Uncategorized

Directives – Protenomaly

12.13.21 by Matty McPherson

It’s been a moment since Tabs Out HQ checked in with Denver, CO-based Aubjects’ and their “short-run & home-made experimental recordings & ephemera.” Eagled-eared podcast listeners, as well as beagle-eyed readers may recall D. Petri and his penance for home-dubbing, upcycled tapes, with various trinkets and goodies ranging from “good boy rocks” to “xerox art booklets” (he’s also recently reengaged the Petriblog outpost, with boodles of cassette, tape label, and brainy people spotlights dating back to 2012) . Personally, I adore these kinds of “craft tapes” and the goodies when they manifest out of the giant tape review box I stick my hand in when I so dare to–there’s an alluring quality I have to sit and chew on; a past I’m just not privy to but am the product of. Also, it’s way more preferred to throwing the ferric oxide into the Tabs Out West Coast HQ furnace (a laborious task that does not reveal any prophecies or omens or even free Bandcamp codes; honestly it’s really just kinda wasteful). 

Anyways, I digress. D. Petri’s Directives project is at the heart and soul of Aubjects and Protenomaly furthers what Directives entails beyond where 2017’s Usphutorontus Deius Nissesubla last left off. For starters, Petri has become enraptured with “novel anomalies,” which means sudden shifts in fidelity mixtures from track to track, hard-to-pin-down equipment transistors, amongst other manipulations. Over the course of side A, Petri (& Hillary Ulman) take these in stride, culminating in results that sound like those moments of sudden-whiplash shock Longmont Potion Castle upends a casual phone conversation with. The tape fizzles and straddles, prancing on a vision until it can’t be held and then moves up to another realm.

There is a method to this madness, or at least the track titles across both sides comprise one of a sort of roundabout sense. As a listener moves through the sheer morse-codian noise of “Lower Digestive Register”, the follow track “Upper Digestive Register” scales the noise into a droney yet vicious melody. It’s all short-lived though, when “Beyond Registration” pushes the noise to a textured character, allowing drums and bells, alongside bass, and even keys begin to find a sense of real harmony that “Above Beyond Registration” almost turns into a deconstructed technoise ditty. By this point though, Directives hits a transcendent plane with “Across Many Gulfs”, utilizing a harmonic sound (not too far from a guitar) that sounds like sine waves surfing and thrashing.

Side B makes up for less tracks with greater time dedicated to these zones, which ends up culminating in full-fleshed longforms. “Society Toothpick Diorama” could be a fancy way of relating the ways in which a dentist manages a drill, with noise pulses and outbursts moving in cyclical, focused patterns that recall such the labors of a root canal with decadent results. “Tangled Narratives” and “Slumping Into Progress” meanwhile materialize haywire, schizophrenic vestiges into the vaguest sensation of “noise pop”, but it’s not until Petri hits “Towards Fertile Grounds” that everything comes into focus–literally it’s a personal field recording; one that’s beyond a momentary relapse and more a full fledged place of solitude. Petri crafted most of these sounds over a span dating back five years ago, and coming down to end the tape with the crystal sounds of cicadas and other various ephemera offers a passage out of the Protenomaly, as much as a reflection to this era of novel anomalies. To new frontiers.

A visual rendition on youtube is also available for consideration.

Home-dubbed-in-real-time C60 in upcycled norelco cases w/ hand-cut / stamped / glued / numbered j card & insert utilizing personally significant 8-50 year-old upcycled papers  + 16p b/w art booklet. Hand-numbered w/ elements hand stamped / glued & different square of antique construction paper w/ crayon markings by humans who were pre or grade school children at the time the markings were made (between 1975-1985; mine came with the letter b etched on it)! 66 copies produced in total. 

Available at Aubjects Bandcamp Page

Enjoy Our Last Century on Earth – Was Ist Los

12.10.21 by Matty McPherson

Brisbane, Australia based Minimal Impact is not a frequent updater of their blogger outpost, but when they do so, the goods are always going to be chunky, droney, and filled with that sweet blistering noise that gets you shrieking, dancing, or maybe discombobulated. So, I suppose that brings us to today’s quick treat, the upcycled C32 Was Ist Los by the lads in Enjoy Our Last Century on Earth. If you’ve been jonesing for the kind of metallic void screaming and cantankerously clanky industrial, then let this duo be your guide. Was Ist Los collects a small fortune of one-offs and split/collab tracks that don’t hold back any punches. It’s a barbarous kind of tape. Yet one that also is impeccably mixed with the kind of precision that doesn’t seek to wear out the hi-fi. It stays in the green without ever floating into the red, which leads to all sorts of malignant brain-fried deviations rendered with utter clarity.

Side A opener “Acknowledgement (And Yet We Continue) ft. K.P.” functions like a phone call coming from hell, as a voice as gargled and ancient as a martian narrates the state of affairs like an omnibus narrator. All the while, both T.E. and Z.M. make quick work of turning scrap metal into electronics and electronics and synths into scraps; clever how they can pull that off. Although the duo are not just in the mood for crushing, omnibus weight; tracks like “Serene Agitation” give the bass a moment to breathe and open things up, while “Libidinal Terrain of the Nation” and “Where is Snow” function like stately power tool drone waltzes. Both (of course) soon descend into a reign of chaos that cuts out just before the state of affairs can completely collapse. Imagine if this was played during the pipe dream minigames of Bioshock and you’ve got a good grip on just the kind of energy this duo is weaving themselves through,

Edition of 40 available from the Minimal Impact Bandcamp page.

Nina Guo – Blauch Räusch

12.6.21 by Matty McPherson

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

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

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

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

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

Related

Derek Monypeny – Unjust Intonation

11.29.21 by Matty McPherson

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

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

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

Limited Edition Cassette Available from the Trouble in Mind Explorers Series

Related Links