“Warmth and woozies,” that’s what Meadow Argus is made of! Tynan Krakoff of Columbus, OH recently revived that ol’ solo moniker for a followup to his tape from over five years ago. And yeah, there’s already a Meadow Argus III on the way! But today, we’re looking at the Meadow Argus II self-release from back in April. It’s a simple C35 kind of affair; one that is legitimately keeping me on edge as I type this up.
You see, I recently swapped boomboxes and while this older Sony model plays immaculate, the Meadow Argus tape stutters and drones before swallowing itself whole. Over and over! Perhaps it is a result of the dying polyphonic air/reed organ that ties the tape together? Well, Krakoff has also stuffed this with a litany of field recordings, pianos, and alien DNA equally as demented and destitute. Either way, it’s a listening tactic that keeps the tape’s two sides from ever letting things fall into a lull, while opening up an expansive journey through recorded warbly artifacts.
Headphones are understandably recommended and noteworthy for how well they untangle these sounds and the tape’s six tracks. Afterall, Krakoff isn’t just doing “noise for the sake of noise” here. Take Side B’s nocturnal suite. It seamlessly moves from the quicksand rupture of “amber” until a foghorn signals that it’s time for a twilight lift from a “northbound train,” a junker scaling through soot, scruff, and scowls. By the time it’s finally made landing at “shingle beach,” the previous 14-odd minutes of previous tape loops and manipulation are all elements pushing to the horizon line; things are clearing up, with a layer of what could only seem to be ham radio static and frail, busted keys guiding this cruise down to a terminal plane.
Pro-dubbed cassette tape on clear shells with imprinting, with double-sided full color artwork by Pearl Morgan. Edition of 100.
I’m a sucker for a good rule, limit, or promise. Perhaps the Pilgrim Talk label is as well. The California based enterprise is a bit of a hideout for noisers, microtoners, and sustained voiders (the label claims “the void is real”). Nick Hoffman is the local intaker of the label, over twelve years on the job. He’s recently moved down to LA with a lute in hand to strike out whatever fortunes are still arising outside of a line at The Smell or what have you. Also, Hoffman is a bit of an occasional interviewer, sometimes offering an interview alongside a tape release coming out on Pilgrim Talk. He did such a thing with Takahiro Kawaguchi’s Recorded Xenology. I give a genuine recommendation for the interview as Hoffman and Kawaguchi cover ample room discussing the construction of Kawaguchi’s live and studio body of work; the experiments and set-ups that have been his bread and butter dating back to 2k4. It’s helpful context towards the constructivist sounds of Recorded Xenology, which is a tape release truly bound by simple rules, self-made instruments (a la Bad Jazz), and sound repetitions.
Rule* 1 is of course my favorite: HORN. And no, that’s not a free pass to honk or crank or wail. Kawaguchi is not trying to summon Mr. B Natural with THIS decked out “air compressor and ten car horns” super instrument (an instrument that has been modified, partially confiscated, and still revealing itself over the course of several years). Instead, he’s well tuning up the horn, exploring the compositional sounds that come about. And while it could have been a demolition derby or destructive catalyst, the sound is actually quite jubilant. There’s ample bounce to this horn that lets the instrument’s tonality begin to hit foreign, isolated planes. Removed from the context of a car and the horn takes on semi-regal as much as semi-gauche sounds; it’s an uncanny, yet welcome feeling to say the least. When he reintroduces the instrument for Rule* 3, HORNS, Kawaguchi is letting it move about semi-automatically, almost like a rudimentary Keith Fullerton Whitman Playthroughs session. It’s a sound that as it sustains over the twenty and a half minutes, cannot help but transmute or reconfigure. Yet, a greater magnitude of sonic intensity, including a warming drone, comes through that piece that is displaced in “HORN.”
In between these two Rules* is Rule* 2 “NO HORN,” which substitutes the horn for fingers and paper cone recordings that were converted into sound. It’s much more of an ASMR type of event that gave me thoughts of can openers (amongst other crank type objects) and pennies on a dead mime. Although, the tape’s cover (art by Mr. Hoffman) itself may stand as a more enduring drawing of what exactly is happening on “NO HORN.”
