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Tethers – It Bows by Day
7.18.18 by Ryan Masteller

There was no interest in holding back for Tethers, a cross-country collaboration between Andrew Weathers and Brendan Landis. The result, “It Bows by Day,” speaks for itself. Guitars (mostly), organ, and contact mics erupt in shimmering pulses, like the peaks and valleys of a seismograph or radio waves from a quasar.

“Taken for Granted Your Own Two Hands” was “improvised simultaneously in Brooklyn/Oakland on the full moon of July 19th, 2016…” Wait a minute. Sure, I get that the internet lets you do amazing things, like make dank memes and release Soundcloud mixtapes. But how do you simultaneously improvise with another person on the opposite side of the United States? Last I checked, Oakland is pretty far from Brooklyn. I guess magic was in the air, or in the ethernet cables, because “Taken for Granted” is easy to get lost in, easy to dream about, dream through, without any real chemical enhancements. Still, I bet weed makes it cooler.

“Tall Fields” exhibits NO SUCH MAGIC – not the long-distance kind anyway. Weathers and Landis somehow were able to be in the same place at the same time, in Brooklyn, and the results are more subdued, more meditative, perhaps the result of the proximity of the physical space to the mental space. Mind-meld kind of stuff, transfer of ideas before reactor shutdown. But the mesmerizing drone is no less sultry or intoxicating – in fact, you could argue that there’s more clarity in the detail, more detail in the restraint. Clearly they were onto something. No, not ON something – although I bet weed makes it cooler.

Lurker Bias still has some of this edition of 43 available. Make it happen for yourself, savvy consumer!

Remote Choir – Behemoth Conundrum / Sacred Cow
7.9.18 by Ryan Masteller

Jimmy Crouse has a vision. It’s similar to the one my friend and bandmate Paul had back in college when we were ripping off the Pixies and using our rock and roll lifestyle to, ahem, appeal to potential mates – you know, like peacocks. (Well, I was anyway. Regardless, none of us was good at it.) See, Paul wanted to ditch the standard four-piece lineup and bring in a bunch of likeminded souls to hum and chant, likely with minimal accompaniment (Paul was good at stripping a song down), potentially circling around a stage, likely holding candles. Come to think of it, Paul may have just wanted to start a cult.

In any event, I was totally against it – no way we were picking up chicks with a CHOIR. But Jimmy Crouse somehow, somewhy, obtained the key that unlocks the mystery of the unified vocal, the stretched harmony of chords emanating from the human mouth, and put it to use – not sure if it’s for good or evil, but let’s let you guys decide as you sift through it. Regardless, Crouse has compiled his Remote Choir, which is “made up of people from different places and times, some who have never met, and maybe never will.” That’s the gist, the likeminded camaraderie of a coterie of friends and strangers lending their voices to these original hymns, combining to form a liturgical Voltron heaven-bent on piercing the veil between the inner and outer, “the space that separates us.” These gothic paeans call to mind, for me anyway, the aching mantras of DAMA/LIBRA’s “Claw,” an intense song cycle and one of the favorite things I’ve written about in my now illustrious writing portfolio. (Google it, it might show up.) Remote Choir does it pretty well too – it’s lovely stuff.

But don’t take my word for it – or Paul’s (god, was he ever right!). Head on over to Specific Recordings or the Remote Choir page and grab one of these tapes, which contains both the “Behemoth Conundrum” and “Sacred Cow” EPs.

Toni Dimitrov + Jared Sagar / Derek Piotr – split
7.4.18 by Ryan Masteller

Jakarta’s Tandem Tapes has been a repository of dream collaborations for a while now, and you should be all caught up on their catalog, which now spans a whopping 41 releases. These cassettes, in measly editions of 25, are highly sought after among the tapehead community, holy grails of one-off experimental excursions from some of the most interesting practitioners of sonic mayhem. Just keep an eye on that postage from Indonesia, am I right? High five!

Toni Dimitrov and Jared Sagar’s side filters field recordings through digital processing until they come out the other side so warped and reconstituted that all context is erased. Even birdsong becomes ominous in their hands! “Palabra,” which is Spanish for “word,” does not contain a single uttered syllable, instead leaving it up to me to impose text and meaning upon it. Which I am not interested in doing here! Mainly because the lack of language is actually doing all the speaking for the duo. That and the ominous birds. Among other things. Still, “Palabra” takes seventeen whole minutes to unleash its inner beauty to us, which is perfect because I only have seventeen more minutes before my soufflé is done.

