masteller

Glass House – External Forces
9.21.18 by Ryan Masteller

“The Glass House headspace.” What does that look like? Where does it exist, if it indeed does exist on a physical plane? Is it actually glass? Can you see through it, or is it all frosted, like the window in my master bathroom? Do frogs attach themselves to the frosted glass that you can see from the inside of your master bathroom? Is it hurricane proof?

I feel like I’ve gotten off topic here.

“The Glass House headspace” is gained like an unlockable achievement in Final Fantasy [number forthcoming], where you dig down deep to your inner being and, with the proper (and exorbitant) amount of MP, tap into heretofore unobtainable amounts of personal power, more unobtainable than Unobtainium from Pandora in James Cameron’s masterpiece “Avatar.” With this power you can choose to heal your comrades or deal massive amounts of damage to your foe, which may or may not look like creatures from “Avatar.”

I’m all over the place today.

Let’s all shut up for a minute, and before you start chucking stones at me (there’s a Glass House here after all), we must consider “External Forces.” A sonic feast for those scrounging the barren Bandcamp cupboards for any sort of crumbling sustenance, this cassette tape is a powerful reminder that the Philadelphia/Brooklyn duo is still at the top of their game, even three years after their last tape (“Headlands” on Lillerne). Thick slabs of delectable synth are drizzled with piano melodies, minor-key meditations bloom into serene ambient clouds. If these forces are indeed external, they penetrate pretty deeply into one’s inner being. Listening to Glass House is the sonic equivalent of trying to peer through the frosted glass window in my master bathroom, except on all sides, and as far as the eye can see. Pretend you’re listening to that.

“External Forces” comes in an edition of 50 from Oxtail Recordings – get one now, while supplies last!

Nothing Band – Descension / Digestion
9.20.18 by Ryan Masteller

The following screenshot is of a conversation between me and my wife (read: my wiiiiiiiife). She was at one end of the house watching television with her sister; I was in my office at the other end.

God bless her.

I on the other hand can see through the screeching – or rather HEAR through it. Because it’s not all screeching, not to those who have trained their ears to appreciate the nuance of each sonic decision. See, for people like me – basement dwellers with no real ambition in life other than to pick apart other people’s artistic decisions to make themselves feel better for quitting bands forever after their college math-rock quartet dissolved seventeen years ago and who now weep openly whenever they play June of 44 records (which is almost never anymore because of the constant weeping) – where was I? Oh yeah – for people like me, we just get it, dude.

I like how Nothing Band is described as a “deconstructionist rock project”; the man behind it, Max Nordile, sure can scatter about the elements of traditional rock-n-roll as if they were piles of toys in a child’s room. Then, Nordile-as-child rolls around in the toys, flailing his limbs as he thrashes about, all while his Toy Story Mr. Mike Voice Changer Tape Recorder (only $175) records in the background, capturing every crash and bellow.

But Nordile’s not a kid, and Nothing Band is not a joke, so strangled guitar, Neanderthal percussion, and growls and hollers punctuate the recording, turning Mr. Mike’s happy smile into a terrified grimace. Still, Nordile’s got a great sense of humor – check out some of these amazingly worded subjects of his vitriol: “Mute Crooks Sell Good Luck,” “Hippie Gestures,” “Flag Business” (I stand for the flag!), “Gods Are Food,” “Jar of Piss” (which sadly is not a cheeky full-EP cover of Alice in Chains’s “Jar of Flies”), and “Policy Wonks.” So what you end up with is an abrasively entertaining record from a musician who cut his teeth in “avant skronk-punk bands” and on no wave. Is it pleasant? Well, if you’re asking that, you’re missing the point.

Time to debug your Paypal account and head on over to Decoherence Records to get one of these nasty beauts!

New Batch – \\NULL|ZØNE//
9.17.18 by Ryan Masteller

A mad scientist once told me that if you don’t have any imagination, you’re never going to get anywhere. Then he turned his back to me and got back to work on whatever invention was occupying his attention at the moment, touching nodes and rods here and there, which caused his already explosive gray coiffure to frizz out even further. But that advice, and that insane look in his eye as he relayed it to me—that intense stare into my soul accompanied by uncontrollable muscular twitches and facial tics—made me think long and hard about what I was doing with my life. Was I a failure? Had my imagination evaporated to the point where I could no longer appreciate anything beyond hard data?