Back in Winter, an album out of South Korea quickly spread like wildfire around RYM, Bandcamp, and various other outlets. Anyone who was lucky enough to pick up a cassette of Parannoul’s To See the Next Part of the Dream may have noticed that it was the inaugural release (LR-001) of a new midwest upstart, Longinus Recordings. For the past few months, Matthew Cruz has turned what was a serendipitous act of good faith into a functioning label with three tape releases under its belt, a couple of digitals, and a sudden global cult following. His documentation via Instagram has been a worthwhile microblog to follow, even when it implied a hiatus was coming. Although there’s not going to be a sudden hiatus.
When Thomas of TBD Presents and I hopped on Zoom in late May to discuss Longinus, it was obvious that Matthew Cruz had infinite futures in mind, as well as an endless barrage of love for the artists he’d been working with. So, here’s the story of Longinus Records as it stands in Summer 2021 — how he found Parannoul, turned a one-off project into a real deal, and where the label is headed next — amongst a litany of other psychedelic curios and musings.
This interview was assembled through an open dialogue/conversation and we thank Mr. Cruz for being a cool fella!
Are there any labels that influenced Longinus when you started?
Now as far as record labels go, I don’t think there’s anything terribly differentiating between labels big or small; it’s the concept they produce. Labels rarely put mission statements and such on their releases.
Now if I had to choose one that I love, Factory Records and the Madchester scene. I loved that Tony Wilson gave his artists free reign to do whatever the hell they wanted. At that time in history, artists were subservient to the label, not the other way around. And yet, how Factory was operated became a catalyst for Madchester! Wilson’s unique DIY ethos being able to break that hold on how music was being produced and distributed really resonated with me.
Obviously, I don’t want to say my whole label is completely inspired by Factory Records because they collapsed after Happy Mondays’ garbage album “Yes Please!” and we’re not trying to do that with Longinus.
Can you tell us about your job and what you are currently doing?
So, I work at a college radio station and just started a summer internship with a large corporate fast food entity. In the past, I’ve been writing longforms about music. I remember in one of our team meetings, this one person was talking about how some people we’re [writing these longforms] to flex their music taste. To a degree, something I’d agree with. That’s not necessarily the point though; it’s about sharing the music you like. Coming from someone who has had a musical journey for 7 to 8 years. Some people are getting into music for longer or just recently. The longer you go, the more obscure you write. So part of what I do is be a fake tastemaker/journalist.
The stuff I write isn’t obscure. I’ve written about Gas’ Pop. That ambient techno that emulates LSD is my shit. I adore it to the point I have a test cassette of Pop! It sounds like a fake urban legend. I even dm’d Wolfgang Voight and a week later he got back and said if it looks like this, it is real! I can’t help but be thrilled I own that.
So, Psychedelia is kind of overarching how you listen to music and what you like? More so than shoegaze?
Honestly, I’d jokngly describe myself as a “fake as fuck” shoegaze fan. Yes, I love “the big three” a lot for their textures and emphasis on psychedelia. I’m someone who enjoys exploring psychedelia. I would consider Wolfgang Voight’s Gas as the zenith of Psychedelia, simply in terms of the way it replicates the effects of psychedelic drugs; it may not be stylistically psychedelic music but I’ve always been intrigued by “wall of sound” style music with grand production that gives off kaleidoscopic sounds that are vibrant and thick.
Although, I don’t explore shoegaze as an offshoot of psychedelia, I explore psychedelia as a concept and how they replicate the textures of it. As far as Shoegaze goes, I love a lot of Galaxie 500 and slowcore, fishmans… I don’t listen to a derivative of Loveless and think it’s garbage or M83’s Dead Cities and try to discover every underground shoegaze gem.
Like earlier this year, I got into a thing where I was only listening to Happy Mondays, the Stone Roses, and Leisure by Blur (which isn’t even that great of a record!) because I thought there were engrossing takes on Psychedelia.
What was the plotting out of Longinus Recordings, especially for the inaugural release (Parannoul’s To See the Next Part of the Dream)?
