masteller

Neuringer / Dulberger / Masri – Dromedaries
3.23.18 by Ryan Masteller

I rode this dromedary into the ground. It’s not like I wanted to, but I didn’t have any choice. As I fled across the Sahara – I’m a wanted man in Eritrea, don’t ask – I marveled at the dexterity of the animal across the dunes, the endurance it exhibited as we placed miles between us and the authorities surely baffled at my sudden disappearance. I had to rendezvous with my handler in Tripoli before hopping on a plane, and I needed to make haste. I had a new best friend.

Keir Neuringer, Shayna Dulberger, and Julius Masri totally get it, totally get my situation. Maybe they’ve been there before, I can’t be sure, but their brand of far-out, twisted jazz, at times a torrent of stimuli, at others a restrained meditation, pretty much perfectly soundtracked my flight across the desert. “Dromedaries,” the homage to my “getaway car,” as it were, begins with the all-out marathon “Passage to the Spine,” which ratchets up the same tension I felt as we initially whipped along under the blistering Saharan sun. From there the tape ebbs and flows, marking the days with ragged intensity and the nights with dull paranoia, with nothing but my one-humped, even-toed ungulate for company. I grew to love that dromedary – he saved my life. And cuddled me by campfires during the cold desert night.

I rode this dromedary into the ground, but then I turned him over to an old friend at the other end, a previous contact, a Moroccan art dealer who I knew would take care of the old fella. I’ll never forget him.

I turned over my copy of “Dromedaries” as well – I figured one of the higher-ups could make some sense of it, decipher the code, get more out of it beyond the “listening” “pleasure” that I did. You can play amateur sleuth yourself if you want – 100 copies of it exist over at Already Dead Tapes.

Mis+ress – self-titled
3.21.18 by Ryan Masteller

I stuffed a towel in the drain of my kitchen sink, turned on the faucet, and lay down flat on the tile floor. Mis+ress’s self-titled tape for Somewhere Cold Records piped in from the other room. I remained there until my entire house filled up with water, and I was immersed in it, floating gently via some mystery current. Turns out the current was the flow of the water as it emptied through my open front door, where my wife was standing, incredulous. My house was ruined. My wife was pissed.

I’d also ruined my Mis+ress tape in the process.

You may be wondering why I’d take such stupid and expensive measures to listen to a cassette tape, but we writers for Tabs Out have a code: Let the sounds that emanate forth guide your actions in preparing for the maximum possible effect. I’m paraphrasing, but Article 16, Section 111.B.61 of the Tabs Out Handbook is pretty clear about following your gut on this tape-listening stuff. With Mis+ress, there was nothing I could do but immerse myself under water, what with the gorgeous ambient guitar, the fullness of the effected tones, and the sheer tranquility of even compositions. A physical reaction of sheer bliss coursed through my bloodstream while listening, and I had to get all amniotic in response. My house just happened to be a casualty.

There are those of you who are probably wondering why I didn’t just relax on a couch, or if I really had to be immersed in water, why couldn’t I have done it in the bathtub? I would answer that if you’re asking that question, then you just don’t understand.

Mis+ress is Brian Wenckebach “of Brooklyn shoegaze darlings Elika and experimental electronica outfit Thee Koukouvaya. He’s worked with a number of established artists and labels including Showtime Television Networks, Polyvinyl Records, Ulrich Schnauss, Asobi Seksu, Noveller, Thisquietarmy, and Nadja. This album was recorded with an electric guitar and four effects pedals in his sister-in-law’s childhood bedroom in Toms River, New Jersey.”

The self-titled tape comes in an edition of 50 from Somewhere Cold Records, and you should buy the tape, because the digital version costs $1,000 (I’m serious)! … I accidentally bought the digital version, which sucks because I have a lot of damage to repair here. ☹

Q///Q – Serene Answer
3.19.18 by Ryan Masteller

Look at my hand. It’s steady, unmoving, no shake to it, no tremor. There’s a calmness within me, not to mention a hereditary predisposition to stillness, that allows me an uncanny amount of control over my bodily functions, minimizing involuntary action. As such, I can do a lot of things most other people can’t: build tiny and intricate model ships in bottles, hit bullseye after bullseye at the archery range, portray human statues at outdoor events, win Jenga championships. I’m often complimented on this ability.

Nah, I’m only kidding. You should’ve seen me a half hour ago before I had my first cup of coffee. I was a quivering mess.

