masteller

Nursalim Yadi Anugerah – Selected Pieces from HNNUNG

4.29.19 by Ryan Masteller

I like that we don’t have to guess with Hasana Editions, the tape label based in Bandung, Indonesia. It’s all right out there, right on the cover. The big, underlined title. The artist name. The location of origin, the method of performance, the style of music, the runtime, and even the channel (Stereophonic) are all represented. If I was doing this for Cassette Gods, I wouldn’t even have to search for or squint at how long the tape is to put it in the header like we do there – C52. It’s like a dream.

The presentation itself is beautiful, and the “Selected Pieces from HNNUNG” are majestic and expressive. Nursalim Yadi Anugerah is a composer based in Pontianak, Indonesia (he’s not a member of Pontiak, which I had to do a double take to figure out), and he’s “inspired by the cosmology, sonology, and culture of indigenous people of Borneo.” In fact, look – I’m not going to be able to paraphrase this with any grace, so let me just stumble through a direct quotation: “Adapted from Kayaan people oral literature Takna’ Lawe’, ‘HNNUNG’ is a chamber opera that amplifies the cosmic dramaturgy of Kayaan culture – in which the narrative of matriarchy is essential.”

I’m an outsider experiencing these pieces; I cannot relate to them on a cultural level or grasp their nuance or even interpret the intended audience response. I CAN relate to them on a musical level, and finding myself tossed about on the waves of “HNNUNG” is pretty exhilarating, intoxicating even, despite my remove from understanding. These nine pieces, selected, as the title suggests, from Anugerah’s larger opera, were “performed by Balaan Tumaan Ensemble and Kerubim Choir using various instruments ranging from kaldii’ and sape’ to tenor saxophone and contrabass.” Sometimes it sounds like some sort of experimental improv ensemble racing through a live set, but then the choir comes in and blows up any proper thoughts I may have been forming about it. Other times the eastern compositional flourishes are a welcome reminder that I’m on uneven footing, and that I should prepare to be surprised.

And I almost constantly am! I have no idea what “HNNUNG” means (all I picture is a sword flying end over end in the air until it embeds itself in a tree trunk with a hearty “hnnung” sound), so I am tabula rasa in this environment. “Selected Pieces from HNNUNG” etches itself across my surface. The drama and the tension coax new feelings, enabling mental connections heretofore unconnected. I am drawn further and further in.

Can I get out? Sure, I just press stop. I have to go get lunch anyway.

“Numbered edition of 100. Hand-stamped pro-dubbed C52 NAC cassette tape with recto/verso printed golden card. … Made and duped in USA. Printed in Indonesia.” Thanks again, Hasana Editions, for doing my work for me!

Chester Hawkins – Metabolism Quartet [for Witold Lutosławski] / Nocturne for Poppy

4.18.19 by Ryan Masteller

Imagine I told you I was gonna slice up your string quartet. What would you do about it? Would you be scared? Would you call the police? Imagine me chuckling at your misunderstanding and dismay. “No, no, not literally, like with a knife. With a tape editing machine!” The relief you’d feel would be palpable. I can feel it even now, and it’s theoretical.

Chester Hawkins performed “improvised autopsies” of Lutosławski’s string quartet work: “‘The Metabolism Quartet’ is a mixture of two live performances in Washington DC: one recorded in isolation at Intangible Arts’ studio (4th September 2018) and one in public at Rhizome community arts space (8th September 2018).” He hooked up “three granular synth engines and one tape-edit/concrète emulator” and went to town on the Polish composer. The result is a fascinating mashup of classical and electroacoustic manipulation, which ends up pretty firmly in modern classical territory by the end of everything. Witold Lutosławski is probably beaming down from his perch on a heavenly cloud, having traded in his electric guitar for an angel harp.

Did I say electric guitar? I meant, uh, all the other non-rock instruments he almost certainly played.

Hawkins adds guitar, though. Live lapsteel. Plus he’s added field recordings. I’m not familiar with Lutosławski’s work, but Hawkins is doing some pretty good work here. He may – and this is complete conjecture – be … improving it? (Friend of Tabs Out Scott Scholz is probably rolling over in his grave as he reads this, even though he’s alive.) Because “Metabolism Quartet” is awesome, a friskily tense revue that manipulates the original quartet’s material till it’s a menacing slab of vibrating steel, a gothic reinterpretation that ratchets up the suspense and fills your mind with panic. It’s a 30-minute wander through a haunted house, where a disembodied ensemble soundtracks your every move. That’s an unnerving proposition.

Oh shoot, and there’s another side to this tape? “Nocturne for Poppy”? Well, I’ll be getting right down to that thing in just a sec. Just remember: if anybody asks, like the cops or whatever, I had nothing to do with any string quartets that have, eh, gone missing, or, um, anything like that. Seriously. I’ve been at home all week.

Edition of 50 available from Zeromoon and Intangible Arts.

