masteller

Karris Adams Duo – Nothing Stays Buried (La La La La)

7.1.19 by Ryan Masteller

I don’t know why I’ve been inundated with scary things lately, but Personal Archives has sent me the Karris Adams Duo’s “Nothing Stays Buried (La La La La),” and now I’m all like, should I be afraid of zombies too? I don’t know if they’re quite as scary as ghosts (not as fast), but they look way grosser. Still, I’m not here to beat that dead horse (unless it’s chasing me); instead, I want to focus on the music, and if you’re unfamiliar with Personal Archives (I know you’re not unfamiliar, but bear with me), you should be ready for some wild and woolly (and wiggly!) improv. Here, Reid Karris (prepared guitars, “skatchbox on b2”) and Alexander Adams (drums) build worlds out of sonic tinker toys, creating bizarre and excellent scaffoldings that continue to increase in height and breadth until they’ve filled the studio space that they’re recording in (Hinsdale Underground Bunker Complex, which is a great place to hide from the undead). At least that’s how it’s working in my imagination.

Karris and Adams aren’t as bombastic or in-your-face a duo as Sex Funeral, Personal Archives honcho BBJr and Matthew Crowe’s outfit. But they’re certainly kindred spirits, with Karris’s guitar squiggling all over the rhythmic framework Adams provides. They don’t take themselves too seriously, which highlights their playfulness and creativity – in fact, it sounds like they’re having an amazing time recording together. Just look at some of these jokey track names: “Emerson Karris, Lake Street, and the Palmer House Hilton” (ELP jokes are not easy, and this one works!), “He Won’t Stop Thumping until You Leave Him Alone (For H)” (ew?), “Wiggle a Bit” (gladly!), and “Pop Song 312” (take THAT, R.E.M.!). Don’t you want to listen to those tunes, no matter what they are?

All this just goes to show how finger-on-the-pulse BBJr and Personal Archives is when it comes to live improv. Karris and Adams are a joy to listen to, and probably a joy to behold in a live setting. Why don’t you figure out how to make that happen, how to get off your couch and go check them out? I have no idea where you live, but if you’re like me, you’re probably always up for a road trip.

“C30 lavender shell hand-stamped cassettes, dutifully dubbed in Dubuque. Professionally printed two-sided j-card.” Only 40 available!

New Batch – Unifactor

6.30.19 by Ryan Masteller

Well hey, everybody, thanks for showing up. They say the written word is dying, that it’s on its way out, but I’m here to discount that notion with some old-fashioned text on your screen that you’ll have to read with your eyes and comprehend with your brain. I’m not one to talk into a microphone and make jokes and trigger fart noises for an hour and a half to satisfy your every disgusting whim. I take my job as an investigator into the sonically artistic so seriously that you wouldn’t believe it if I told you how seriously. Trust me – it’s an intense calculation.

So you WILL take my word for it – or words – literally – because you have chosen to read about the tenth batch of tapes from hardcore Cleveland label Unifactor. Don’t misread – Unifactor isn’t releasing hardcore tapes. They – and by they, I mean Jayson Gerycz, purveyor and sonically artistic (hey!) guru behind the label – are simply hardcore, meaning intense and serious, about releasing what they release, and these new ones are no exception. So strap in, friendly neighborhood audience, and listen to my tale of woe and regret in relation to these three missives from the passionate jaws of expression. Or tales of joy, maybe, who knows.

MARILU DONOVAN & TRISTAN KASTEN-KRAUSE – NOWHERE

This is all bowed upright bass and harp. Not kidding. You don’t kid around about that sort of intense and serious minimalism, not while there’s tones to discover. The duo takes their time occupying the space they share, letting the vibrations of the two instruments mingle in the room, in the atmosphere, filling that space, creating more space, expanding the walls of the room, and the ceiling too, and the floor, everything bowing outward along with the sounds their bows are making. It’s like they’re making their own pocket universe here in “Nowhere,” which turns out to be actual nowhere, a swirling vortex of vibrating strings and clouds of rosin dust. It is birthed from the frequencies of the molecules that Donovan and Kasten-Krause are agitating all up in this piece, the friction and force becoming sonically resonant and decipherable by the human ear. Got all that?