As I pondered this horseshit, I pressed play on Uton’s “Pa-Luu Val-oon,” which is the most fun thing to say MAYBE ever (certainly more fun than “cellar door,” thank you very much Drew Barrymore in “Donnie Darko”). I was immediately struck by the Finnish producer’s IMAGINATION, as well as the ability to harness it to ride a wave of experimentation of an intensity heretofore unseen since I left the mad scientist’s lab not five minutes earlier. Indeed, the first two tracks of this tape play out like the sounds emanating from a 1950s supervillain’s super lair, where all sorts of gadgets are being tweaked and beakers are being poured and plugs are being … plugged in. Then the tranquility sets in, supervillain turns off the light, heads upstairs for bed, and everything just kind of goes on reserve for the night. It doesn’t last, the restlessness returns, morphs, shifts, refracts, intensifies, pulls back, and, probably, evolves into a conscious entity, like Vision from DC’s X-Men.

But that’s Uton, not African Ghost Valley, and it’s to African Ghost Valley I now turn, still trying to shake the sheer plastic emotionless egg my outlook on life has become. African Ghost Valley is full of IMAGINATION, a different kind, though. Where Uton stretches out sound and lets it hang, AFG drops in on an idea and quickly abandons it for the next, because he’s not remotely interested in staying in one place for a long time. So yeah, “UNT” is a lot shorter, only seven tracks, over half of which are less than two minutes, but the restlessness belies mad genius at work. In fact, AFG doesn’t even try to act like a proper scientist, plugging the … plugs into open flames and dousing electrical sockets with heavily toxified goo boiled to scalding over Bunsen burners. Sounds come and go, rhythms crust over, and AFG stands back, pleased with the direction his work’s going in.

Wait a sec – I think my imagination’s back! I can see dragons, and spaceships, and rainbows, and ice cream! (*Passes out*)

Never doubt \\NULL|ZØNE//, from which you can purchase these tapes. Editions of fifty, suckas!

Bolt of Void – Live Snakes!
9.12.18 by Ryan Masteller

Look, you’re only going to be disappointed, as I was, when I opened up this Norelco to find a grand total of zero live snakes. There weren’t any dead ones either, like Bolt of Void tried to live up to their promise but failed, not realizing that snakes need air and water and food and stuff like that to live. They can’t live inside a tape case or an envelope. No animal can.

Crushed with disappointment, I popped what was ACTUALLY in the case – a cassette – into my cassette player, ready to just be in a bad mood for the rest of the day. Fortunately, although the tape itself didn’t live up to its name, the band sure did! Like an electric shock of negative energy interacting with dark matter, Bolt of Void’s screeching skronk-fusion blasted out of my speakers with enough energy to power a small city for a few hours. Like Charlotte, North Carolina, or Wilmington, Delaware.

The trio recorded “Live Snakes!” live (duh) at 3 Kings’ “Weird Wednesday: April” in their home base of Denver. They utilize a typical free jazz setup plus more: Ryan Ruehlen plays alto and baritone saxes, plus megaphone and “FX”; Kari Treadwell the bassace, plus “vox”; Nyal Ruehlen (a likely relation to Ryan) knocks about a drum kit, as well as “sampler.”

I don’t live in Denver, but I want to see Bolt of Void live. Seriously, people, the energy – imagine experiencing this in person, let alone the cassette artifact of it (which I’m experiencing today). I’m even almost over my snake disappointment, that’s how much my outlook has shifted.

Still, it’s worth reiterating this disclaimer before you buy one of these tapes directly from the band (which you should): there are NO live snakes contained within, so don’t get your hopes up. Edition of 50.

Chemiefaserwerk – Nuformal
9.10.18 by Ryan Masteller

ShhhhhHHHHHHH!

Be QUIET, everyone!

Listen up: verz, a label specializing in QUIET MUSIC, has dropped a new Chemiefaserwerk tape called “Nuformal,” and you’re going to need to keep it down in order to get anything out of it. So, we could continue screaming at our dogs through these megaphones or we could shut up and pay attention a minute.

ENOUGH! Keep it down, will you?

Once you’ve knocked off all that racket and you’ve got your headphones firmly affixed to your head (I recommend the really massive aviator ones with the quarter-inch jacks), you can enter the world of “Nuformal,” the world of Chemiefaserwerk, aka Christian Schiefner. It is a world of black-and-white photographs (see cover above), where the wind passes and time ages your images to gritty representations, faded and worn but powerful still.

Chemiefaserwerk specializes in haunting our memories, and he continues to do so through every one of his “ghostly pops, crackles, and tones” as they “wander and ooze” across our mental landscape. “Nuformal” is a continuation of that course, every processed sample, every emotional cue a lesson in restraint and patience.

But you have to give it your complete focus to it to get the point of it.

So FOCUS! WILL YOU PLEASE BE QUIET?! There are only seven copies of this tape still available, out of forty, and you need utter concentration to maneuver to the website link and click on it and then buy the darn thing.