music sound I personally find most exciting.
Are there any labels you collect?
Well you put me on the spot! But I do love the Flenser. They’ve always got something interesting going on. Yes, they have more of a sound than Drongo, albeit with a lot of range that the dark atmospheric stuff they put forth allows. Personally, I would love to achieve that with Drongo!
Joyless Youth Home Recordings (who would go on to co-release the Exit Bags) are making cool releases and I appreciate what David is putting out.
Drongo’s tape runs have often been limited affairs, each stylized differently and uniquely. How do you know how big a tape run will be
I make mistakes with the runs all the time! Sometimes they stick around for years or other times they sell out immediately! I wanted to give these to stores n’ stuff. I originally priced my tapes at $3 just to break even, but I’ve upped it to $5 to pay out Drongo artists at least a little something for their time!
Are you dubbing them yourselves? And what is the process like?
I do buy blanks from duplication.ca or DeltaMedia, especially the latter for those early releases; DeltaMedia only does multiples of 25 and so I’d pick up 25 tapes and then try to sell ‘em. A handful of people also signed up for the Drongo Street Team subscription program! Now I’m autosending out like 10 tapes to people who autopay me monthly! A couple of them are based in Seattle and I literally just drop ‘em off at their house 🙂 Having those guaranteed ten sales increases the quantity of these runs, for sure.
I self-dub myself, because I don’t want to pay for pro-dubbing. When it comes to this process, I tell myself “I’m saving money!” and then go to record or thrift stores and buy like 5 tape decks. They all break on me and then the cycle starts anew–well I’m exaggerating a bit, but I think you get it. Like I did a tape run of 100 for the latest Warble and Fuzz compilation and that STRAINS a tape deck. An acquaintance from Seattle gave me a Pioneer double deck that has a six cassette changer mechanism. I could use that for dubbing and swap between six tapes quite efficiently. I used that for five runs at the start of the year until it started to have some high end frequency issues. The deck that I used for that run basically pooped out as I was looking to dub Ground Hums.
What is your highest hope for cassette culture (in general) as we push forward through time?
More people buy tapes! I’d like physical media culture to be more about having the music and not “the commodity fetishism”. Physical media is in a weird place in 2021 and digital media is always weird (streaming is bullshit); digital media lends itself to file libraries. That isn’t an invalid way of listening, it just feels radically different from physical media. When an album arrives in the mail it imparts a good feeling. I just don’t want to spend $20 on a vinyl consistently, when I can hold it in the palm of my hand for $5. I want tapes to be accessible, and not locked behind discogs markups.
SOME GREAT TAPES / FUTURE CULT CLASSICS DRONGO HAS SENT FORTH!
Skunk Ape – Ground Hums
Utilizing a myriad of tools, pedals, friends, and locales, Elliott’s own Skunk Ape project hit a dreamy, yet frigid sphere with Ground Hums A soundtrack for destitute locales, from snow-drenched fields of barren waste to misbegotten motels where the TV is all static; it’s a most apt title that even the liner notes’ minimal design parallels quite well. Elliott’s nine compositions hold a low-flying level of feedback and dronery, functioning lullabies for decepid machines like motel radiators or rusting water heaters.
The noise-damaged ambient does not evoke pure rage though; it often feels curious, scanning for a sign of life. Side A may carry no words, but it evokes one holding out on a voice on a shortwave shortwave radio in the midst of a destitute snowstorm. The glacial qualities allow folksy guitar to pass through and distill a warming, thoughtful bend that just happens to tie this release towards slowcore. At its most harmonious, Ground Hums becomes a reminder to those that they are not alone, which becomes elaborated through the tape’s back half. Here we find greater guitar play, alongside crescendo style drones that swirl and melt. The frigid qualities of Side A begin to dissipate, and what unfurls is a sparkly, crystality that takes hold slowly, but surely over this side.
Eniks Cave – The Holy Holy Noisemakers
The one known as Eniks Cave has been a longstanding, upstanding fixture at Drongo HQ! Naturally, many of Cave’s projects have slinked through the label’s catalog; with a trusty synthesizer baseline and a knack for ambient droney zones. Nevertheless, Cave is always shifting focus, ever changing and pulling out more ends to explore–2020’s The Mirror Phase saw shoegaze being woven into the fold for example. Cave’s latest release for the label, the Holy Holy Noisemakers, is a euphoric reset. Opening with a burst of noisy sax and guitar, “Zohar” proudly declares Cave’s latest exploration is towards the most transcendent corners of free jazz, a welcome exploration and further dive for Drongo into territories unknown.
