Karris Adams Duo – Nothing Stays Buried (La La La La)

7.1.19 by Ryan Masteller

I don’t know why I’ve been inundated with scary things lately, but Personal Archives has sent me the Karris Adams Duo’s “Nothing Stays Buried (La La La La),” and now I’m all like, should I be afraid of zombies too? I don’t know if they’re quite as scary as ghosts (not as fast), but they look way grosser. Still, I’m not here to beat that dead horse (unless it’s chasing me); instead, I want to focus on the music, and if you’re unfamiliar with Personal Archives (I know you’re not unfamiliar, but bear with me), you should be ready for some wild and woolly (and wiggly!) improv. Here, Reid Karris (prepared guitars, “skatchbox on b2”) and Alexander Adams (drums) build worlds out of sonic tinker toys, creating bizarre and excellent scaffoldings that continue to increase in height and breadth until they’ve filled the studio space that they’re recording in (Hinsdale Underground Bunker Complex, which is a great place to hide from the undead). At least that’s how it’s working in my imagination.

Karris and Adams aren’t as bombastic or in-your-face a duo as Sex Funeral, Personal Archives honcho BBJr and Matthew Crowe’s outfit. But they’re certainly kindred spirits, with Karris’s guitar squiggling all over the rhythmic framework Adams provides. They don’t take themselves too seriously, which highlights their playfulness and creativity – in fact, it sounds like they’re having an amazing time recording together. Just look at some of these jokey track names: “Emerson Karris, Lake Street, and the Palmer House Hilton” (ELP jokes are not easy, and this one works!), “He Won’t Stop Thumping until You Leave Him Alone (For H)” (ew?), “Wiggle a Bit” (gladly!), and “Pop Song 312” (take THAT, R.E.M.!). Don’t you want to listen to those tunes, no matter what they are?

All this just goes to show how finger-on-the-pulse BBJr and Personal Archives is when it comes to live improv. Karris and Adams are a joy to listen to, and probably a joy to behold in a live setting. Why don’t you figure out how to make that happen, how to get off your couch and go check them out? I have no idea where you live, but if you’re like me, you’re probably always up for a road trip.

“C30 lavender shell hand-stamped cassettes, dutifully dubbed in Dubuque. Professionally printed two-sided j-card.” Only 40 available!

New Batch – Unifactor

6.30.19 by Ryan Masteller

Well hey, everybody, thanks for showing up. They say the written word is dying, that it’s on its way out, but I’m here to discount that notion with some old-fashioned text on your screen that you’ll have to read with your eyes and comprehend with your brain. I’m not one to talk into a microphone and make jokes and trigger fart noises for an hour and a half to satisfy your every disgusting whim. I take my job as an investigator into the sonically artistic so seriously that you wouldn’t believe it if I told you how seriously. Trust me – it’s an intense calculation.

So you WILL take my word for it – or words – literally – because you have chosen to read about the tenth batch of tapes from hardcore Cleveland label Unifactor. Don’t misread – Unifactor isn’t releasing hardcore tapes. They – and by they, I mean Jayson Gerycz, purveyor and sonically artistic (hey!) guru behind the label – are simply hardcore, meaning intense and serious, about releasing what they release, and these new ones are no exception. So strap in, friendly neighborhood audience, and listen to my tale of woe and regret in relation to these three missives from the passionate jaws of expression. Or tales of joy, maybe, who knows.

MARILU DONOVAN & TRISTAN KASTEN-KRAUSE – NOWHERE

This is all bowed upright bass and harp. Not kidding. You don’t kid around about that sort of intense and serious minimalism, not while there’s tones to discover. The duo takes their time occupying the space they share, letting the vibrations of the two instruments mingle in the room, in the atmosphere, filling that space, creating more space, expanding the walls of the room, and the ceiling too, and the floor, everything bowing outward along with the sounds their bows are making. It’s like they’re making their own pocket universe here in “Nowhere,” which turns out to be actual nowhere, a swirling vortex of vibrating strings and clouds of rosin dust. It is birthed from the frequencies of the molecules that Donovan and Kasten-Krause are agitating all up in this piece, the friction and force becoming sonically resonant and decipherable by the human ear. Got all that?

