masteller

Graham Repulski – Negative Highlight Reel
2.23.18 by Ryan Masteller

Get used to it, because I’m pretty much going to always drop a GBV comp on Graham Repulski when I talk about him, and that shouldn’t make you shy away one bit. Sure, he’s got similar affectations as ol’ Bob Pollard, and his voice is right in the same register. Plus, he always records his scrappy rock tunes straight to 4-track, so everything’s blissfully in the red, a perfect complement to the pop rocks and Budweiser fizzing in the back of your brain. At least it feels like I got pop rocks and Budweiser fizzing around when I listen to Graham “Goddamn!” Repulski. He’s probably still reeling from that Eagles Super Bowl win.

Philadelphian or no (and yes, thanks, he is), Repulski channels that blue-collar do-it-yourself-ness of the City of Brotherly Love, curdling the sweet nectar of hope with the sour reality of toil into an at-once recognizable and also comforting concoction. And yeah, you take the good with the bad, and you roll with it no matter what – any Philly homer worth their salt gets it, and that’s why dreams really do come true for guys like Vince Papale and … Vince Papale, basically. Graham Repulski just likes to shake the soda can – the one containing the fizz (again) of your hopes and dreams – a little bit before handing it to you. It’s a Philly thing; maybe you wouldn’t understand.

Buy “Negative Highlight Reel” and 24 other amazing releases from the artist hisself; released January 28, so you can probably still get it. It’ll probably never sell out – I bet Graham just makes a new tape every time someone orders one anyway. Absolute DIY.

-otron – Prism Exhiliarated
2.21.18 by Ryan Masteller

The designation “-otron” is much more versatile than you might originally think. Consider, how would you watch replays at your favorite gridiron team’s stadium without a jumbotron? Or, how would you research the most hilarious quotes and make the dankest memes without the online Futurama repository Morbotron? Then of course there’s the O’Tron clan from County Cork, Ireland. And how else would you answer the question, “What was the name of that movie we watched over at Steve’s the other month, the eighties one where the guy got trapped in a computer game or something?” “Oh, ‘Tron,’” of course.

This -otron, without ANY connecting text, just hanging off the end of its hyphen as if it was dangling by a scrappy vine on the edge of a precipice, is a UK producer of seasick techno, guaranteed to fracture your field of vision like a boulder to a windshield … but in color! “Prism Exhilarated” is a “sampletronic” odyssey into the furthest reaches of deep, or inner-, space. Tracks like “Gemini” ping through the terminals of spaceports, transmissions from pilots and astronauts and other people more in charge than me penetrating the electronic mayhem. Tracks like “Geometry4U” burble and burst and make you feel like you should have paid more attention in high school. Its samples feel condescending to me because I’m math stupid.

But wait, there’s more to it than just that!

[“Prism Exhilarated”] is … the world’s very first album release to integrate Soundary’s Prysm technology. … Prysm is a unique duplication system, ensuring that every copy of an album is sonically different from every other. Thus, when you buy Prism Exhilarated on cassette you are purchasing a unique musical artefact available to no-one else. It is the ultimate collector’s edition.

Wow! The self-released edition of 49 cassettes is available from -otron’s Bandcamp page, where you can also find “’reference’ digital rendition (the effective copy 0), which is included with each cassette and also purchaseable as a standalone download.” I mean, you’re essentially getting two tapes when you buy one. Or 49 different tapes when you buy all 49! Are you that brave?

William Hooker Trio feat. Ava Mendoza & Damon Smith – Remembering
2.19.18 by Ryan Masteller

What’s shakin’, bacon? Is it your floors, your walls, your roof, the very foundation of your abode? Yeah, mine too – we must have something in common, you and me. Is it that we both live on the San Andreas Fault? No, that can’t be it, I don’t live in California. (Do you?) I wonder then if it’s this William Hooker Trio tape. You’re listening to it too?! No way! That’s gotta be the culprit.

This Hooker guy’s a drummer, and you know what that means: lots of late-night practices in the apartment downstairs, and no amount of stomping on the floor for him to shut up at 2:00 a.m. is going to make a difference, because he can’t hear you over the sound of his drums. That’s OK though – all that practice has made him a damn fine drummer, and when he surrounds himself with, say, two other people, it is possible for magic to ensue. Here he comprises his trio with Ava Mendoza on guitar and Damon Smith on double bass for maximum jazz density, setting the stage for that aforementioned magic to be conjured in our midst.

