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7.14.20 by Ryan Masteller

Sometimes treasure is real. Not the pirate kind of treasure that lies in heaps in caves on deserted Caribbean islands, known only to those who possess the right maps and compasses and things, and maybe a dash of magic or a sprinkle of prophecy, but the everyday kind, the kind that unearths itself in the cleaning out of a closet or a garage or a space beneath a bed. Well, that’s not to say it can’t be the pirate kind, what with the preponderance of obviously sunken vessels that litter our eastern seaboard, filled to the brim with Spanish doubloons or jewels or artifacts or, say, Nazi gold bricks. In fact, there’s probably so much treasure at the bottom of the ocean just waiting for scientists and explorers to get to that we could probably eliminate poverty as we know it. Now, let’s get in our diving bell and get down there! 

I got off track there a little bit. I’m actually NOT here to talk about pirate treasure, but treasure a little more within our grasp. See, some of us are already flush with treasure, even though we might not know it. I, for instance, have a lot of clearly valuable baseball cards from the late 1980s and early 1990s, not to mention my stupendous and unmatched cassette collection. I’m one of the lucky ones, completely aware of the value of my collections as historical artifacts and cultural signposts. But others, like Matt Vraja, don’t know what they have until they “clean out the family estate.” 

I’m going to avoid telling the whole story, one you can read on the inside of the Jard of Benjamin Vraja’s “Anthology.” Yes, Matt and Benjamin are two different people, I didn’t introduce a typo up there. Matt is Benjamin’s nephew, who never actually met Benjamin before his sudden death in 1996 – Matt had just heard stories of the eccentric musician his uncle had been. But one day, in 2014, he actually came across his uncle’s recordings, and in matching the anecdotes to the fascinating and forward-thinking sounds he was hearing, Matt realized he had to introduce his uncle’s work to a wider audience. 

That’s where “Anthology” comes in. The tape captures recordings that Benjamin made in the 1970s and 1980s, at various studios and academic institutions, and with various equipment. Focused mainly on synthesizers and other proto-electronic gear, Benjamin experimented the hell out of what he had in front of him, and the results are never less than fascinating. Imagine finding lost Don Buchla tapes, or recordings by Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Wendy Carlos, or Ray Manzarek. Benjamin Vraja compositions might not fetch the millions of dollars these other big names would, but maybe that’s because he’s still a hidden … treasure. He doesn’t have to be so hidden anymore with this release, which should now be a must-have for anyone interested in early synth experimentalists. 

Honestly, though, sometimes it’s literal pirate treasure that turns up. You really never know.

You can grab this self-released beauty on Bandcamp. Edition of only 45. Truly as rare as gold! 

7.3.20 by Ryan Masteller

So many things are getting canceled anyway, we may as well cancel 2020 in its entirety, am I right? Every public event, unless you live in the southern United States (which I do … sigh), is going right out the window, gatherings of people banned because we’re all disgusting petri dishes made of meat that live to sicken the others. This includes, among a vast array of other activities, sporting events, church picnics, hang gliding classes, and musical concerts. I’m here to rant about my newly hang-gliding-lesson-free calendar.

I kid! This site’s for music, not hang gliding.

Among the COVID-related event casualties was Sofia Drone Day 2020, and if you, like me, were like “That sounds awesome!” upon discovering of that day’s existence and then immediately crushed that (a) it was canceled and (b) Sofia is a city in Bulgaria and you weren’t going to make it anyway, you might be surprised and potentially thrilled that Bulgaria’s own Amek Collective has you covered. Sort of. See, the Amek Drone Ensemble, made up of label vets Linus Schrab (V I C I M), Angel Simitchiev (Mytrip, and Amek honcho), Margarit Aleksiev (OOHS!), Ivan Shentov (krāllār), and Maxim Mokdad (OOHS!), were probably planning a pretty sweet 2020 set when the cancellation occurred, so they had to react fast. And react they did, releasing their Sofia Drone Day 2019 set as the ADE on cassette to tide you over. Tide you over till what? Till everything gets back to normal, that’s what.

So now we have Op. 1, a thirty-minute improvised glowing, hovering, rippling sphere of synths, loops, guitar, etc. that morphs and re-forms itself over the course of its gestation. The players absorb the spirit of Drone Day like it was belief in some sort of dark wizard Santa Claus, translating that faith into wave upon wave of thickly defined sound. Listening to Op. 1 has me thinking that maybe the quintet has set their gear up somewhere near the event horizon of a black hole, but then I realize how silly that is, because none of that gear would sit still enough to play. Still, this is some heavy, heavy drone.

So don’t feel too bad that you missed out on Sofia Drone Day 2020 (because you were anyway); feel good that you can wrap your mind around Sofia Drone Day 2019, because, you know, drone is timeless that way.

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6.26.20 by Ryan Masteller

I couldn’t even imagine living in Alabama on a good day, let alone during this TIME of the COVIDs. But Blotchouts finds a way, the carnival-punk cacophony of “Lenora Guards the Egg” a greasy sparkle in the festering dirty river of human existence in the Deep South. Blotchouts probably can’t even wear a mask into the grocery store these days without the threat of getting beat up. It ain’t American to be forced to wear face coverings in public places, so anybody infringing on anybody’s freedom to walk into an establishment and NOT see a bunch of goobers covering their faces in surgical apparatus is ripe for a pounding. RIPE, I say!

Not that this has much to do with Blotchouts, or anything at all actually, and that’s before I even question my own preconceived notions of whether Blotchouts WANT to wear masks in public places. They may be the punchers instead of the punchees! At any rate, “Lenora Guards the Egg” is like listening to an itchy rash materialize on your skin and spread as far as it can before the antibiotics begin to do their dirty work. And that’s a good thing, trust me! Guitars irritate tender skin and synths squirt countermelodies like festering lesions lanced with the herky jerky rhythm section. That’s so gross! But that’s what you have to expect when you name your band anything with the word “blotch” in it – skin ailment metaphors are just par for the course here.

Skin ailment metaphors are probably par for the course in Alabama too, what do I know. You think those southerners are into songs called things like “Cockroach Milk” or “Enema”? How about “I’m a Baby”? Come to think of it, those aren’t so far-fetched. Still, the jittery jangle and abrasion of the wacky Devo’d maelstrom Blotchouts kicks up whips across the land, bursting through the borders of the Yellowhammer State and out into the great wider unknown. Weirdos getting picked up on tape decks from California to the New York island, just like Woody Guthrie promised. Did Woody Guthrie promise accessibly punk weirdness on the scale of Blotchouts when he wrote the New Testament? That’s a trick question – EVERYTHING was promised in the New Testament.

Buy Blotchouts and more, more, more from Pecan Crazy Records!

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