The synths are more angelic, the guitar work more freaky-deaky, and the saxophone is in full punchdrunk mood. It’s a recipe that Cave doesn’t wear out over the C30. In fact, he finds ample space to craft atmospheres reminiscent of mid-90s post-rock odysseys. There’s Tortoise style-lounge dub on “Supernal Meters”, alongside the O.Rang tinted spaced out drones and dub drumming of “Devekut”. Meanwhile, Side B’s explorations find ample space between the ethereality of early Dif Juz, alongside Bitchin Bajas and even Landon Caldwell. The piece “Subliminity” stretches and lashes and yearns, immaculately.
It’s an impeccable piece of bedroom recording.
From Elliott:
My friend/housemate Zac! He just records a super crazy amount of music that begets projects from indie rock to black metal. I met him at the University of Washington on the bus after a noise show. Both of us realized “wait you go to my college and listen to noise/tape music? And you’re from the bay area too?” All of his pals listened to indie rock and at that point, he had an album, Looking Through Shattered Glass, done and was looking to put it out. I was super lucky, as this was two months after the first compilation.
For the Holy Holy Noisemakers, Zac was practically recording two albums at once; one noisy and then these ambient saxophone compositions that became the album. I was daily pressing him to finish recording it because it sounded so good! But maybe the next Eniks Cave will be a black metal album. We’ll have to flip a coin to find out.
Archival Image – Exo
The figure known as Archival Image is shrouded in anonymity. Although that does not mean hermitude and isolation necessarily birthed these recordings. Recorded across september 2019 to june 2021, from finland and eugene, OR to territories elsewhere, Exo reunites a litany of Drongo collaborators (Elliot contributes guitars and post-production, while arius ziaee brings out guitars n’ synths) and practitioners towards exciting advancements in “bug pop”–tapes do come with an insect inside afterall! Exo’s miniature “bug pop” compositions mumble and bubble, inviting you to stay low to the ground, as if to hear something coming from a crevice right below the dirt. Tracks like Drone, Depth, and Cynipid play with minimal, skeletal structures, crafting melodic hums that invoke plant grass as much as molecular anatomy. Side B offers the dark underbelly of this bug pop, opening with the lumbering industrial fight epic, “Sequence”. Even when the synthesizer is turned towards a louder, more industrial-damaged frequencies, Exo can’t not radiate a degree of warmth; a fascinating solace.
From Elliott: Archival Image is my partner (Ari of Lanayah) and they’re a huge bug nerd–lyrics are about bugs and taxonomy, but it’s so delayed and reverb’d you can’t hear the lyrics! I don’t think I’ll be doing runs of 25 anymore unless its something special like the Archival Image; we put bugs in those tapes and it was a (good) pain in the ass! They all had to be glued. We’d been talking about that idea for a while, and it was a great bug season when we did it in June. We kinda borrowed that idea from an Amulets tape tbh.
Serpent Season – Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The baklava shrouded Randall Leong was an early Drongo stalwart, coming out of the gate with this piece of doomy neo-folk that helped to further strengthen the quality control and possibilities of what a Drongo Tape could, would, and should be. Teetering between the blasted transmissions that dominated the Kranky era of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Patrick Shiroishi continuing acoustic dirges, “Hiroshima and Nagasaki” is a ghostly wandering through an abyss. Over the three tracks (each one taking its name from one of the three words of the title), Leong tests just exactly what a droney aberration could reflect, wading through reverby guitar, rural-tinged folk melodies, while integrating small quips of seafaring insects and birds, as well as spoken word.
From Elliott: He was the first person I got a submission in my email box with! Randal reached out through a mutual friend of Layanah!
Lanayah-Forever in May
Is this a cult black metal classic by now?! I can remember pre-COVID catching these fellows hit an absolutely gnarly droney riff that quickly dominated my winter. Layanah may humbly denote themselves as “”fairly unclassifiable blackened screamo” worthy of three (“???”) question marks. Yet, Forever in May is a lucid summation of their 2016-2018 halcyon era. The crux of their polyglot sound on this album is revealed through gorgeous longforms expeditions. Sure, there are quick outbursts like “Three Javelins”, yet its on “Soft, Vanishing”, “Wind Chimes”, and “Soft Transition” where Lanayah teeter between the kind of post-hardcore that paralleled mid-2010s post-rock and sudden scramo outbursts from the 00s that hit like a walloping smackdown! Meanwhile, tracks like “Pine Sun Orange” the ten-minute “Alone Year”, invoke cathartic, amber-tinged drone metal.