MOON RA – mUSICA iN dIFFERENT iNUTILI sERVICES Vol. 1

I’ve covered Marie e le Rose’s work before, as MonoLogue, in fact, right here on Tabs Out. And now she’s back as Moon RA with “mUSICA iN dIFFERENT iNUTILI sERVICES Vol. 1,” a trance- … er, trans-Europe excursion through the influence of “Tangerine Dream, Nono, Kraftwerk, Webern, and other electronic pioneers.” And, like me, Moon RA was transfixed by what she found. Honestly, I could listen to music inspired by all these artists (even “other electronic pioneers”) until you came in the room and ripped the headphones from my cold, dead ears, or even until I realized that I needed food and exercise and sunlight to live and took the headphones off myself for survival purposes, the zones are just that deep. Moon RA’s got the touch, the golden touch, twiddling the golden knobs and teasing out the golden tones from solid gold synthesizers. She turns your mind into a planetarium and puts on a laser light show that slowly and surely builds in intensity until it’s bursting out your eyes as if your eyes were the projector onto the screen of the universe, and you could share that laser light show of wonder and awe with all the people of the world, and everybody would just be like, “What were we fighting about, anyway?” That’s how “mUSICA iN dIFFERENT iNUTILI sERVICES Vol. 1” works – it’s insidious.

ARIAN SHAFIEE – ARABIC VOICE

Arian Shafiee zones to a different vibe, this one light years ahead, behind, beside, in addition to the vibe you’re tripping to in the present tense. So switch over, quick, to opt in to future sounds of “Arabic Voice,” a deconstruction of a cappella Arabic music run through every technological permutation Shafiee could imagine before ICE came for his loop station (not in country legally) and his Garageband license (not valid form of ID). The erstwhile Guerilla Toss geetar slinger discovered the inspiration for this record in the form of the local bodega’s PA emanations and a YouTube playlist pointed out to him by said bodega proprietor, and he sampled and mangled the holy bejeezus out of all that stuff. The result is a processed extraterrestrial head trip of indeterminate origin, an Orange Milk release that somehow slipped through the label’s cracks and ended up on Unifactor. That’s outstanding work if you ask me, and outstanding reporting on it, if you also ask me.

Vague Voices – Гробник

6.13.19 by Ryan Masteller

Oh, I was so SCARED there for a minute! The text on this tape by Vague Voices looked like black metal text, and just braced myself for the onslaught for no apparent reason. So despite the fact that black metal certainly informed the work of the duo (Stefan Bachvarov and Angel Simitchiev), there isn’t any yelling or those infernal blast beats that get the cat all agitated so that he goes under the couch and doesn’t come out until I turn off the black metal.

Actually, I like black metal, and that’s a game the cat and I play.

I don’t have a cat.

All honesty aside, “Гробник” is still a creepy ride, just a slow and synthy one down the demonic passageways of dangerous video games. In fact, “Гробник” was commissioned for “Sofia Game Night 2018 – an even dedicated to gaming culture.” Bachvarov and Simitchiev were so taken by the result that they expanded their collaboration and dropped this nightmare of an atmospheric drone tape, synthesizers soundtracking horrifying happenings deep in the woods late at night. Or maybe it’s an alternative soundtrack to “Doom.” What do I know? What I DO know is that “Гробник” is “an old Bulgarian word meanings an elderly person approaching their death, a mythical vampire-like creature, or а grave-digger.” So probably more along the lines of the forest horror.

These ten pieces evoke nefarious dread at every moment, the level of which depends on how vile the deeds are that happen during the track. So “Гробник” plays like an anthology film, a “Black Mirror”/“Twilight Zone”/Brothers Grimm homage, but with super cool synth gear. I would suggest picking one up from Amek Collective, but they’ve sold out their run of 77 already. Looks like it’s to depths of Discogs with you, doomed pilgrim!

Burnt Probe – Corresponding Exits

6.4.19 by Ryan Masteller

I can’t keep UP with this! German Army is, like, the most prolific experimental artistic force out there, even more prolific than Merzbow probably (*Citation needed), and the sheer volume of releases is almost impossible to pin down. And just when I think I’m out, that I have time for a breather, there’s a new package at my door, a delivery of like five new things they’ve put out over the past few months. I swear to god, if the GeAr dudes were anything other than supremely awesome all the time, I wouldn’t write about them so much. I guess we’re all lucky that they’re supremely awesome.

Look at me, complaining about a wonderful gift. SMDH (Shaking Merzbow’s Damn Head).