MOON RA – mUSICA iN dIFFERENT iNUTILI sERVICES Vol. 1

I’ve covered Marie e le Rose’s work before, as MonoLogue, in fact, right here on Tabs Out. And now she’s back as Moon RA with “mUSICA iN dIFFERENT iNUTILI sERVICES Vol. 1,” a trance- … er, trans-Europe excursion through the influence of “Tangerine Dream, Nono, Kraftwerk, Webern, and other electronic pioneers.” And, like me, Moon RA was transfixed by what she found. Honestly, I could listen to music inspired by all these artists (even “other electronic pioneers”) until you came in the room and ripped the headphones from my cold, dead ears, or even until I realized that I needed food and exercise and sunlight to live and took the headphones off myself for survival purposes, the zones are just that deep. Moon RA’s got the touch, the golden touch, twiddling the golden knobs and teasing out the golden tones from solid gold synthesizers. She turns your mind into a planetarium and puts on a laser light show that slowly and surely builds in intensity until it’s bursting out your eyes as if your eyes were the projector onto the screen of the universe, and you could share that laser light show of wonder and awe with all the people of the world, and everybody would just be like, “What were we fighting about, anyway?” That’s how “mUSICA iN dIFFERENT iNUTILI sERVICES Vol. 1” works – it’s insidious.

ARIAN SHAFIEE – ARABIC VOICE

Arian Shafiee zones to a different vibe, this one light years ahead, behind, beside, in addition to the vibe you’re tripping to in the present tense. So switch over, quick, to opt in to future sounds of “Arabic Voice,” a deconstruction of a cappella Arabic music run through every technological permutation Shafiee could imagine before ICE came for his loop station (not in country legally) and his Garageband license (not valid form of ID). The erstwhile Guerilla Toss geetar slinger discovered the inspiration for this record in the form of the local bodega’s PA emanations and a YouTube playlist pointed out to him by said bodega proprietor, and he sampled and mangled the holy bejeezus out of all that stuff. The result is a processed extraterrestrial head trip of indeterminate origin, an Orange Milk release that somehow slipped through the label’s cracks and ended up on Unifactor. That’s outstanding work if you ask me, and outstanding reporting on it, if you also ask me.

Vague Voices – Гробник

6.13.19 by Ryan Masteller

Oh, I was so SCARED there for a minute! The text on this tape by Vague Voices looked like black metal text, and just braced myself for the onslaught for no apparent reason. So despite the fact that black metal certainly informed the work of the duo (Stefan Bachvarov and Angel Simitchiev), there isn’t any yelling or those infernal blast beats that get the cat all agitated so that he goes under the couch and doesn’t come out until I turn off the black metal.

Actually, I like black metal, and that’s a game the cat and I play.

I don’t have a cat.

All honesty aside, “Гробник” is still a creepy ride, just a slow and synthy one down the demonic passageways of dangerous video games. In fact, “Гробник” was commissioned for “Sofia Game Night 2018 – an even dedicated to gaming culture.” Bachvarov and Simitchiev were so taken by the result that they expanded their collaboration and dropped this nightmare of an atmospheric drone tape, synthesizers soundtracking horrifying happenings deep in the woods late at night. Or maybe it’s an alternative soundtrack to “Doom.” What do I know? What I DO know is that “Гробник” is “an old Bulgarian word meanings an elderly person approaching their death, a mythical vampire-like creature, or а grave-digger.” So probably more along the lines of the forest horror.

These ten pieces evoke nefarious dread at every moment, the level of which depends on how vile the deeds are that happen during the track. So “Гробник” plays like an anthology film, a “Black Mirror”/“Twilight Zone”/Brothers Grimm homage, but with super cool synth gear. I would suggest picking one up from Amek Collective, but they’ve sold out their run of 77 already. Looks like it’s to depths of Discogs with you, doomed pilgrim!

