masteller

New Batch – Astral Spirits
10.25.17 by Ryan Masteller

*Puff, puff, wheeze, wheeze* That run was killer! I can barely breathe … *gulp, puff* OK … phew … let’s do this… I am not in good shape like Arrington and Ted over there… I see you guys, all buff and junk… *pant* OK, I’m ready.

 

BILLINGTON / SHIPPY / WYCHE – S/T
Somebody scrape me off the wall, because Billington/Shippy/Wyche’s tape blasted out of my speakers and shredded my face. I was unsure what was happening at first – I assumed this release came from renowned British crooner Lord Billington Shippy-Wyche, but I was incorrect in assuming his dulcet voice would emanate from my tape player. Instead we get a guitar-guitar- drums trio, consisting of Mark Shippy (yeah, the U.S. Maple guy), Daniel Wyche, and Ben Baker Billington (yeah, the Quicksails guy). We also get a no-hold’s- barred improvisational set that’s bound to knock your socks (or, ahem, your face) off. The trio goes straight for the jugular and then the carotid, detonating a pipe bomb of serrated guitar and frantic drumming that virtually impossible to withstand. However, to suggest this onslaught is not only gripping but also enjoyable is not as ridiculous or far-fetched as it seems. Quite the contrary, dear chaps, the virtuosity on display is spellbinding in its acceleration, the pedal always to the proverbial metal. (I have a vague idea why I’m thinking in a British accent right now.) Then side B happens, and the spaces of “Norvin’s Fandled Submersible” (also probably the title of a song in Lord Billington Shippy- Wyche’s oeuvre) open up, and the textures and tones – oh, the textures and tones! – become more distinct. Each player is given more exposure to shine on their own, and they circle each other until erupting together in the tape’s ultimate passage. Now it’s time to phone the janitor (I have a janitor for my house) to do something about this mess. I’ll be fine, I’m a Christian.

 

ARRINGTON DE DIONYSO & TED BYRNES – THE BALLOT OR THE BULLET
Much like Billington / Shippy / Wyche, Arrington de Dionyso & Ted Byrnes grind through free improv jazz at peak performance, like athletes at the top of their game, endurance training while the “Record” button is pressed. Unlike Billington / Shippy / Wyche, Dionyso & Byrnes are only TWO people instead of three, and there are tenor and baritone saxophones and bass clarinet smeared all over this tape. (Byrnes plays drums, like Billington, so … same?) Since it’s scientifically proven that it’s harder for two people to do the same amount of work as three, THE BALLOT OR THE BULLET is a greater achievement and should thus be recognized as such. Because, again, science! (I don’t know what’s gotten into me.) Because I’m just kidding, guys! When you give me that look, it’s a joke. Let’s forget about all the comparisons and just let it stand that THE BALLOT OR THE BULLET, with a title like that and roots in a musical tradition rife with protest documents, stands as a massive monument of a middle finger to an America that just can’t get it right. Sorry to get all political here, guys, but c’mon, let’s stand for the anthem, OK? (Again, the look means joke! A joke, incidentally, I shamefully admit I stole from Mike Haley.) BALLOT/BULLET really is a just visceral reaction to the utter flaccidness of governmental power and how the majority of thE country feels about it. Wanna blow as hard as you can into a horn to get it out of your system? Dionyso does. Wanna pound on a drum kit till your fingers bleed and you can transfer your attention from your psychic pain to the physical? Byrnes does. Let’s take a cue from these guys, shall we? Channel that anger into something positive. If we all do that, maybe something good will happen.

 

NAKATANI / KAWABATA / CHOU – PERIGEE
Back to the trio with this one, but the heavy lifting going on here is of the cerebral variety. Whereas the previous two tapes in this batch reeked of athletic effort – the drenched pits and crotches of the players a victorious mark of vigorous physical exertion – ew, c’mon man – you’ve got to get in the three heads of Tatsuya Nakatani (percussion), Makoto Kawabata (guitar and electronics), and Henna Chou (cello and electronics) to experience the full power of “Perigee.” That’s not to say that Nakatani, Kawabata, and Chou each have three heads – that wasn’t clear at all in the previous sentence. Each has only one head, the three heads I referred to are the three heads combined in the compositional effort. It only SEEMS like each has three heads, because there’s the equivalent of three brains in each head, 3x mental processing power. I see how you could get confused. Regardless, “Perigee” unfolds with care, each player adding and subtracting elements with a deliberateness that appends the term scientific” to the experimental nature of these recordings. Because not a second or a sound is wasted – even when free improv hissy fit “Apsque” interrupts the otherwise tranquil process, there’s a control that’s evident. After so much sonic splatter on these other tapes, “Perigee” is a nice palate cleanser.

