Jordan Anderson – Hand of Fear

3.22.19 by Ryan Masteller

I can’t even leave the house. I’ve been totally neutralized as competent force within society, unable to contribute anymore in any meaningful way. It’s this FEAR that’s got me, this TERROR that something bad’s going to happen to me as soon as I step out into the world. They say it’s just paranoia, but I’m not one to throw that kind of caution to the wind. Trust me, I have an unhealthy obsession with safety – I basically need an inner tube in the bathtub so I don’t accidentally fall asleep and slip under the water. I also drink a pot of coffee before baths. (I also take baths, not showers.)

I MIGHT be afraid of Jordan Anderson. He seems scary, because he has a tape of electronic music out called “Hand of Fear,” and I’m not sure I can handle it in the advanced state of perceptive decay I currently find myself in. But I don’t have to leave the house to listen to tapes, and I can email what I write instead of trudge it down to the mailbox where people who want to hurt me can see me. There’s also a photo of a car driving very fast on the j-card, and there’s just no way I can imagine putting myself in a situation like that. So I’m extra frightened.

But … I’m soothed. (I’m as surprised as the rest of you – I thought I’d be up all night because I wouldn’t be able to begin to sleep without the lights on.) In the end I’m blanketed like a baby by the electronic pixelations dreamed up by Jordan Anderson in what could only be described as a fit of kindness. Because how can “Hand of Fear” creep down your spine with cold, bony fingers, chilling your very soul, when its patches and tones are so warm and inviting? It’s like the idea of a “Hand of Fear” is something that Anderson wants to rebel against, to push back from. But we’re still steeped in tension, yessir – that’s what gives the tape its edge, its enduring sense that everything is happening at once, too fast, and it’s all impossible to stop.

Maybe I’m just a sucker for the fragmented IDM along the lines of Aphex Twin or Squarepusher, artists I used to listen to during the times of my life I could walk out the front door. “Hand of Fear” “grips” (pun definitely intended!) me similarly, taking off down fractured pathways of mangled digital percussion, pushing the limits of composition within the confines of BPM and emerging in complete tonal oases where the only thing to do is … emerge along with “Hand of Fear.” Jordan Anderson is a counterbalance to the madness, a smoothly flowing conduit of kinetic energy for machines with lots of ball bearings for maximum frictionlessness. Or something like that. I’m still not going outside.

Only 20 of these available from Outward Records, so act fast! Comes with a sticker and buttons. Hooray!

Aisuru – Lonely Psalms

3.21.19 by Ryan Masteller

Aisuru, no!

Aisuru died and went to heaven. That’s the only thing that explains it. I mean, “Lonely Psalms,” am I right? Tis like the singin’ of the angels themselves. In fact, that one time I fell asleep in my breakfast cereal (I’m a heavy sleeper, and a breakfast enthusiast) and couldn’t breathe past the milk (skim), I actually left my body and approached the light and ascended to the clouds and heard the heavenly host, a great mass of voices resolving its chord progression in sheer power so gentle that worlds were created and destroyed as I observed. Such is the power of the almighty sustained tone.

The delicacy of an Aisuru track could also do these things if given the amplification, which is why I think Aisuru is either dead and an angel or in hiding in a cathedral. (Aisuru’s not even missing and is in Austin, Texas? Never would’ve guessed.) I’m going to guess a cathedral, because I have a tape recorded by Aisuru whose contents made me write all this dumb stuff about angels and the afterlife. You give me this gorgeous ambient stuff and I immediately take off into flights of fancy, imagination working wicked overtime.

And this ambient stuff is truly gorgeous – these eight tracks don’t disappoint in any way. And they don’t overstay their welcome, as some long tapes tend to do – no, most are short, less than three, four minutes, even though there’s an eleven-minuter in there. So you’ll still have time to go about your day after listening, time to go to the grocery store or the laundromat or to call an ambulance to get blacked-out me revived from my cereal mishap. In fact, of those scenarios, I encourage the latter.

As is Histamine Tapes’s wont, these babies are recycled: the j-cards were hand-cut from a book on ancient architecture, and the cassettes were repurposed and dubbed over – mine came on a “Christmas on the Border” tape. Cool! Edition of thirty.

Seth Cooke – Weigh the Word

3.12.19 by Ryan Masteller

That was a great Bible study – I’m really glad we were all able to meet and really dive into the Word and pray with each other. I don’t know what I’d do without my small group – I really feel like I can open up to them about all the things I’m going through, all the issues at work, all the financial strains I’m shouldering from putting two kids through private school, all the marital stressors that pop up here and there. But mostly we work through these things by reading the Bible, consulting God’s Word for holy answers. And it works for guiding us through these troubled times, too – some social ills are so clearly condemned that we can help guide those who can’t understand that toward the path of righteousness. The Bible is Truth. God is Love. GOD IS SO GOOD.