Hooker’s an outrageous bandleader, nimble on the kit, while Smith’s fingers dance over the frets like a ballerina in “Swan Lake” or Robert Loggia in that scene from “Big” with the floor piano. Mendoza is as inventive as the theoretical progeny of Kim Gordon and Sonny Sharrock. Together, on “Remembering,” they activate seismic force, the blasts of power and tense interludes rubbing up against one another like tectonic plates for maximum friction. I am literally jumping up and down with both feet slamming on the floor, and yet they play on.

To be clear, I don’t want them to stop; I just want to be a part of the music, that’s all.

“Remembering” is part of the February Astral Spirits batch. Here’s an aid for your own “remembering”: pick up the dang thing before it sells out. Edition of 175.

Berber Ox – A Year and a Half
2.15.18 by Ryan Masteller

Let’s see, what’s happened in the past year and a half?

[opens notebook, reads a few notes, eyes grow wide in horror, slams notebook shut]

Who ARE we?

Oh, wait, my mistake – Berber Ox’s “A Year and a Half” came out in October 2017, so maybe if I adjust the timeline things won’t seem so bad…

[opens notebook to different page, reads a few notes, eyes grow wide in horror, slams notebook shut]

Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat it – we’re a bunch of animals. And I don’t know what Berber Ox is playing at here – is the Australian artist wallowing in the cerebral grit and grime? Pushing forward some hopeful vibes? Something else entirely? I’m going to go with option 3, because it’s almost impossible to pinpoint any sort of agenda or assign a perspective. Imprint yourself on this thing as you listen to it. I obviously am.

Because there it is, dense as a slab of obsidian, incorporeal like an unsettling fog. “A Year and a Half” marries gurgling electronics, field recordings, and … whatever the hell else Berber Ox has lying around the tool shed, I dunno. Sometimes the tape wants to be lake mist, at others it wants to be a distant but ominously approaching thundercloud. Rhythms skip like pebbles here and there, but, paradoxically, they escape gravity while gravity itself encloses with psychic pressure.

“A Year and a Half” is not necessarily for the faint of heart, yet it rewards deep listening. And if we keep our chins up, maybe the next year and a half will prove less oppressive than the previous.

[eyes notebook, lifts cover slightly, thinks better of it, lets cover fall, folds hands on lap]

Buy buy buy, with your money! At ((Cave)) Recordings.

Hasufel – Forlorn
2.12.18 by Ryan Masteller

Didn’t Hasufel just release a tape, like, a minute ago? You leave these black metal nerds on their own for a second and they keep pumping out that black metal nerd stuff as if their lives depended on it, don’t they? For all we know, their lives DO depend on it. Do NOT underestimate the power of music. Of any kind.

“Forlorn” picks up where “Lord of Carrion” left off, an unholy (you’re going to hear that word a lot in reference to Hasufel) offering to dark entities bent on mischief but who we look to when our lives need meaning and we can’t find that meaning anywhere else. (Why is it that demons and devils are the only ones that listen to us? Why?!?) Perfectly encapsulating the mood of the tape, “Forlorn’s” title track conjures feelings of loneliness, sadness, despondence, abandonment, forsakenness, hopelessness, desperation, and other words I found in the thesaurus. (Thanks Roget’s!) But with tracks like “Ossuary” and “Ziggurat,” the idea of self-importance (even if after death) lingers like a giant granite chip on the shoulder of a pissed-off minor deity. “The Darkness on the Hill” is just the beginning of YOUR JUDGMENT.

As Hasufel, synth slinger Dylan Ettinger has hit that super sweet spot where camp runs together with the actual dark arts so that you don’t have to bust the tape out on Halloween only. He meets us all at the intersection of Bauhaus and Xasthur like a high priest with a wicked agenda or a minor deity with a giant granite chip on his shoulder, ready to lead us in death chants and ominous hymns. We the pliable supplicants are ready and willing to do thy bidding, my master.

“Forlorn” is out on El Tule (Spanish for “the Tule,” I think), but that link takes you to Discogs. You’re better off clicking the Bandcamp link to buy one of these sweet EPs, limited to 100 copies. Don’t sweat what you heard, but act like you know.