I had to blink twice when I saw Puremagnetik Tapes’ logo; the one with a rather Suite 309 style. Micah Frank is the intaker of Puremagnetik, the Brooklyn-based institution responsible for the digital instruments and Ableton sound plugins (in a subscription-based service model) dating back to 2006. Frank’s been steadily curating music/concert releases and this tape label for the past couple of years now, with over a dozen under the label’s belt.
Puremagnetik Tapes’ releases are ballasted, singular pieces that afford a listener a distinct time and place with each listen — as well as a free audio plug-in with purchase of one of their handy dandy clamshell tapes or a digital download. The sounds here invoke minimalism, free-drone, amongst others worthy of spatial analysis and meditative testing, so I went ahead and picked five.
Micah Frank – Noontide
For as much as Frank has been a huge proponent for field recording and percussive experimentation provoked by the likes of John Cage, his own Noontide is less the result of digital manipulation and more the result of early lockdown’s uncertainty. The resulting nine compositions dabble with electronic soundscapes that can start by sounding of deserted plazas and misbegotten brutalist architecture (“Gevi”), surveying and considering the unsteady uneasy peace. Frank’s pieces don’t stay dejected, in fact they often seem to realize that to sulk in the nothingness is contemptuous. Instead, they give way to glissading synth patches and anthemic bouts of ethereal ambience (“Noontide”) that can be quite bubbly (“In Orbit Unfolds”) or curiously soothing (“Turrets”) to traverse.
An Moku – Less
The beauty of a Puremagnetik Tapes release often comes down to the subtlety that the digital manipulation invokes within its roster. For Less, Dominik Grezler (An Moku) enacted a set of sonic limitations–bass, pedals on two pedalboards, some dusty vinyl crackles, and field recordings–and set forth. It’s a small, visceral set of limitations that finds Grezler’s hardware turning his bass into a low orbiting alien synthesizer as much as a transistor radio or a droning orchestra, while it takes the vinyl crackle and warps it into the taps of a leather pair of shoes. For most of Less, Grezler’s Zola modular synthesizer and the way it can manipulate his bass guitar is the paramount focus, leading listeners from jangly chord patterns into fizzly, bright zones or jarring, just out-of-focus ruminations, all without ever sacrificing the low end that glides and centers this set of eight pieces. In fact, the low end is practically radiating and hissing with primal, electronic urges. It might as well be calling on a listener to stay close and keep their ears to the floor.
arovane – Wirkung
Just how much warmth can one exactly extract from a Puremagnetik release? A whole Wirkung’s worth is my personal measure. arovane’s pieces, built of off “succinct improvisation multi-tracked with a harpsichord patch and a Neupert clavichord lute instrument” that define Wirkung, came from a dive into romantic composers and their defining ethos: the emotive and dramatic characteristics of a great composition. The 17 tracks here are not ones to be pilfered with or taken out of their immediate context. Carefully filed and organized, arovane decidedly distills a vivid, sensual array of euphoric moodiness throughout Wirkung. Many of the pieces quickly invoke images that strike of soaring jubilance: a vivid sunrise, fog burning and steaming away, crisp autumn air mended with creek water. It’s an environmentally minded tape that’s all done with the kinds of synthesizer sounds that border on an acid-tinged sound bath. It’s a sonic concoction that arovane is studious towards, assuredly having tracks last for just a couple, if not a few minutes at most for maximum effect. They make the brain POP, gently guiding one towards the next part of a dream, before bowing out into their gaseous state, leaving you head over heels. At the center of it all is “niin”, a seven minute soundspace that unfurls like dewdrops coming off of leaves. Small textures fly apart like cicadas, while a synthesizer note is held near and dear, droning off into the abyss. Things quietly pass through this system and each listen unveils a new appreciation for the natural gusts of wind that saunter through.
Boris Salchow – Stars
Yes, even Puremagnetik Tapes have something of a secret weapon on the roster: noted video game composer/v-neck beefsteak Boris Salchow. And with Salchow’s ear comes a penchant for tingly, interactive compositions. Mixing west coast field recordings into the digital fray of these 14 piano compositions, Stars’ soundscapes are inviting as they can be sparse. The piano chords that Salchow finds a motif within are a somber lot, pining for a clear Sunday morning, like the one that “Desert Beach” unhurriedly invokes in its sub-two minute run time. Yet, they can shift their emotive characters based on the tonal garnishes that suddenly jolt to life. At times on tracks like “A Flower” or “Fading Memories”, there’s a characteristic similar to the tape loops of an old Radiohead composition (yes, I know), that flicker with a thrill of noticing all those details around your desk. Meanwhile pieces like “We and Us” or “Still Movement” uses manipulation to instill depth, stretching the ways digital manipulation can produce percussive distillations that give the tape an almost post-industrial veneer.
