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V/A – Death On The Hour
10.7.16 by Mike Haley

I’m looking forward to three things this Halloween season:

1) Eating all of my kid’s candy the night they get it and telling them a Frankenstein broke in and stole it.
2) Juice Demons.
3) Geographic North‘s “Death On The Hour” cassette compilation.

“Death On The Hour: Aural Apparitions from the Geographic North” is fueled by spectral atmospheres. Focus is averted from the trick-or-treat and pumpkin carving conditions of the holiday and fixated more on the idea of spending the night in the vacant house that Old Man Wallmaker hung himself in on Halloween night 6 years ago. I’m talking classic horror movie patterns, reconstructed as an experimental cassette comp.

Moses Archuleta of Deerhunter cracks open the door with a track from his solo project Moon Diagrams. No stranger to the GeoNo fam – his “Care Package (Sketch For Winter IV)” was released on the label in 2015 –  Moon Diagrams’ opening cut “Omegaplex” is a relatively lighthearted start. But that’s how these things always begin, right? After all, you aren’t worried about crashing in Wallmaker’s Victorian style pad in the least.

But that feeling doesn’t last – you’re only human – as the next couple of tracks creep in. Landing and M.Sage go séance-style with covers. An eerily patient John Carpenter take and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put A Spell On You” disguised as muddled verbal fragments disoriented in a sound-smog, respectively. Sage, who runs the Patient Sounds label, whacks the Halloween motif with a witch’s broom, crawling into a rather itchy zone. Ekin Fil, the below-fi workings of Ekin Üzeltüzenci, instills confirmation that there is no running water, no lights, no cell reception with salves of ambient gaze. Thoughts that are later echoed by menacing stretches from Auburn Lull, Kranky’s Windy and Carl, and the closing credits drone of Lyonnais, the comps longest burner at nearly 14 minutes. Shadows start to fuck with your psyche and you start goosebumping. We know what happens next, right?

The gang shows up! The gang, played here by Leech (Brian Foote of Nudge, Fontanelle) and Jacober, knew it would be hilarious to half-spook ya and bring beer, flashlights, and a boombox with some peculiar hang-jams. Their winged rhythms and adult bevs get ya out of the slither station, but only about 45% or so. I mean, the rope Old Man Wallmaker used is still hanging there. But yeah, what a great bunch of friends you have. Now, in true horror movie fashion, everyone splits up to explore / make out because nothing could possibly go wrong.

Bad idea (duh). Turns out Old Man Wallmaker faked his death and has been hermiting out in the basement with enough old Joy Division bootlegs and poppers to last him years. You would have known that if you listened to TWINS and The Flag before acting a fool. Wallmaker takes to your throats with a rusty screwdriver. Now you’re dead and can’t order “Death On The Hour: Aural Apparitions from the Geographic North”, out now in an edition of 100.

Belarisk – Greys, Escaped
10.6.16 by Mike Haley

Only seconds into “Greys, Escaped” I had a very vivid image in my head. As the tape went on that image naturally expanded into a scenario which was reinforced with each blop, zap, surge, scratch, whist, and tickle Belarisk dispatched. Aspects of the artwork gave credence to this micro story my brain had fashioned. Everything was lining up. My imagination was being a good little boy and deserved a treat in the form of repeat listens. Those repeat listens put even more fat on on the bone of my now rather formulated story. It got deep. Deep to the point of being embarrassing, quite frankly. Instead of going deep here, into a hole we may not escape, I’ll paint with a broad brush my Belarisk vision.

It’s 1992. Windows 3.1 has just been released. It’s an exciting time. Most people don’t even know what happens when you win Solitaire yet. Before going to bed, Bill Gates tells his wife Melinda – who he wasn’t married to at the time, but I didn’t know that – that he needs to do some work on RAM calculations or .dll bugs or whatever. He goes down to his office, locking the door behind him. Unbuttoning his shirt with one hand and fingering through floppy discs with the other, he chooses a specific one. The label on it is all white with a single black, pixelated musical note. He pops it in the drive of his avocado colored desktop (only one in existence btw)  and removes his button down shirt, revealing a CRISP T-shirt with the Windows logo on it, tucked in. Tucked in hard. In his top drawer, sunglasses. Are holograms of the Windows logo on each lens? You’re God damn right there are. Bill eases into his leather office chair while the program loads. The one program he couldn’t complete: MusicMan.

