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12.1.20 by Ryan Masteller

It’s not what you think. Well, it might be, but it wasn’t what I thought, and mine’s the important perspective. Well, it might not be, especially if you ended up getting it right the first time. What I’m trying – and failing – to communicate is that LCM’s “Signal Quest” on Orange Milk is NOT the most Orange Milkiest of releases, so if you were expecting a hundred robots humping MIDI patches in a far-future sci-fi environment, you’re going to be disappointed. I, on the other hand, am not disappointed by anything, so this left-turn release for the label is just par for the course for these relaxed and welcoming ears. You can’t phase me with nothin’.

Here’s where I tell you about “Signal Quest” and the minds behind it. LCM stands for “Lynn” (Avery), “Cole” (Pulice), and “Mitch” (Stahlmann), a Minneapolis/Oakland collective specializing in, like, WAY forward-thinking soundtracky material that’d go perfect with JRPGs – RPGs originating in Japan. I had to look that up because I’m a dummy who doesn’t play a ton of video games (besides “Mariokart”), and it turns out that “The Legend of Zelda” is considered a JRPG! “Breath of the Wild” is like the best game ever. But beyond all that, LCM endeavored to create within a sonic landscape their own interpretation of a JRPG, whose sound design, lacking visuals, would still feel like a livable, inhabitable space, a tactile representation of an imagined world through sound. “Signal Quest” succeeds in the nerdiest of ways: by “focus[ing] on playable networks structured in hardware, software, and electro-acoustic processing … intended to connect, record, and react as an organism.” Like I said: nerds!

I also said “succeed,” and boy howdy, listen to this thing. You want to get lost in some fantasy world where you’re surrounded by gorgeous environmental music, and you can’t tell what the heck made any of it? Head on into “Signal Quest” for that exact scenario. Within it you’ll be subjected to the slow burn of interstellar travel (think relativity!) as you head from one destination to another, the importance of your experience slowly growing on you as you begin to understand what turns out to be your mission. LCM is there with you the whole time, describing in their compositions the weight of your destiny, backing you up with utterly relevant theme music as you contemplate the future, and dissipating with you into starstuff as you … uh … win? Whatever. By the time “Palace of Chimes” stretches into its sixteenth minute you’ll have become one with whatever universe it is that you inhabit, the celestial tones enveloping you and whisking you away to some sort of regeneration chamber after uncovering the secrets of the galaxy. You ALWAYS end up regenerating.

Don’t be stupid. Get one of these from Orange Milk, like, NOW.

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11.26.20 by Matty McPherson

While LA has often been viewed as the car capital of the world (®), it seems that the 20s are poised to be the decade it finally casts that moniker aside and embraces new age clarity. Or, at least the tape labels are. Case in point: Never Content Records. Noah Klein’s Los Angeles based tape label has united several facets of LA and Oakland’s diy scenes, from Sonoda’s zen dream pop to Patrick Shirioishi’s audio journals and field recordings through the first month of lockdown. Taken as a whole, the label’s steady adherence to soothing, contemplative music felt like its own talisman to the monotony of society. Music as solace, indeed. 

Never Content also features the most meaningful and meticulous cassette packaging I’ve come across, with each release featuring their own unique design and additional objects provided, providing a whole experience that really ties the sounds together, worthy of a devotional. Right now, I’m gazingly intently at the raw amethyst crystal that came along with the label’s latest, Realm of the Twilight. It is a split between Channelers and Ki Oni that sees both parties carving out their own inner sanctuaries.

Side A belongs to Channelers, the Oakland based spiritist known as Sean Conrad (who also designed the tape art)! Conrad’s pieces are free-flowing, with the characteristic of a flowery petal gently moving down the stream. Elven flutes, vaporous synths, and deep keys all give depth to the natural/digital synthesis of “tenth moon”. A throbbing drum pulse on “mind may wander” gives the track a fleet-footed characteristic. With every syncopation, the sound takes bigger and bigger leaps, moving into greater realms of exploration and care. When it finally zooms out at the end of its eight minute run time, I feel like I have been deposited into the stars. Talk about sanctuary!

Ki Oni (Chuck Soo-Hoo of Dublab) has been on a tear recently, with features in Freedom to Spend and Geographioc North’s latest tape compilations. Yet, neither of those feature any trace of his ambient club bangers found on Side B. “mapping the netherrealm”’s gauzy reverb and snares n’ hi-hats are shoegazetronica fit for the pedantic typer. Meanwhile, “dimension for two” sees traces of crystallized wind chimes and windy guitar lines that glide over the mental fog. I admit, bangers may not be the right word to describe Ki Oni’s work, but the tracks are playful and mindful, like a dance party for one happy camper.