Jacob Sacks – Montreal
Okay I know what you’re thinking after all these digital ambient zones–is there a Puremagnetik release that’s…unplugged? One preferably that’s just a piano performance designed for an audience of one and doesn’t come with a free audio plug-in for that matter?
For that, I slide your way Jacob Sacks’ Montreal, a selection of most serendipitous, SYNCHRONOUS piano improvisations performed in Montreal in 2019. The twenty miniatures that compose Montreal function as a real-time documentation of Sacks tinkering and elaborating on atonal, bluesy piano compositions; imagine if you will that you are watching a TMC Silent Sunday and Sacks just happens to be this week’s performer and you’ve got yourself a handy sense of the majesty that awaits. With no editing done,the session’s spoils are preserved for immediate digestion! It’s a rich, dense tapestry of tributes Sacks explores, bordering on mischievous as much as dead-eyed serious; deconstructions that might just suddenly pull out into a full-fledged track that has you back at that high-end ballroom in ‘58. All without forgoing the warmth that Puremagnetik’s releases have come to find out on the hi-fi.
Okay now listen up folks! I know you were all clamoring for Tad, but they broke up years ago. Also, you didn’t really specify which Tad you wanted so I went ahead and booked us Sir Tad of Columbus, OH (aka Meadow Argus (AKA Tynan Krakoff)) for this here shindig. He’s got a cool thing going, lo-fi keys and dubby bass, plus those misbegotten vocals that make it all feel like a washed out Simpson hallmark greeting card you got for your birthday back in 2009 (also, if you still have any money on the circuit city gift card from that…would you let me know?).
Anyways, Sir Tad is gonna SLAY at the party. I know it’s only a fifteen minute set he’s pulling here, but it should be enough time for like 5 games of musical chairs. Plus, Sir Tad is a bonafide MC now! Haven’t you heard Deeper and Deeper, the opening track on this EP here? He’s practically guiding you through the sheer drop of a comedown, with jubilant keys and meditative vocals that’ll have you all whizzed out for the carnivalesque music box majesty of a “Yucatan Sunshine”. That one stutters in and out so NO CHEATING during that musical chairs game, Jeremy! Afterwards, we’ll “Tie Cord to Racing Car” and try to figure out what day it is, before letting the goofball hit us with the “county fair public domain type beat” of a Great Generic Park. Oh you want an encore? Sir Tad is there to serenade once more with “Deeper and Deeper Pt. 2”, a last meditative breath. I sure hope he comes back with another set for longer soon!
Pro-dubbed C15 cassette with full color double-sided art by Pearl Morgan. Hand-numbered edition of 50. Available at the Sir Tad Bandcamp page.
We close out the year with a little help from Angel Marcloid, Ryley Walker, Rachel & Grant Evans (Hooker Vision), Tim Thornton (Suite 309/Tiger Village), Headboggle, and Mike Nigro (Oxtail Recordings).
Fire-Toolz – Eternal Home (Hausu Mountain)
ΜΜΜΔ & ALEM – L’Âge De L’Absolutisme (Antifrost)
Tiger Village – In Stereo III (Suite 309)
DIDA – Ingenuous Scenes (Orange Milk)
Sparkling Wide Pressure – Pretending Eternal (Hooker Vision)
Steve Gunn and Ryley Walker – DRZWI DOORS (Husky Pants)
Bitchin Bajas – Switched on Ra (Drag City)
Headboggle – Digital Digital Analog (Ratskin Records)
Bastian Void – Topia (Oxtail Recordings)
Wiggly – If I give you a cherry, the least you could do is spit the pit back into my bowl so’s I can suck on it later, and you don’t have to poke me in the eye with the stem (Cavern Brew Records)
Luke Daly’s Powl Dune release is humble in its personal descriptor inside the Jcard of his self-released tape Pattern from Town Beach. “Synthesizer and field recordings.” No more, no less. Yet, the sounds of Powl Dune are moody, ever-shifting knots. Daly’s synthesizer work can bounce between nifty-low ends and subterranean droning (with field recording workcraft lodging itself in-between). Its utilitarian synthesizer work that inspires a litany of those synapses to fire off in your brain. Its track titles–er, lack of them–also indicate full album listening. That’s right, no stops, just drive for 30 minutes to the nearest beach and take in those patterns and loops. And honestly, why not go and take a whiff of the “Pattern from Town Beach”? I hear the weather is still nice this time of year.