Bill toiled for hours, working on algorithms and keystrokes trying to get MusicMan to function properly. And sometimes he felt like it would. Bill would guide MusicMan’s code through pockets of harmony and beauty. Pockets of sensational structures. At it’s best it was like he was floating on a cloud. But then the viruses would kick in. Blue screens and hard reboots were always the night’s defeat. “No! No! Not again!” he would vociferate as smoke came out of the monitor and Paintbrush tools corrupted. There would be no escape from the dense buffering.

Okay, I said I wouldn’t go too deep, but I think I’m starting to go too deep. I’ll stop before Gates is in his boxers and Bill Clinton is sleeping off a peyote experience on the sofa. But take from that what you will and transplant it into this Belarisk tape. But please, stay away from notions of vaporwave or chiptune you may have conjured up from my wee tale. It’s all child’s play in comparison. Be prepared for a heavy audio defrag with “Greys, Escaped”. Belarisk, while at times elegantly grazes on screen savers, gets gravely in the trash bin. Lee Edward Tindall gives power to pixels. He chews on the cud of confusion and shits out an electronic maze of fuss and passion. A very powerful specimen indeed.

“Greys, Escaped” is available from Moss Archive in an edition of 80 copies. I HIGHLY recommend that you grab a copy now!  Come graduation time for the DIY weirdo cassette class of 2016, this is going to be a contender for valedictorian for sure.

Khaki Blazer – Gelatinous Ground
9.28.16 by Mike Haley

Eventually someone needs to take a hammer to Khaki Blazer’s head so we can all see what flows out of it. I’d imagine the results would be similar to that scene in Ghostbusters when the EPA dick shuts down the high voltage laser containment system and lets loose hordes of goblins and gizmos on NYC.

Khaki Blazer is the solo project of Moth Cock‘s Pat Modugno. And no, I don’t actually want to break open his skull. I was just being silly. But honestly, I most definitely want to bottle and distribute the ecto-kombucha brewing inside that cranium. Khaki has squirted obscure sonicisms on Hausu Mountain, Alien Passengers, and others in the past. His latest plasmic gladiator comes from the brand spanking new Cleveland outfit Unifactor.

“Gelatinous Ground” raids the sugar packet and unlabeled medication caches, nervously blending cocktails and idiosyncrasies. Velvety vocal manipulations mush into eccentric weirdouts. Bubbles pop and thick gels spill. When rapid haphazardness isn’t tugging at your amygdala, Pat cleaves hip hop chunks and kneads em like he’s trying to activate their gluten. At times you almost feel concerned. Is he okay? Why is he doing that with his mouth? Then synthesizer magic swoops in with grace and charm, and you feel even more concerned. Extremely crisp, collected, fist clenching coldness stretches from seconds to minutes. What’s going on now? What happened to the seizure paced, heart burn music? What. Are. You. Trying. To. Hide!?

I don’t know what Khaki Blazer is trying to hide. I love all too much what he is showing. “Gelatinous Ground” was made in an edition of 100 copies and should be purchased by you. While you are at it, pick up the new Sam Goldberg and Bending Spirit tapes. They all sounds dope as h*ck and the artwork is top notch.

New Batch – Oxen
9.23.16 by Mike Haley

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

I don’t know if this actually happens in real life, but you know in movies when someone robs a bank and the money explodes? They open up the duffel bag in the car, it’s full of cash in bricks, and then BLAMO! Red paint is everywhere.  Take that situation, but replace the duffel bag with Norelco cases, the bricks of cash with three cassette tapes, and the red paint with disgustingly intrusive, dynamic harsh noise. That is the new batch from Oxen.

The positive thinking of Kiran Arora‘s “The Good Times Are Over For Good” C30 sets the pace. Utilizing guitar, organ, tapes, and the drumming of Zach Fogle, none of which escape the processing department alive, frequencies are created that can be felt on the roof of your mouth. Sounds that are so raw and capable they could probably mess up your WiFi signal. They aren’t walls, more like electric fences holding back some type of esoteric destruction pressed against the chainlink. SO legit.

Anime Love Hotel, the project of Alexis Cash from Texas, brutally mushes sonic tape manipulations and potent, rigid convolution and her “Mami” C20. Both sides stay in a constant flux of crude levels, like rapidly switching from watching a child’s surgery in real life to at home on VHS. It’s a mentally damaging process with micocassette whiz that blasts through noise dregs like a knife. Again, SO legit.

“Upside Down” from Tokyo’s scum (aka: Sou Inomoto) finishes everything out. It’s a C20 of accelerated cut up onslaughts. Of machine gun buffering and regurgitation. Rusted Cycles of force with short-lived moments to recharge, then back to the force feeding. Such a crunch. SO legit.

All are available now from Oxen, but probably not for long.