Q///Q, though, doesn’t need coffee, doesn’t need anything really to hit that Zen zone. Peter Kris (German Army, Germ Class, Final Cop) and Quinn Brayton (New Collapse, Centimeters) are steely eyed gunslingers marching up the dusty main thoroughfare of a frontier town, and no one has the cojones to approach them. No one needs to be afraid either, because instead of guns (and yes, I listen to NOISE), these lawmen are toting synthesizers and drum machines. I guess most people simply become awestruck when faced with unflinching purpose.

As might be expected of a German Army offshoot, Q///Q traffics in sparse, woozy dub and slow-mo industrial clash. “Serene Answer” seems like it’s happening under water, or under Jell-O, and it’s OK that this dank glob of eerie ooze has engulfed you. You just have to relax and let the translucent jams happen. It feels pretty good, actually – maybe not cuddly or cozy, but certainly amniotic. Maybe that’s why everything’s so calm and even right now – we’re all in some jellified stasis.

According to the Baked Tapes Bandcamp, “Serene Answer comes in an “edition of 60 azure c32s in clear Norelcos with full color art.” Yeah, I believe that.

Nick Hoffman – Salamander
3.13.18 by Ryan Masteller

I live in Florida, so it’s almost a constant daily occurrence to find insects swarming around my ears. You’ll have to forgive me then if, when I strap on my headphones and press play on Nick Hoffman’s “Salamander” cassette, I start flailing my arms about me as if I was being attacked from all sides by tiny biting menaces. I mean, I do have delicious blood, so I don’t blame them. But this sound, it doesn’t come from the beating of tiny wings, but rather Nick Hoffman’s “Salamander” itself. What the hell?…

The A-side, or “head,” of this “Salamander,” another creature we have in abundance here, was “synthesized using custom generative software” – so the buzzing finds its source in the bowels of a computer! Still, this digital spring issues sounds that feel alive, organic, imbued with strange patterns and textures. On the “tail” side, Hoffman switches over to “electric fan motors and metallic objects,” still crackling with unusual life and flitting just as mischievously as the “synthesized” compositions on side A. I sit engrossed, headphones affixed, an amateur sound entomologist, or herpetologist – what am I focusing on again? – studying my subject to reveal its mysteries.

Which somehow relate to Kepler’s great icosahedron, lovingly gracing the pearlescent stock cover. I have no idea how. Do bugs swarm in a great icosahedral configuration? Do salamanders have polyhedron markings on their skin? Nature is full of mysteries. I encourage you to dig into this one from Notice Recordings, pro duped on chrome plus tape stock, edition of 100.

Dere Moans – Doom Royale
3.9.18 by Ryan Masteller

I’m going to be honest with you guys – if I wanted a “blistering torrent of early 2000s nü-metal/death metal samples juxtaposed with 80s/90s pop,” I could’ve just stuck my head in an industrial-sized blender. Because I actually don’t want it. Never did. I could get the exact same effect, probably, from doing the blender thing. Sure, I had nü-metal streak, I went to public high school, but man, that is one segment (now purged) of my record collection that I never want to go back to.

Still, Dere Moans… you intrigue me, you whippersnapper, you. What does the answer to the question (more an exclamation) “You only listen to ONE heavy metal song at a time?” sound like? (By the way, thanks for that great perspective, Houdini Mansions, I wish I’da thunk it.) I have no idea, and as terrible an idea as finding out might be … let’s frickin’ find out! The Minnesota producer, fortunately, doesn’t follow the lead of a project like Splice Girls, where the samples are really obvious and the result aligns more with pastiche (and I enjoyed “Spliceworld,” don’t get me wrong). Nope, on “Doom Royale,” I can’t pinpoint a single song. This realization – that I wasn’t THAT deep into the macho nü-metal quagmire – ends up doing more for my sense of self-worth than I had any right to expect from Dere Moans so… bravo, sir?

The repurposed metal samples clang and bash against the insides of speakers like electrons with roid rage, revving their motors and spinning their wheels in the sand until smoke begins to pour out of the engine block. And just to throw another metaphorical log into the stew, the snippets glitch out like Max Headroom in paroxysms of wordless Tourette’s. You guys remember Max Headroom? God, I’m old. But I had you at “glitch” and “wordless Tourette’s,” didn’t I?

So what DOES it sound like? Noise? …Sort of. Industrial? …Maybe. “Digital hardcore”? …Um. Nü-metal? …Oh, guys, this is so hard. It’s certainly nothing if not a brain scrambler. Give it a spin and buy a copy if you like it. Only 20 available from Bad Cake Records…