Edition of 50 at Never Content’s Bandcamp…with an amethyst crystal in the first 20 orders!

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11.13.20 by Ryan Masteller

Let’s get the presentation of this thing out of the way, shall we? Speaking of shells, this thing is a tactile nightmare, some sort of confetti-paint-sprayed monstrosity that’s rough and feels like it’ll chip under my fingernails if I touch it accidentally. The artist name “Cursot” is hand-stenciled nicely over the paint though, and the whole thing is only slightly opaque, giving the impression that the surface was dipped in a vat prior to the tape being recorded upon. At least I hope so, otherwise it’s not going to play. Oh, and the Norelco is equally splatter-painted. I’m not gonna lie, it looks cool. It feels weird.

I only know this is called “Dopplered Gaze” from the Flophouse Bandcamp page, because that title is nowhere to be found on the tape itself. For those of you unfamiliar with the Doppler effect, you should look it up – it has to do with how waves reach an observer from a source when both observer and source are in motion. I am not in motion – I am sitting on my couch. The source of “Dopplered Gaze” is not in motion – it’s the tape being played in the same room that I’m in. But the WAVES – oh the waves. Those things are so in motion that they’re impossible to ignore (not that I’m trying to ignore them – I’m listening to Cursot for the very purpose of not ignoring them). These waves oscillate all up in here, repeating and reverberating and forming fascinating patterns that I as the observer (listener) of the source (tape) receive and decode and ultimately enjoy. Are these waves coming from a synthesizer? From a bunch of effects? From loops? Who knows! I just know they keep getting pumped out at me.

You could do worse on a rainy day like today than being stuck inside with Cursot’s “Dopplered Gaze” blasting from your speakers, as it’s a great way to spend some time in the gloom. (I almost typed “gloop,” then I realized that’s actually an appropriate word relating to the process of painting both tape and case.) Whether it’s droning thick zones or percolating with viscous liquidity, “Dopplered Gaze” emanates from its source like constant radiation. Now, somebody just figure out what this Cursot’s all about, and we can wrap up this review right nicely. Email’s in the comments.

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11.12.20 by Ryan Masteller

Mike Nigro was once cold-called by the Tabs Out crew during one of their podcast sessions, and it was pretty funny – Mike runs Oxtail out of Australia now, by crikey, so he was at work while Mike, Dave, and Joe B were carrying on into the wee hours of the early evening. The boys peppered Mike with stupid questions, and Mike was game. Come to think of it, it wasn’t all that funny. But this is about Oxtail, tangentially about Mike, so there you go.

Phaeton is an Oxtail product, and you might have heard of the duo that comprises Phaeton: Matthew Gallagher (Machine Listener) and his bro from the same mo Luke Gallagher (Moondrops). Together they are an ambient/kosmische monolith, two halves of a titanic cosmic experience. On “Biome” the brothers contemplate life forms, both mammal (sliverback gorilla, grizzly bear, wolf) and manta (manta), as well as human species, ol’ homo sapiens itself. Utilizing the art of “synthwork,” the Gallaghers trace commonalities among the different types of animal, allowing us as listeners to get into the head or behind the mask or into the pajamas of whatever it is the subject happens to be. The commonalities are striking, like we’re all part of and inhabit this thing called Earth. Imagine!

So all is sunrays, all is survival in the elements, all is natural behavior. It happens right in front of you all the time, but how many of us actually notice it? I’m guilty. I saw a big turtle in the pond behind my house the other day, and my neighbor says he’s been living there forever. If I could only learn to appreciate my surroundings instead of worrying about all this modern human stuff, maybe I’d be less stressed out. Hey, maybe we all would! And maybe Mike, Dave, and Joe B would leave our Australia-based friends alone, content as they’d be in simply listening to good tapes without feeling the need to be funny over them. What a world that would be!

Like I said, this is out from your pals at Oxtail Recordings.

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11.11.20 by Ryan Masteller

Ever/Never is a New York label “specializing in music for adults,” meaning that it’s not really intended for people like you or people like me, the good folks who hang around the Tabs Out website or Twitter feed. We tend to gravitate toward a more juvenile humor, where poop jokes collide with funny numbers like 4:20 and 69, where the sound of toilets flushing and farts bleating is music to our ears, and where a tape consisting of literally nothing but fake jazz-radio-station banter comes in at #1 on a year-end best-of list. No, Tabs Out is for big stupid baby children, butt poop pee fart cake wang Super Mario wiener butthole constipated turd. Ever/Never is not for us.

Or is it?