 

MATTHEW LUX’S COMMUNICATION ARTS QUARTET – CONTRA/FACT
Is “Contra/Fact” the hidden gem of this Astral Spirits batch, or am I imposing a narrative where one doesn’t belong? What constitutes “hidden,” anyway? Is it “hidden” because I simply came to it last, the final tape of four in this magnificent batch? Or is there some other characteristic that makes it a little less obvious than the others? I guess if you held the green j-card splotched with yellow, orange, and red up to certain trees at certain times of the year, it would be camouflaged. Maybe it’s because it begins so differently than the other three tapes here: the dash of Afrobeat and rumba on “Carmisa Sate” had me wondering if Matthew Lux’s Communication Arts Quartet was the second comping of Fela Kuti’s band! That’s a ridiculous thing to wonder, but the four-piece of Mikel Patrick Avery, Ben Lamar Gay, Jayve Montgomery, and Matthew Lux wander through some pretty enticing territory on “Contra/Fact,” from smoky jazz club stages on “C.G.L.W.” to, yes, even more vaped-out experimentalism (“Ninna Nanna”). “Paw Paw” might be my favoritest new jazz tune. “Colonial Gysins” is about as prog as these jazz hounds are going to get. I could keep going, and it doesn’t matter in the end whether this hidden gem is hidden or right out in the open – it’s still a gem, and I can’t get enough of it. Can’t get enough of any of these tapes, really.

 

As usual, these lovely tapes come in batches of 150 from Astral Spirits, and you can totally buy them all right now! And you should! Only problem is that you’re going to want to buy the back catalog as well, so make sure you have enough funds in your bank account before you follow any of this advice.

Diamondstein / Sangam – Lullabies for Broken Spirits
10.16.17 by Ryan Masteller

[Turns away from the audience, motions toward the director]: This is one of those split tapes right, where the one side is the one artist and the other one’s on the other? Yeah, it sounds great, can barely tell the two sides apart. That’s what they call “flow” I guess, right? So you want me to talk about it? I had a bunch of other stuff queued up. No, no, this one’s good, I’ll pop it in. Next break, can I get a water with some lemon? I know we’re back on in a minute – oh, thanks Cheryl, you had it all ready. Fantastic.

[Turns away from imaginary director, faces imaginary audience, which is essentially the front-facing laptop camera]: Hey gang, have I got a treat for you next, one that’s guaranteed to knock the socks right off your feet, but in a very QUIET, very CONTEMPLATIVE sort of way. Got a good grip on those socks now? (You’re really gonna need it!) We’ve got not one but TWO artists on this recording, each of them sharing the real estate, separated only by the direction of the magnetic tape. OR SO IT WOULD SEEM! Actually, it’s mostly that way, but the entirety of the release is sandwiched between collaborative tracks, the gripping “I Wish I Had More to Offer” and the nocturnal “Evenings Fly By.” But don’t be fooled, as Diamondstein and foil Sangam – or is it the other way around? – are perfectly capable each on their own to wield the mighty responsibility of atmosphere and mood, creating for you, dear audience, the perfect soundtrack to your late-night reveries.

[Turns, faces a different direction like there’s another camera over there, spends rest of time NOT looking at front-facing laptop camera]: But what IS the perfect late-night soundtrack? What does it entail? Surely some of you prefer the mournful, longing synthesizer leavened with field recordings of Sangam’s “Knowing Loss,” a passage not unlike Angelo Badalementi’s incidental synthesizer music on the original run of TWIN PEAKS, a damn fine television show if I should say so. But maybe you’re partial to the noir arpeggios of Diamondstein’s lengthy – at eleven and a half minutes! – and beautiful “The Praise Chorus.” Surely these two standouts are enough to sate your desires!

[Eyes close, breathes deeply, raises hand in a “stop” motion]: But no, the tape continues, and its loving embrace extends for its duration, its oddities and excursions illuminate its darker corners so that it at once presents itself as a unified whole. And this is why you must attend to “Lullabies for Broken Spirits” with the utmost care: the deeper you plumb its depths, the more you’re bound to uncover. And isn’t that the point of the adventure anyway? Your time on this planet is too short to not hold close the most profound mysteries you can uncover. Start here, start with “Lullabies for Broken Spirits,” start LIVING.

[Pauses, dramatic effect.]

[Presses stop, eats Cheeto. Is content.]

[Hovers cursor over Doom Trip Bandcamp site, notices only 12 of 100 copies remain, panics for a second, calls 12 friends, hopes to god they all buy a copy, realizes that the 12 friends don’t exist, considers buying them all anyway. GUYS, HURRY, I DON’T KNOW HOW MUCH LONGER I CAN HOLD HIM OFF…SOLD OUT!]