Speaking of seventeen whole minutes, Derek Piotr’s “Live at Crunch House 2018” also unfolds over the exact same amount of time. Gone are the Eastern melodies and glitchy vocal contortions saved for Piotr’s proper album releases, and instead we get the experimental scribbles of an artist stretching out a little bit beyond the comfort zone. Although not sprawling drone in the slightest, “Live at Crunch House” has more in common with “Drono” (2016), a hard left turn in Piotr’s discography that too takes its time to get where it’s going. But where “Drono” stayed true to its titular allusion, “Crunch House” is all over the place, everywhere at once, not staying still, cycling through sounds and territories with abandon. It’s a lot of fun, never a dull moment.

And now my soufflé is ruined.

There’s only a few of these left, so grab one while you can from Tandem Tapes!

Peter Kris – Error Into the Sun
7.3.18 by Ryan Masteller

It is happening again. This was the first time, the initial double cassette release Peter Kris (of sonic patriots German Army) snuck into the world via Never Anything Records, and I missed out on it for some reason. Was I sleeping? Was I on vacation? Was I buried up to my neck in a desert in the Old West in some sort of slow-death nightmare? It could have been anything – point is, no matter how hard I try, I can’t will a copy of “Labrador” into existence. Even scouring fuzzy images of Tabs Out headquarters that the podcast boys post to Twitter turns up nothing, so I can’t even beg Dave to send me Mike’s copy while he’s out of the house. I’ll just have to settle for “Error Into the Sun” then.

Whoa, whoa, hold on – let’s get this out of the way. I’m not “settling” for anything. You certainly don’t “settle” for double cassettes with this much care and preparation put into them. This, readers, is the crown jewel of a crown jewel batch from NA, and I say that with no intention really of elevating one of the four releases in this batch over another – this one’s just the biggest. You go on over to one of those Bandcamp links in this here internet story and you buy those tapes from Event Cloak, Nils Quak, and Micromelancolié. That’s just your duty as a music fan, a Tabs Out listener, and one of my closest friends.

A deep dive into “Error Into the Sun” yields an intensely immersive experience, but do we not expect that from Peter Kris now? (This one just lasts twice as long as his average output.) His ability to sculpt worlds with his treated guitar is utterly second to none, whether it’s the lonesome reverbed strum of short intro “Adopted” or the guttural doom of “Collecting Circle.” Even album centerpiece “Michael Palin” (shoutout ftw!) shapeshifts over its fourteen minutes from murky drone to angelic shimmer to tense rumble to crisp outro, showcasing under one title the array of emotive playing Kris is capable of, a supreme power derived from extensive practice, not from farcical aquatic ceremony.

(I had to shoehorn in a “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” Palin reference somehow, right?)

This double cassette is in an edition of 50 from Never Anything Records – it is NINE DOLLARS folks, why don’t you have this in your collection already? Bargain.

Andrew Quitter and Nick Hoffman – Apotheosis Putrefactum
6.28.18 by Ryan Masteller

Andrew Quitter and Nick Hoffman have populated more scenes with more music than is probably healthy, and speaking of health, this tape on Weird Ear doesn’t give the sense that the boys are interested in anyone’s well-being anyway. This is their second collaboration, by the way, the first being “Nu Grotesque” (2013), and I sense a pattern in influence: “Grotesque”? “Putrefactum”? Eh? OK, I had to look up “Putrefactum” just to make sure I wasn’t missing something, and sure enough, it means what you think it does: “rotted, putrefied.” That’s just grotesque!

So what sort of black bile is churning around the bellies of these two lads these days? If the sound emanating from this tape is any indication, it’s actual black bile! Yes, “Apotheosis Putrefactum” is a study in disorienting queasiness, the kind that ratchets up tension in good horror flicks. Quitter’s “synthesis” is of the analog variety, while Hoffman prefers digital, but combined the two will have you sitting down, clutching your stomach, and mumbling “I don’t feel so good” before internal rainbows burst forth from your mouth “Exorcist”-style and continue until you too have become a victim of these two “artists’” whims.

Artists of the REVOLTING, that is!

So I hope you’re in the mood for some diabolical nausea-inducing sound art, because that’s just what this tape provides, four tracks of extended wickedness and dread doled out at tortuously slow pace. Let this evil sonic goo coat your mind and body – you won’t even pray for release, you’ll be too far gone already. I think that sounds like a winner of a way to spend this summer afternoon!

Edition of 50 still available from Weird Ear. Act now!