Cyanide Tooth starts “Midnight Climax Operation” with “Heartburn,” a spoken PSA about heartburn that warps periodically before sinking into a morass of processed loops or whatever. It’s a good trick, a good joke, and it might be something we can work with. Hip-hop beats stutter out of it before more heartburn talk, then jackhammer rhythm. It’s the kind of pieced-together madness that fits perfectly on the podcast, actually, a microcosm of speech and noise that so many of you (us) slurp up like catnip. It’s not out of the realm of madness to position Cyanide Tooth as descendants of early tape manipulation and noise experimenters like Throbbing Gristle, Coil, and Nurse with Wound, especially since the promo copy so kindly suggested them for me. Thus “Midnight Climax Operation” shreds itself like a distorted Halloween sound effect tape feeding back on itself while a black cat walks across a synthesizer. OK, that’s one “for” us, I guess.

“Time Safe Delay” starts off like that “Billions” bit, but way better – a voice says “space” a lot over a stuttering rhythm, and other samples start finding their way into the thing. I’m in. This first track, “Signal Thru Flames” takes up the entirety of side A at almost nineteen minutes, and as voices continue to make themselves heard and frequencies continue to spiral out like solar flares, it’s hard not to get caught up in/inundated with/overwhelmed by the sprawl of sonic deconstruction. The chaos is barely controlled, the only undercurrent a relentless shuffling rhythm over which Maximum Ernst can do whatever they want. “Orb-Like” and “Glass Enclosure” take up side B, the former a psychedelic sampled whirl, the latter a shimmery prismatic vapor. And all I can do is marvel at how perfectly Mike would work this into a monologue or something.

So either Ever/Never’s age appropriateness stretches beyond and before that of just mere “adult” or else we’re all growing up a little, maturing. I’ll go with the former, because poopy butt stinky butt.

11.10.20 by Ryan Masteller

I was really nervous about this one – I honestly thought this might just be field recordings of the HVAC system at the Snell-Hitchcock Quad at the University of Chicago. That would have been a killer for me, because I probably would have had to have been on some sneaky drugs to get any enjoyment out of something like that, but I don’t do any drugs, sneaky or otherwise, so I was ready to be lulled right to sleep. Ever try not to sleep to AC hum? It’s virtually impossible.

Fortunately, Stephan MOORE did a little MORE to make this a MORE enjoyable experience. He outfitted a few benches in the quad with speakers, and then played music through them that fit the timbre and rhythms of the Searle Chemistry Lab’s ventilation system that could be heard in Snell-Hitchcock. People could sit on the benches and experience immersive audio ambience in real time. This whole thing was part of the “Chicago Sound Show” exhibition.

I wasn’t there, but I can imagine spending some time on one of Moore’s benches was a remarkable experience, each bench clued into its own sonic environment. And on “Dreamwalk with Solo Voice,” Moore shows us how he adds to the experience with a far-out array of ambient synth washes and otherworldly chords. Even on the closing “Anatomy of a Voice,” a harsh blast of “the singing apparatus up close,” Moore sticks to the script of immersive experience. Also, the cassette shells themselves are fun and sparkly!

Check this out on Dead Definition.

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11.9.20 by Ryan Masteller

I know what I was doing in spring 2020: sulking. Sulking, and a lot of nothing. There was nothing happening. Nothing to look forward to. Nobody to chatter with. No incompetents to holler at. (Well, in my vicinity, anyway.)

What was Ruin Garden doing in spring 2020? A lot more than me, I can tell you, if this self-titled cassette tape is any indication. The recording project of the elusive “JKA” of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Ruin Garden may have been planning “Ruin Garden” all along, but the timing couldn’t have been better. A treat for all senses – yes, even smell – the tape slowly unfurls an impressive “collection of static loops and drones from archival tapes, found sounds, and electronics,” each one a completely different vibe and result. Sometimes it feels like you’re underwater, perhaps in a deep-sea trench, or maybe you’ve just stuck your head in a fishbowl. At other times it feels like you’re in slow-motion hyperspace, if that even makes any sense, separated from the vacuum only by a thin membrane surrounding your body. At still others, you might be standing next to a wood chipper as somebody continually chucks cases of pint glasses into it.

Regardless of what the heck “Ruin Garden” is doing, it’s clear that that JKA has kept themselves busy throughout a life of isolation. JKA’s work is quite industrious too – the tapes themselves are recycled TDK D90s, and there’s just a hint of artwork on the shell to suggest that this isn’t a blank (although I wouldn’t store the tape far away from the case – you’ll never figure out what it is otherwise). Fifty of these were made. Only two remain. I’ll let you get yourself in gear while I sit back and listen to the alien probe from Star Trek IV pretend to make whale noises.