Burnt Probe – Corresponding Exits

6.4.19 by Ryan Masteller

I can’t keep UP with this! German Army is, like, the most prolific experimental artistic force out there, even more prolific than Merzbow probably (*Citation needed), and the sheer volume of releases is almost impossible to pin down. And just when I think I’m out, that I have time for a breather, there’s a new package at my door, a delivery of like five new things they’ve put out over the past few months. I swear to god, if the GeAr dudes were anything other than supremely awesome all the time, I wouldn’t write about them so much. I guess we’re all lucky that they’re supremely awesome.

Look at me, complaining about a wonderful gift. SMDH (Shaking Merzbow’s Damn Head).

I mean, this isn’t even a GeAr joint, although Peter Kris is fully onboard. He’s joined by Adam Bellhouse as Burnt Probe, and the two of them get to shredding every electronic component in front of them in no time flat. Scorching the earth with their industrial-bordering-on-techno rhythms and scored and blackened source material, the duo barrels through nine jacked-up, postapocalyptic tracks, most of which, surprisingly, should serve to get your booty moving in some sort of capacity. But it’s like the “Terminator” future out there, all dystopian and junk, and the psychological damage wrought by the sonic terrorism matches the carnage of our future.

Or, as a wise Black Lodge denizen once asked, “Is it future, or is it past?”

Maybe it’s present. Oh crap!

I’m going down in the fallout shelter. I suggest you get to yours. Thanks, Burnt Probe, for ruining my picnic.

Buy one of these beauts from Madriguera.

Various Artists – The Great Krell Machine, Volume One

5.1.19 by Ryan Masteller

I read this book, you guys. At least I think I did. Actually wait – maybe I didn’t, but that cover certainly looks familiar. I’m certainly no stranger to 1960s sci-fi, and the cover of “The Great Krell Machine, Volume One” looks like something I DEFINITELY would have read at some point. I’m just drawn to that look, because you know just what kind of vibe is going to be going on within those pages. It’s comforting and exciting at the same time, and there’s that retrofuturistic nostalgia factor that is simply unignorable. Actually, my interest is piqued – I’m going to start reading this book right now.

What the … This isn’t a book! It’s a cassette tape. Well I’ll be darned … It looks amazing. If it sounds half as good as it looks, we’ll be in really good shape. And what’s this? It’s a Flag Day Recordings compilation? That makes it even BETTER. I don’t know about you, but the raft of quality releases that Flag Day has dropped rivals the output of Isaac Asimov. OK, maybe that’s too far. But we’re in good hands, trust me!

To “The Great Krell Machine”: the tape takes its name from the 1956 film “Forbidden Planet,” which I’ll not delve too deeply into here, because you can look it up. Basically, it is a machine of immense power created by the extinct Krell race discovered by spacecraft crash survivor Dr. Morbius on the titular planet. You can imagine, especially in 1956, its enormity, its vast arrays of light, its analog ambience. It was a time not long before the golden age of Sputniks and space odysseys, when the tactility of control rooms and the blinking lights of consoles and displays captured the imaginations of every human being.

“The Great Krell Machine, Volume One” takes us right back to that time, its nine contributors tapping in fully to the hands-on science of early discovery. They twiddle knobs and flip switches, and it all sounds like someone set up a microphone in a physics laboratory, capturing its ambience. Sure, there are bleeps and bloops, but that’s all part of the immersive experience, getting really deep into the vibe of new scientific frontiers and pristine utopian fantasies. It’s an environment in which I’d like to spend a whole heckuva lot of time.

This cassette came out in an edition of 70 for last year’s Cassette Store Day. Still available!

Tracklist:

Francisco Meirino
Geoff Wilt
PraxisCat
Benjamin Mauch
Guillermo Pizarro
Walker Farrell
Death Lessons
cloning
Todd Barton