I mean, this isn’t even a GeAr joint, although Peter Kris is fully onboard. He’s joined by Adam Bellhouse as Burnt Probe, and the two of them get to shredding every electronic component in front of them in no time flat. Scorching the earth with their industrial-bordering-on-techno rhythms and scored and blackened source material, the duo barrels through nine jacked-up, postapocalyptic tracks, most of which, surprisingly, should serve to get your booty moving in some sort of capacity. But it’s like the “Terminator” future out there, all dystopian and junk, and the psychological damage wrought by the sonic terrorism matches the carnage of our future.

Or, as a wise Black Lodge denizen once asked, “Is it future, or is it past?”

Maybe it’s present. Oh crap!

I’m going down in the fallout shelter. I suggest you get to yours. Thanks, Burnt Probe, for ruining my picnic.

Buy one of these beauts from Madriguera.

Various Artists – The Great Krell Machine, Volume One

5.1.19 by Ryan Masteller

I read this book, you guys. At least I think I did. Actually wait – maybe I didn’t, but that cover certainly looks familiar. I’m certainly no stranger to 1960s sci-fi, and the cover of “The Great Krell Machine, Volume One” looks like something I DEFINITELY would have read at some point. I’m just drawn to that look, because you know just what kind of vibe is going to be going on within those pages. It’s comforting and exciting at the same time, and there’s that retrofuturistic nostalgia factor that is simply unignorable. Actually, my interest is piqued – I’m going to start reading this book right now.

What the … This isn’t a book! It’s a cassette tape. Well I’ll be darned … It looks amazing. If it sounds half as good as it looks, we’ll be in really good shape. And what’s this? It’s a Flag Day Recordings compilation? That makes it even BETTER. I don’t know about you, but the raft of quality releases that Flag Day has dropped rivals the output of Isaac Asimov. OK, maybe that’s too far. But we’re in good hands, trust me!

To “The Great Krell Machine”: the tape takes its name from the 1956 film “Forbidden Planet,” which I’ll not delve too deeply into here, because you can look it up. Basically, it is a machine of immense power created by the extinct Krell race discovered by spacecraft crash survivor Dr. Morbius on the titular planet. You can imagine, especially in 1956, its enormity, its vast arrays of light, its analog ambience. It was a time not long before the golden age of Sputniks and space odysseys, when the tactility of control rooms and the blinking lights of consoles and displays captured the imaginations of every human being.

“The Great Krell Machine, Volume One” takes us right back to that time, its nine contributors tapping in fully to the hands-on science of early discovery. They twiddle knobs and flip switches, and it all sounds like someone set up a microphone in a physics laboratory, capturing its ambience. Sure, there are bleeps and bloops, but that’s all part of the immersive experience, getting really deep into the vibe of new scientific frontiers and pristine utopian fantasies. It’s an environment in which I’d like to spend a whole heckuva lot of time.

This cassette came out in an edition of 70 for last year’s Cassette Store Day. Still available!

Tracklist:

Francisco Meirino
Geoff Wilt
PraxisCat
Benjamin Mauch
Guillermo Pizarro
Walker Farrell
Death Lessons
cloning
Todd Barton

Nursalim Yadi Anugerah – Selected Pieces from HNNUNG

4.29.19 by Ryan Masteller

I like that we don’t have to guess with Hasana Editions, the tape label based in Bandung, Indonesia. It’s all right out there, right on the cover. The big, underlined title. The artist name. The location of origin, the method of performance, the style of music, the runtime, and even the channel (Stereophonic) are all represented. If I was doing this for Cassette Gods, I wouldn’t even have to search for or squint at how long the tape is to put it in the header like we do there – C52. It’s like a dream.

The presentation itself is beautiful, and the “Selected Pieces from HNNUNG” are majestic and expressive. Nursalim Yadi Anugerah is a composer based in Pontianak, Indonesia (he’s not a member of Pontiak, which I had to do a double take to figure out), and he’s “inspired by the cosmology, sonology, and culture of indigenous people of Borneo.” In fact, look – I’m not going to be able to paraphrase this with any grace, so let me just stumble through a direct quotation: “Adapted from Kayaan people oral literature Takna’ Lawe’, ‘HNNUNG’ is a chamber opera that amplifies the cosmic dramaturgy of Kayaan culture – in which the narrative of matriarchy is essential.”