I was on RYM one day, sorting by new tunes to see if there was something I could flex on my co-workers and friends. And I found this album by this South Korean individual going by the name of Parannoul—it had 100 ratings or so at the time which is a decent amount for a DIY record, but in the grand scheme of things isn’t that much. Before I was just listening to the Stone Roses or something and I decided to throw it on after. It was a definite “a-ha!” moment, like listening to Twin Fantasy for the first time and realizing “this is gonna be a visionary piece of music that will be influential.” It’s kind of surreal having listened to To See the Next Part of the Dream and it was as good as it is while NOBODY knew about it! I was in that moment when I realized “Holy shit! I wanna do something with this!”
So I emailed Parannoul at like two in the morning. I think I verbatim told Parannoul that it was “visionary” or some other high praise and asked if I could press cassettes of it. I’m not a musician nor a professional tape label; I had never had experience with this, but I was just so enthralled and impressed by his album, that I was more than willing to front the costs and make these tapes. Then I got an email a day later with a confirmation, and then it kicked in that I own a tape label now…
Yup, so I started designing the Jcard. The first one I did, was really really shitty, because I wanted to lock down this proof-of-concept so that people could see it was real! I literally modeled it off of Twin Fantasy, making a basic Jcard that would work for all intents and purposes.
I had thought, “okay, I can go on Amazon and purchase 30 cassettes and dub them with my Nakamichi BX-150, a $5 goodwill purchase! I had envisioned that this album was likely to fade into obscurity and that I could say “Hey, I made a cassette once!” and that I would have made a legitimate physical copy of Parannoul’s music and we would part ways. We really did think we would only sell 30 tapes if we were lucky.
I kind of realized that I was getting in over my head when the initial test batch of 30 tapes sold out in two hours. At this time, Parannoul had doubled on RYM to over 200 ratings where it was consistently at the top for the early “Top 40 of 2021” list. With not a lot of major album competition at this time, it was finding an audience. So, the release and success was truly serendipitous. I could not make the time to efficiently produce another run in house, so I turned things over to professional duplication. I had sold 100 of them…and then the Pitchfork review came out, which really put it in scope how special this type of music had come out was for a lot of people.
Yeah, you can even see this with Home is Where and Hey ILY, these burgeoning emo acts that threw their releases out on tape and have kind of blown up thanks in part to that network of critics.
Yeah! With Parannoul, Ian Cohen literally posted on Twitter something like “Hey this album with a blue smokestack is getting a lot of buzz on music forms…” and I realized we were likely gonna get a review. I love Ian Cohen, and in every sense of the word that guy is a tastemaker. As someone who participated in the vibrant DIY scene in Michigan, it was really awesome to him to champion bands like Dogleg that didn’t seem like they would otherwise get attention. Their BNM sorta smashed the stigma of “good midwest emo/DIY records that are capped at mid 7.0s”.
For the record, I used to follow the DIY scene rumbling across the Midwest more often. I attended those last two years of Bloodfest, which was basically the emo scene’s Lollapalooza. It was so fun, with a lot of bands of all kinds getting together to play at a Michigan High School! It was too perfect and I can’t believe they allowed that to happen.
Have you found or listened to artists like Asian Glow through critics, other extremely online artists, or on Bandcamp?
I had not listened to these albums or artists before. Total blind listens! While I had seen Home is Where’s “fifth wave emo” image going around, all of my artists I have found through Bandcamp or RYM. When I did find the album, I did start digging into Asian Glow on Bandcamp and saw a web of connections. Most notably that both were in Seoul, South Korea. People were not tuned into this at the time, but if you started checking the trending for Seoul, it was picking up.
It was another “eureka” moment with Cull Ficle. I was hearing a bunch of reference points from those shoegaze tinges to the Microphones; passionately written songs with math rock melodies. Of course I wanted to press it on tape! And its fifty tape run took three days to sell out, with orders being placed all over the world! We got orders from the UK, Sweden, and a lot from South Korea!