Skyminds – s/t

4.16.19 by Ryan Masteller

This is truly the only response one can have when listening to Skyminds’ self-titled tape on Auasca:

I AM NOT KIDDING.

But what do you expect from a Michael Henning/Sean Conrad joint … or should I say a Selaroda/Channelers (etc.) joint?

(Uh huh. Now you get it.)

I am always ready for the synthesizers with these two, the ones that sound like that “mind blown” gif up there looks: supernovas cascading energy outward but also occurring within your mind. But you can never be sure what else these cats are getting up to, what other avenues they’re sauntering down and testing. Happily, with their new self-titled tape, they’re feeling extra frisky, pulling out all kinds of acoustic instruments and adding them to their homespun trippy-ness for passages of mega-Floyd-y goodness. The shift from synth drone to psych folk and back makes for nice changes of pace throughout the album, and just begs – BEGS – for repeat listens to tease everything out.

Conrad is the proprietor of Inner Islands, the most consistently peaced-out new age tape label out there, one that focuses on the spiritual and mental journey and what that sounds like. Henning as Selaroda has released music on Inner Islands. Skyminds thus is a powerful narcotic, with Conrad’s powers complementing Henning’s, and vice versa. The compositions deliver on the duo’s zones-for-days ways, calming the mind and guiding the soul, acting as a sort of vision quest through misty pastel atmospheres and desert-wilderness vastness. Night sky’s huge out here, man – turn your attention to it.

Skyminds is available from Auasca in an edition of 100, pro-dubbed, on blue cassettes.

Autophonia – nolite te bastardes carborundorum

4.15.19 by Ryan Masteller

When drones (the musical ones, not the remote-controlled helicopters) come to you, they often come as they are: serene, scenic, deferential, polite, gentle, constant, rich. You don’t have to guess with a drone. You don’t fool around with sound sources or intent – you just let that drone wash over you and release the feelings that it’s supposed to release. A good drone moves effortlessly, without any friction tugging at its progress.

I once believed these things fully, but I’m not sure I do anymore.

Autophonia’s drones are incredibly complex, acoustically derived, and emotionally resonant. The trio, “consisting of Jennifer Slezak (mandolin and violin), Jen Powers (hammer dulcimer), and Stephanie Dean (accordion),” improvised these five tracks – improvised them! – as if the sounds had been living within their bodies all their lives. The moment these three performers entered the studio together, the sounds, like spirits, exited their bodies through their instruments, only to be captured by the recording engineer through the dark magic of the studio switchboard. From there they were transferred to cassette tape, from which audio emanates that almost assuredly assumes corporeal form as soon as the encoded material traverses the tape head. Surely the music hear lives and breathes in some capacity long after the moment it’s heard.

These are no mere drones – they shift perceptibly at the players’ command, taking on shapes and textures that fit more comfortably into the nooks and crannies between post-rock bombasts. But the absence of the one doesn’t define the other – the gentle ruminations of “nolite te bastardes carborundorum” defines itself, “a document of a live performance” – an organic unfolding – “not a studio creation.” And although “nolite te bastardes carborundorum” does indeed translate to the very post-rocky “do not let the bastards grind you down,” it holds on to that hopeful sentiment that there’s a space beyond the drudgery and violence for solace and rest. Now THAT I believe – and once you hear how Slezak, Powers, and Dean deftly and discreetly join forces before repurposing a seeming delicateness into real emotional power, you’ll believe it too.

Available now from Scioto Records.

Arrowounds – Book of Endangered Species

4.12.19 by Ryan Masteller

Recycling is good. It’s good for Earth. It’s good for the environment. It makes you feel good doing it, because it makes you feel like you’re a part of something bigger than yourself. Histamine Tapes is a paragon of the waste-not/want-not philosophy, regularly repurposing old tapes for their new releases. For Arrowounds’ “Book of Endangered Species,” the label home-dubbed some reclaimed 90-minute cassettes, mine in particular being an old Maxell XL II-S, totally taking me back to middle and high school, when I made tapes of as much of my friends’ record collections as possible to listen to on the bus or in my car.

Taking me nowhere, though, is the sticker on the B-side, which reads “cont. Michelle Shocked + K.D. Lang Shadowland.” Now there’s two artists I never found myself drawn to.

I am much more drawn to what Ryan Chamberlain’s Arrowounds project’s got going for it. On “Book of Endangered Species” he aligns with another powerful Ryan – me – in pointing a bony, gnarled, accusatory finger at “pollution, greed, neglect, and a denial of science by those in power” as the culprits of “the continuing destruction of our natural world.” I am drawn to the homespun charm of these seven ambient, electronic tracks, their lo-fi atmospheres at once charming yet challenging. They operate in stark contrast to sounds of titanic industry or rampant capitalism, which I imagine sound something like a mix between computer bleeps and wet farts. But the natural world beckons with static and flow, with water, wind, and air, with harmony among its constituent parts. Chamberlain offers us the sonic equivalent of that, the alternative to techno-future oblivion.

Each copy of this edition of 30 is different. Only five left!