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

Athens, Georgia, is still trying to shake the stink of R.E.M. and Elephant 6, and it’s not doing a very good job of it, because we’re how many years past a breakup of the former and a dissolution of the latter? Nobody should care anymore, but here I am, still talking about it. If somebody, maybe a psychiatrist, were to subject me to a word-association test, maybe in a psychiatrist’s office, and they led with “Athens,” I’d break into an immediate sweat and blurt, “R.E.M.! No, no Elephant 6! Why did you say ‘Athens’?!?” Then they’d stamp “Certified” on my case file like I was in a cartoon or something. \\NULL|ZØNE//, god bless ’em, is out to make sure I get a clean bill of mental health and never have to blurt “R.E.M.” again. The experimental label, run by the ineffable Michael Potter, is putting a different kind of Athens on the map, one that’s weird and eclectic and doesn’t sit still for anything. Probably smack in the middle of the U of GA campus (FUCK YOU BULLDOGS), \\NULL|ZØNE// exists to jam a musical middle finger right in the face every single jock-ass undergrad that strolls past Potter and his seething anger. Well, part of that’s true anyway – I’m doing a bit of projecting, you know, with my hatred of Georgia, and the University of Georgia, and the South, and everybody in the South…

Where’d I go there?

(Full disclosure: some Southerners are OK – I live in the South after all. I like R.E.M., too, and Olivia Tremor Control.)

 

DENDERA BLOODBATH – HUNGRY GHOSTS

I’m doing this one first because I’m cheating. It’s not really part of the batch that came out September 8, having preceded the other two tapes covered here by two weeks. But I live in a world where all three of these tapes arrived in my mailbox at the same time, and by golly they belong together! Verge Bliss (is that any real-er of a name than Dendera Bloodbath???) has crafted this really unusual noise tape where harsh blasts of distortion rub elbows with field recordings of gospel choirs and … well, that’s about it, actually. “Up Above My Head” is the track I’m talking about, the third one, and the recording melds with the power electronics and becomes the exact kind of incantation that will bring unholy ruin to Athens. I kid! Sort of. Bliss normally plays an autoharp, but “Hungry Ghosts” is a head trip of a different sort, lasering all sorts of frequencies through the headphones before coming out the other side a transformed heap of human life. See, HUNGRY GHOSTS is all about the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and somehow Bliss’s mediations on afterlife guidance are pretty helpful on the living side of existence. Not standoffish in the slightest, these sonics grab you and hug you … weirdly … yeah, weirdly, but still, it feels good to not be alone in death. Am I reading into that right? (Edition of 50.)

 

CAREY – OTHER PEOPLE

Proving that wonderful things truly are coming out of places I hate, Carey is Dan Carey Bailey, a composer and musician from Atlanta who… yuck, Atlanta. Sorry. You’ll be happy to note, then, that “Other People” is a forward-thinking folk/jazz masterpiece that could care the fuck less about Williams Street and that guy who does the Adult Swim music. Carey plays all the instruments on “Other People,” save for some cello (which is a nice addition, I must say), and in the process hits a one-man fusion sweet spot that probably should not exist outside of the confines of improvisation. The folk really shines through on “The Beauty in Failure,” a track the Books totally they wish they could get their mitts on to add samples to, while “On Being” is the solo piano joint that belongs on television and film soundtracks – not one soundtrack, but all of them. The rest plays as a musical approximation of famous film scenes, theatrical in its execution but insular and intimate nonetheless. Bailey’s work probably should be seen to be believed, meaning somebody’s gotta put some visuals to these tracks. Who’s on it? (Edition of 50.)

 

PHILIPP BÜCKLE / MICHAEL POTTER – SPLIT

And then of course there’s this one. Philipp Bückle’s sidelong meditation “The Never Got The Message” is yet another stab at cinematic ambient that manages to sink itself deep into the subconscious, burrow under the skin and overwhelm with its restraint. Tones and chords trace unexpected emotional pathways and manage to assert themselves long after they’ve completed, haunting the listener (little old me) from whatever plane of existence they’re really piping in from. Philipp – I’ve got the message. Then there’s Mr. Potter, whose “Garden Portal Almanac” I just totally freaked out over. “End Of Summer Music” is a good place to start as any, don’t you think? Potter hews totally to the ambient shoegaze spectrum, something that’s a nice Kranky counterpoint to “Garden Portal Almanac” and it’s ecstatic prog. Lonesome guitar never sounded so inviting, no matter how distant or alone it wants to be. Summer’s gone, gang, and Potter’s documenting it for us, plaintively, purposefully, running melancholy scales against the backdrop of chilling temperatures and pumpkining beverages. Am I a terrible person for not thinking that’s a bad thing? (The pumpkining – everybody should be OK with the guitar and the temps.) Get your hands on this one especially – the Jcard art is fabulous. (Edition of 75.)

The \\NULL|ZØNE// Bandcamp is where you wanna be to grab these, which is (thankfully) on the internet and not in… Athens.