Your Instagram has been a nice microblog of the label’s status. Although is it going on Hiatus for the summer?
Oh no, I fucking lied through my teeth! I figured it might slow down, and yet while I was talking with sonhos tomam conta, the brazilian blackgaze artist (and third release on Longinus), I kinda realized just how big the label is getting. Not many tape labels ever have that advantage of having their first release be a huge album that blows up. Thus, I am going to consolidate Longinus Recordings into a formal operation.
That means I gotta manage it like a real business! Shipping Parannoul tapes (60% were bought US, 40% were bought international) for three days means a lot of customs forms! I need to hire someone to glow up my logo and not make it look like it was a photoshop job (I used the sphere of Longinus from Neon Genesis Evangelion as a temporary but I guess it’s my logo now). Also, there will be an actual Bandcamp page without a stock graphic of Shinji or a still from Akira. It kinda looks like a college kid’s finsta at the moment. I will be upping the dubbing quality of tapes!
I’ve been so consumed by all this work and other stuff I haven’t even given a lot of 2021 tapes any listens! Speaking of, I’ve almost thought about distributing some of these tapes to the local record shops, but I have no idea what that conversation entails.
Will there be repressing of the tape?
Absolutely! Every day there are DMs asking about repressing Parannoul. I plan to do one as well for Cull Ficle after its 2xLP vinyl pressing and a few more titles come down the line.
The reselling of the Parannoul tape on discogs has been insane. I don’t like the way that these markets (especially vinyl) are turning resale. Limited colors or whatnot that sell in ten minutes and are on ebay the next day. It pains me that artists intentionally do that to “throttle the stocks” and maintain this kind of demand for the record.
That it has even turned personal with tapes is even more bizarre. On the discogs page for Parannoul, someone was trading a $100 record for a copy (that I haven’t even shipped) of the Cull Ficle tape. The translucent blue tape of Parannoul was listed and just sold for $210. I literally posted a comment on my discogs begging people not to buy from a scalper because that tape is not of hi-fi quality. You have to be crazy! I might be biased because there are shoegaze tapes I’d splurge on (*laughs*), but maybe I don’t understand tapes. Just get the files, a deck or box, and make it yourself; these are white blank tapes.
Do you think that Longinus is going to be focused on rumblings in the global DIY sounds?
It’s whatever I want to do! Now, I’m not trying to sound self-righteous because I don’t think I’m doing shit! It is these artists and their music that is what sells; I’m just the tape distributor and A&R guy and when I hear an album that makes me go “this shit hits,” I just know I want to press it! There’s a lot of music that is being undiscovered from other college kids the same age as me. I would like to keep one hand in the shoegaze realm. It’s still a sound that I’m partial to.
Right now, I just let my artists vibe. I’m not trying to breathe down their neck (we had verbal contracts and email agreements), they go at their own pace and complete it to their own vision. They got free reign over their music and there is nothing I can do besides just try to help support them and distribute physicals.
Now, there are a few Longinus releases I know that are coming down the pipe. I’m prepping Dating’s next album as a forthcoming release on Longinus. They were actually shouted out by Parannoul in a Sonemic interview; they did shoegaze akin to Parannoul back in 2012, way ahead of the curve! sonhos tomam conta’s second record arrived on 8/8 Bandcamp Friday and I have to figure out their release schedule and situation with physicals! I made twenty tapes of their debut and while I had wanted to make more, a lot of her fans are in Brazil. The Brazilian Real is not very strong to the dollar, and cassette culture is not as huge there unfortunately.