New Orleans is a slithering hot bed for minimal synth grinds and industrial jet set rippers. Along those lines beaming out of a cackling wurlitzer jukebox is Nail Club (Sara Nicole Storm). Her cassette releases spanning the last decade are long oop, with many nuggets stored throughout. I know this because Hot Releases re-issued the 2020 Collected Works on tape earlier this year. It’s a Tascam 4-track odyssey and sonic journal of an artist perpetually in flux; the tape’s sequencing purposely time travels through her catalog with an ear more towards mood not chronology. And with good reason, seeing as Storm treats the pulsing rhythm as an ecosystem that sounds like a rickety machine running on 1% battery charge sputtering out an ancient algorithm. Meanwhile, sly synthetic slinkery leverages a springboard for detailed mind palace considerations underneath all that 4-track fuzz. It’s a sound that scales up from the boombox to the grand halls of our nation’s many sewer systems that skaters reside within and one that doesn’t tire.
When trading favorites with Mr. Foxy Digitalis back in May, Brad Rose confessed that L’âge de l’absolutisme was one of the most awe-inspiring releases of 2021 to date. And indeed, when the tape came around, it HIT on the soundsystem and turned me and a pal into literal goo; a fantastical post-rock hybrid and a mongo act of self-realization for MMMD* (pronounced Muhammed). The Athens, Greece based duo of Illos (Dimitris Kariofilis) and Nikos Veliotis have spent 12 years on Illos’ Antifrost label with over a dozen albums. In that time, they’ve decided to make a mad investment in the low end. Beyond the theoreticals and theory, just straight into the veins with the LE oscillators (Look at that back j-card–how you goin’ big on big?). For 2021’s dispatch, Alem joins the duo, to perform a series of baroque stone cold classics that he does with finesse and stateliness you’d expect from your grandfather’s mutant Phillips C60s. To great effect, MMMD brought the choir, the cello and those oscillators to create a “gigantesque basso continuo” that operates as a second skin running under Alem. Baroque Drone wasn’t on my tape 2021 bingo card, but its appearance is worthy of the bubbly–or at least a mad hangover cure. Even as a tidy C30, the three pieces are unnerving in their own cunning and fascinating morose elements to lie into and suck out the impurities. A sublime cleanse.
99Letters has been working in and around (what I believe to be) the Kansai underground scene for over a dozen years, racking up releases with THRHNDRDSVNTNN and Seagrave back in the mid-2010s, in between the occasional DJ mix or other one-off. However, 99Letters has been quiet for a bit since 2018, only recently kicking things back into focus with two releases this year, the self-released Shirankedo and the Cudighi Records distributed Ibuki. Both releases have a bit of a reflective melancholy bubbling through them. 99Letters’ own take on these projects has been influenced by COVID and the Kansai scene’s own slow decline as a result of COVID. It’s changed the approach to tracks, with 99Letters using Ibuki as a springboard to explore the “familiar parts of Japan to show the importance of living powerfully as a work”, crafting songs from traditional Japanese instruments and even using the tape cover as an opportunity to highlight Shozo Michikawa’s ceramic arts.
The resulting set of tunes are patient, subterranean house bops. It’s perfect music for lingering liminal moments as much as rain stricken urban plant life gazing, especially ”Saikai Zyoushiki / 再会常識” wails, with its crisp level of digital ambience (a feature found throughout the 11 tracks) saturating the frame. “Baniku Oishi / 馬肉美味” reminded me of hard hat zones with its 4/4 beat, while a stringed instrument takes the center of the track, imparting a longing and lurching character to the clatter. Of course, you can keep your head to the ground and strut those shoulders in the club if you want, which a track like “Ponzu / 酢” practically encourages. On that track, the percussive tones of those traditional instruments are still mechanistic, yet airy and dynamic enough to bring its loop to the forefront.
99Letters’ approach could be said to be rooted in deep listening practices, a unique manner of enacting the process. Although, I feel more assured noting the way these tracks pull out flow states from these instruments. Certified Downtemp Bop “Mousou Samurai / 妄想侍” exemplifies that. It slinks with its hi-hats that become the track’s guiding base, with the sudden unexpected appearance of a singular, repeated sample giving it a bit of gusto that ties the whole thing together; there’s a dance move to be made out of that one. That feeling is also warranted towards “Tamakorogashi / 玉転がし” which especially amps up the spacious qualities and surprise drops a melodic set of key chords–the bubbly kind that practically signify when you’ve opened a secret chest–that crescendo and crest over and over again. It’s a tantalizing rhythm, nestled deep in an album that channels a soft, radiating power.
Limited Pro Dubbed Cassette Tape Available from Cudighi Records