Endless Chasm – Dweller on the Threshold
10.6.17 by Ryan Masteller

You are NOT going to fuck with me, Endless Chasm! You and I both know that I’m obsessed with TWIN PEAKS, and the only reason I’m reviewing this is the connection of “Dweller on the Threshold” to that show. I mean, that’s not totally true I guess – I can dig your harsh ambient vibes coursing through my headphones. It WAS the entry point though, so it’s me and you and a copy of season 3 that I have to rewatch now once it hits home video formats (available December 5!). You guys watch it too? I’m going to have to slap on a big ol’ SPOILER ALERT right here then, because Endless Chasm is forcing me to indulge the worst impulses of my Twin Peaks fandom (once again) even though I know none of you can respond to me and so this is basically an exercise in frustration. Still, let’s roll with it.

Side A is “White Lodge” (there it is!), and no amount of Giants or Firemen or ????????? is going to provide a satisfactory answer to the nature of the supernatural location. And guess what? That’s OK. I’ve evolved as an ingester of pop culture to the point that I don’t need the answers – my philosophy suggests that the questions are what will drive me to be a better and more complete individual. But that still doesn’t mean I can’t speculate. And Endless Chasm explores the sonic architecture surrounding this this place that is situated on a different plane of existence, much like David Lynch has taken great care to build his scenes around audible cues. Anyone who’s witnessed episode 3.8 understands the great importance of the work of the White Lodge, yet its deliberate and elongated actions call for exactly this type of soundtrackery – compositional fortitude that doesn’t get in its own way.

There’s no “White Lodge” without “Black Lodge,” and although Badalamenti’s shuffly jazz is what has propelled scenes set there in the past, it’s much more terrifyingly appropriate with Endless Chasm’s minor-key drone hovering above the chevron floor. The nature of the Black Lodge has been teased, its origin suggested, but the mystery of the place remains, and the mystery of “Black Lodge” deepens the further into the track we get. Feedback and noise overpower the drone, and I’m one “Gotta light?” from flipping my lid and getting the hell out of here. It’s about now that I notice the distorted (forest?) image on the cover of this tape, and now I’m worried about vortices and convenience stores and garmonbozia when I should really be calling it a night and getting a little shuteye. But that ain’t happening. That ain’t happening with “Dweller on the Threshold” still occupying my attention. It looks like your work here is done, Endless Chasm – I’m a seething mess who can’t shake the feeling of “The Return,” and your tape is enabling my unhealthy obsession. Did you know that I’m a serial theory reader? Wanna hear my favorite? Episodes 3.17 and 3.18 are meant to be watched simultaneously! Holy Jesus Zaireeka Christ! It makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE that way.

Whatever the hell, I don’t know, buy this tape from This Ain’t Heaven Recording Concern, because why wouldn’t you at this point?

Peter Kris – Cargo Road
10.4.17 by Ryan Masteller

Now THIS is how my Fourth of July party should have gone. Released on the holiest of holy days, America’s birthday, “Cargo Road” by THAT Peter Kris, the one we’re contractually obligated as writers to always say is a member of German Army, Q///Q, Germ Class, and Final Cop (god we’re boring as ASSSSSSSS), directs our stimulus-starved attention toward the night sky. But these ain’t your Tennessee/Alabama fireworks – even though you ought to be a big kid before handling them. These internal, emotional cherry bombs don’t blow out in big percussive lightshow spectaculars. Nuh-uh – “Cargo Road” is the equivalent to a time-release cigarette fuse, where the greatest show you’re going to get is the slow burn of the tobacco as it makes its way ever closer to ignition. Peter Kris is a master at filling the silence once the fuse is lit, reflecting the detail of the embers as they burn long after you’ve left the scene.

So you’ve wandered off, almost forgetting about the little cracker that’s gonna freak somebody out in like ten minutes or so, and you lay on your back in the grass next to a bonfire, your eyes trained upward into the darkness, the night sky of your vision filled not with Grand Finales but a hundred thousand tiny sparks drifting in random patterns. You’re surrounded by friends, and everything is new and ahead of you. Peter Kris’s music drifts through your mind, the restrained and effected solo guitar and bass wanderings a meditative starting point for imagining the rest of your life. I mean, this IS on Sonic Meditations after all, so none of these words should surprise you. And as ruminative as these passages are, there’s no reason not to be filled with hope and joy. Just look around you! Surrounded by loved ones. Beaches and bonfires, midnight camaraderie, the Peter Kris Inland Empire way via whatever the hell city or town you call home. Now THAT’S what I’m talking about, America! That’s something I can get behind and believe in.

Our friend Justin Wright aka Expo ’70 pressed 65 of these handsome cassette tapes, so go on ahead and complete that GeAr collection you’re secretly curating. I’m woefully behind, but I see you.

BANG!

Oh shit I forgot about the time-release!