I’m an outsider experiencing these pieces; I cannot relate to them on a cultural level or grasp their nuance or even interpret the intended audience response. I CAN relate to them on a musical level, and finding myself tossed about on the waves of “HNNUNG” is pretty exhilarating, intoxicating even, despite my remove from understanding. These nine pieces, selected, as the title suggests, from Anugerah’s larger opera, were “performed by Balaan Tumaan Ensemble and Kerubim Choir using various instruments ranging from kaldii’ and sape’ to tenor saxophone and contrabass.” Sometimes it sounds like some sort of experimental improv ensemble racing through a live set, but then the choir comes in and blows up any proper thoughts I may have been forming about it. Other times the eastern compositional flourishes are a welcome reminder that I’m on uneven footing, and that I should prepare to be surprised.

And I almost constantly am! I have no idea what “HNNUNG” means (all I picture is a sword flying end over end in the air until it embeds itself in a tree trunk with a hearty “hnnung” sound), so I am tabula rasa in this environment. “Selected Pieces from HNNUNG” etches itself across my surface. The drama and the tension coax new feelings, enabling mental connections heretofore unconnected. I am drawn further and further in.

Can I get out? Sure, I just press stop. I have to go get lunch anyway.

“Numbered edition of 100. Hand-stamped pro-dubbed C52 NAC cassette tape with recto/verso printed golden card. … Made and duped in USA. Printed in Indonesia.” Thanks again, Hasana Editions, for doing my work for me!

Chester Hawkins – Metabolism Quartet [for Witold Lutosławski] / Nocturne for Poppy

4.18.19 by Ryan Masteller

Imagine I told you I was gonna slice up your string quartet. What would you do about it? Would you be scared? Would you call the police? Imagine me chuckling at your misunderstanding and dismay. “No, no, not literally, like with a knife. With a tape editing machine!” The relief you’d feel would be palpable. I can feel it even now, and it’s theoretical.

Chester Hawkins performed “improvised autopsies” of Lutosławski’s string quartet work: “‘The Metabolism Quartet’ is a mixture of two live performances in Washington DC: one recorded in isolation at Intangible Arts’ studio (4th September 2018) and one in public at Rhizome community arts space (8th September 2018).” He hooked up “three granular synth engines and one tape-edit/concrète emulator” and went to town on the Polish composer. The result is a fascinating mashup of classical and electroacoustic manipulation, which ends up pretty firmly in modern classical territory by the end of everything. Witold Lutosławski is probably beaming down from his perch on a heavenly cloud, having traded in his electric guitar for an angel harp.

Did I say electric guitar? I meant, uh, all the other non-rock instruments he almost certainly played.

Hawkins adds guitar, though. Live lapsteel. Plus he’s added field recordings. I’m not familiar with Lutosławski’s work, but Hawkins is doing some pretty good work here. He may – and this is complete conjecture – be … improving it? (Friend of Tabs Out Scott Scholz is probably rolling over in his grave as he reads this, even though he’s alive.) Because “Metabolism Quartet” is awesome, a friskily tense revue that manipulates the original quartet’s material till it’s a menacing slab of vibrating steel, a gothic reinterpretation that ratchets up the suspense and fills your mind with panic. It’s a 30-minute wander through a haunted house, where a disembodied ensemble soundtracks your every move. That’s an unnerving proposition.

Oh shoot, and there’s another side to this tape? “Nocturne for Poppy”? Well, I’ll be getting right down to that thing in just a sec. Just remember: if anybody asks, like the cops or whatever, I had nothing to do with any string quartets that have, eh, gone missing, or, um, anything like that. Seriously. I’ve been at home all week.

Edition of 50 available from Zeromoon and Intangible Arts.

Skyminds – s/t

4.16.19 by Ryan Masteller

This is truly the only response one can have when listening to Skyminds’ self-titled tape on Auasca:

I AM NOT KIDDING.

But what do you expect from a Michael Henning/Sean Conrad joint … or should I say a Selaroda/Channelers (etc.) joint?

(Uh huh. Now you get it.)

I am always ready for the synthesizers with these two, the ones that sound like that “mind blown” gif up there looks: supernovas cascading energy outward but also occurring within your mind. But you can never be sure what else these cats are getting up to, what other avenues they’re sauntering down and testing. Happily, with their new self-titled tape, they’re feeling extra frisky, pulling out all kinds of acoustic instruments and adding them to their homespun trippy-ness for passages of mega-Floyd-y goodness. The shift from synth drone to psych folk and back makes for nice changes of pace throughout the album, and just begs – BEGS – for repeat listens to tease everything out.