Finally, we have something of a “mogul move” right now. sonhos tomam conta, Asian Glow, and Parannoul are currently teasing a collaborative split at the moment that just straight up excites the hell out of me. Think about these three very different aspects of DIY — the Microphones-style lo-fi, textured rhythms of blackgaze, and pure melodic shoegaze — metastasizing into cutting edge sound. It’s a trifecta of what DIY can do right now. Honestly, I’m thrilled that they are all open and wanting to work together; they took the agency to do that! So, the day that split comes out I will be the HAPPIEST man alive 🙂
Doctors from around the world have cited St. Louis, Mo based violinist Alex Cunningham as a leading practitioner in the arts of dispossession. The last time I checked up with Cunningham, I was learning about “social capital where I [he] grew up,” and by that I mean I was knee deep in a liturgy of string semantics propelling a most excellent sonic exorcism. It cleared me of my back aches! Cunningham approaches the violin in all its clandestine glory. He can keep his violin strings at bay, pacing and feeling out the acoustics, or he can lay down a sudden jolt of sonic horror with a most haywire solo; it’s concrete and unrelenting. Cunningham’s sound transmutates appropriately in art form, where his collages separate and render bodies down to their mouths or arms, packing them into an omnibus that seeks to overtake your senses.
These details are important to the tapes Cunningham has been crushing here in 2021, where his ideas still teeter in a liminal space of unclassifiability. The C20 “pas de deux” tape (released through Richmond, VA based label Working Man Lay Down), finds that beyond the violin Cunningham is emphasizing “objects and electronics.” On paper, this may not really surprise you or me. I mean, I use objects to wind my tapes up and electronics to talk about tapes. Yet, the second the ferric hits that tape head with “tensile strength,” it becomes rather apparent that Cunningham has discovered a new source of energy. The violin’s vicious string patterns are chopped up and warped until they reflect the sound of an Amtrak locomotive running on pneumatics. The percussive blasts give a sense that we are traveling at 300MPH. As the piece progresses, the loops become more sensory depraved, moving further into blank spaces. It’s as if suddenly the train was meticulously zipped into a body bag to be sunk at the bottom of the ocean. “bones turned coral” is a welcome companion, a slow-burn working through a litany of found sounds in its first half, before seeking out and finishing with classic Cunningham violin dronery.
Meanwhile, the second release on Storm Cellar, Cunningham’s shiny new imprint, is “Armor.” Armor is a bit longer than “pas de duex,” yet still centers on two main pieces for each side. And without masquerading a Cunningham violin solo under layers of industrial debris, he’s simply bookended with devious intros and outros that emphasize found object textures. The main piece of Side A, “I Saw My Devil,” opens like the sweltering sun on June asphalt, encompassing everywhere and aching all over; sublime kind of dissonant heat therapy. As Cunningham continues down his improv, midway through he hints at a breadcrumb of a softer song, but quickly refracts, savoring in moments of string drone and meticulous, frantic silence. Side B’s Armor is simply a furious whirlwind of a solo. One that starts practically en media res, without any hindrance towards becoming enraptured in the jittering peaks and cantankerous crescendos that Cunningham chases down. Fit for weddings of all occasions/occults, ages 6+
Wiggly – If I give you a cherry, the least you could do is spit the pit back into my bowl so’s I can suck on it later, and you don’t have to poke me in the eye with the stem
The New Jersey based Cavern Brew Records holds an open demo policy that has rewarded itself with a blind bag of lo-fi in all its pop, field recording, and unclassifiable forms! Of most recent note is their release of the Kansas City lo-fi chameleon Wiggly with an album title THAT long and cover filled with THAT much negative space. It all screams “Joy Void 2k15,” and indeed the hissy murmured vocals of everyday imagery would almost make it so! For Wiggly is a one-man machine making songs the color of dusk and dawn, somewhere between basement pop and open sky folk.
Wiggly’s one-man process to put these songs to tape involved a smattering of instruments and adverbage usage ( “electric guitared, bass guitared, harmonicad, floor tomed, tambourined, synthesizered, keyboarded, kalimbad, and bongo cajoned”). In the process, he’s presented soundscapes that sound like the last 35ish years of 4AD, mending the cavernous folk of Heidi Berry or a Victorialand instrumental (“Over”) with Deerhunter’s astral gaze (“Everlasting Light” and “Keeper’s Sign”) and even a smidgen of Amps’ basement fuzz. Perhaps it strikes you as a mouthful of references. Yet, with every listen, I find another earworm to hold onto or another curveball freakout, like the “Strangeface Rant,” to dissect and untangle, and with the skies so gosh darn blue right now, it’s quite a treat to savor.