Conrad is the proprietor of Inner Islands, the most consistently peaced-out new age tape label out there, one that focuses on the spiritual and mental journey and what that sounds like. Henning as Selaroda has released music on Inner Islands. Skyminds thus is a powerful narcotic, with Conrad’s powers complementing Henning’s, and vice versa. The compositions deliver on the duo’s zones-for-days ways, calming the mind and guiding the soul, acting as a sort of vision quest through misty pastel atmospheres and desert-wilderness vastness. Night sky’s huge out here, man – turn your attention to it.

Skyminds is available from Auasca in an edition of 100, pro-dubbed, on blue cassettes.

Autophonia – nolite te bastardes carborundorum

4.15.19 by Ryan Masteller

When drones (the musical ones, not the remote-controlled helicopters) come to you, they often come as they are: serene, scenic, deferential, polite, gentle, constant, rich. You don’t have to guess with a drone. You don’t fool around with sound sources or intent – you just let that drone wash over you and release the feelings that it’s supposed to release. A good drone moves effortlessly, without any friction tugging at its progress.

I once believed these things fully, but I’m not sure I do anymore.

Autophonia’s drones are incredibly complex, acoustically derived, and emotionally resonant. The trio, “consisting of Jennifer Slezak (mandolin and violin), Jen Powers (hammer dulcimer), and Stephanie Dean (accordion),” improvised these five tracks – improvised them! – as if the sounds had been living within their bodies all their lives. The moment these three performers entered the studio together, the sounds, like spirits, exited their bodies through their instruments, only to be captured by the recording engineer through the dark magic of the studio switchboard. From there they were transferred to cassette tape, from which audio emanates that almost assuredly assumes corporeal form as soon as the encoded material traverses the tape head. Surely the music hear lives and breathes in some capacity long after the moment it’s heard.

These are no mere drones – they shift perceptibly at the players’ command, taking on shapes and textures that fit more comfortably into the nooks and crannies between post-rock bombasts. But the absence of the one doesn’t define the other – the gentle ruminations of “nolite te bastardes carborundorum” defines itself, “a document of a live performance” – an organic unfolding – “not a studio creation.” And although “nolite te bastardes carborundorum” does indeed translate to the very post-rocky “do not let the bastards grind you down,” it holds on to that hopeful sentiment that there’s a space beyond the drudgery and violence for solace and rest. Now THAT I believe – and once you hear how Slezak, Powers, and Dean deftly and discreetly join forces before repurposing a seeming delicateness into real emotional power, you’ll believe it too.

Available now from Scioto Records.

Arrowounds – Book of Endangered Species

4.12.19 by Ryan Masteller

Recycling is good. It’s good for Earth. It’s good for the environment. It makes you feel good doing it, because it makes you feel like you’re a part of something bigger than yourself. Histamine Tapes is a paragon of the waste-not/want-not philosophy, regularly repurposing old tapes for their new releases. For Arrowounds’ “Book of Endangered Species,” the label home-dubbed some reclaimed 90-minute cassettes, mine in particular being an old Maxell XL II-S, totally taking me back to middle and high school, when I made tapes of as much of my friends’ record collections as possible to listen to on the bus or in my car.

Taking me nowhere, though, is the sticker on the B-side, which reads “cont. Michelle Shocked + K.D. Lang Shadowland.” Now there’s two artists I never found myself drawn to.

I am much more drawn to what Ryan Chamberlain’s Arrowounds project’s got going for it. On “Book of Endangered Species” he aligns with another powerful Ryan – me – in pointing a bony, gnarled, accusatory finger at “pollution, greed, neglect, and a denial of science by those in power” as the culprits of “the continuing destruction of our natural world.” I am drawn to the homespun charm of these seven ambient, electronic tracks, their lo-fi atmospheres at once charming yet challenging. They operate in stark contrast to sounds of titanic industry or rampant capitalism, which I imagine sound something like a mix between computer bleeps and wet farts. But the natural world beckons with static and flow, with water, wind, and air, with harmony among its constituent parts. Chamberlain offers us the sonic equivalent of that, the alternative to techno-future oblivion.

Each copy of this edition of 30 is different. Only five left!