Oh, what’s this? “S. Cooke teaching tape,” eh, “Weigh the Word”? Don’t mind if I do, thanks – I’m on a pretty good spiritual high right now that I could use some “Personal Ministry” guidance through the “Pathways in the Prophetic.” Just have to press Play…

Oh God! Jesus! Heavenly Father in Heaven, hallowed be thy name, and help me! What are these words emanating from this tape, and these sounds? Are they a test, O Lord? Are they a sign of the end times – is the Rapture upon us? This is SO not a “Personal Ministry” tape, it sounds instead like the unholy gibberish and warped physics of the demonic plane! I’m terrified, here comes a spiritual crisis… These voices mock me, they make sense to themselves but not to me. Now would be a good time to allow me to interpret these tongues, Lord! Maybe I’ll check InfoWars to see if they have anything on this S. Cooke …

Jackpot! InfoWars linked me to this great interview with We Need No Swords (sounds like a lefty peacenik organization if you ask me), and you can truly get a glimpse into the process this Cooke guy (S. stands for “Seth”), but you’re going to have to scroll pretty far down to do it. Turns out he grew up in a Christian environment, and he got his hands on some tapes his dad had put together NOT for artistic abuse, and there’s some text-to-speech programming involved (whatever that is), and Cooke doesn’t even believe in God even though he can recite Bible verses! I simply cannot fathom it – it all reeks of blasphemy. It even SOUNDS like blasphemy, all these warped readings, sometimes in unfathomable languages, interspersed with what sounds like a VHS tape getting eaten alive. Hymns become swarms of bees! I don’t even know anymore.

You heathens are gonna love this, but I’m going burn it along with some Eminem and Jerky Boys CDs… Edition of 77 from Satan’s buddy Cooke himself.

Patrick Shiroshi and Arturo Ibarra – LA Blues

3.11.19 by Ryan Masteller

When I first heard that Patrick Shiroshi and Arturo Ibarra were going to mash together my two favorite songs by The Doors – “LA Woman” and “Roadhouse Blues” – I couldn’t believe my luck: instead of having to listen to TWO songs, I’d get a single tune with all the best parts of each. I wouldn’t have to wait for one track to end for the other to begin.

Imagine my surprise, then, when “LA Blues” began to play and it wasn’t even REMOTELY what I thought it was going to be. However, instead of giving in to the brief flare of white hot rage that passed like an energy cloud across my consciousness, my humors quickly abated as if they were hit by a sudden cold front as I decided to give this a chance, regardless of how easily my foolish and completely misguided expectations had been dashed. The urge to chuck my cassette deck out of the second-floor window disappeared before I had the chance to yank it out of the wall.

That’s not to say the music I was hearing wasn’t white hot. “Loosely inspired by the forms of Japanese guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi,” “LA Blues” from the get-go rends physical space like a swiftly fissioning star, finding alto saxophonist Shiroshi and guitarist Ibarra swirling about each other like primordial starstuff, their notes atoms trying to form bonds at velocities approaching light speed. Dangerous, dangerous stuff, and something you don’t want to get too close to if you find such things disturbing! Tracks 1 and 4, “Projection 8” and “Projection 58,” respectively, are “‘mass projections,’ marked by bombast, intensity, and a total disregard for anything approaching conventional melody or structure.” The Doors, or the idea of listening to them at this specific time, turned into Huxley’s actual “Doors of Perception” and flung themselves wide to welcome me into cosmic embrace of chaotic functionality.

These performances masquerading as neutron bombs sandwich “Projection 14” and “Projection 3,” in which Shiroshi and Ibarra’s considered interplay is more readily apparent. But neither is a break or a reprieve, just a slower eruption of plasmic materials. The duo’s live takes are physical workouts, as if the players’ are lifting weights with their lips and fingers or running a marathon with their lips and fingers. Regardless, they probably have to sit down after a while to recuperate, let their lips and fingers slowly regain feeling again after all that energy expulsion. Not unlike Ray Manzarek after “The End.”

Edition of 100 from Eh?/Public Eyesore. Not a lot left…

Asher Graieg-Morrison – Hereditatem Pt. II

3.5.19 by Ryan Masteller

“The ‘Hereditatem’ series is a reflection on the physical and immaterial influences of a country upon a person,” which I was going to totally deep-dive into until I realized that Asher Graieg-Morrison is from Sydney, Australia, and not the United States like me. But it can’t be all that different – Australia’s got some pretty shady history, and we’re dealing the hell with ours. So maybe let’s call it an exploration of the entirety of the Global North and its subdivisions (countries) and their influence on their own populations. Yeah, let’s view it through that lens.

There’s nothing like cold-ass instrumental (for the most part) post-rock to illuminate the utter wrongness of political machinations. Compositions weigh heavy on their composers’ hearts, which in turn burden equally frustrated listeners with a moral imperative to act: you have received your marching orders, now go. Certainly this emanates more from the GY!BE camp than anywhere else, but that’s the rap that post-rock gets, fairly or not, and Asher Graieg-Morrison treats that rap like a birthright. This isn’t to say that heavy-handedness is unnecessary or even unpleasant. Quite the opposite – we all need a good swift kick in the pants every once in a while, and now’s as good a time as any.

“Hereditatem Pt. II” shares many similarities with some of the electronic-tinged post-rock of mid-aughts netlabels, most specifically Lost Children, a favorite of mine back in the day. Sweeping instrumentals, each with its own manifesto of sorts, fill the tape, such as this for opening track “Quick!”: “Everything is so QUICK! Speed, agility, wealth. Things to accomplish. Binge-resting, bargain-hunting.” One can almost TASTE the cynicism leavening these thoughts, cynicism that is not misplaced. Then there’s this missive, which I almost mistook for a funny Tabs Out tweet for a second, at least until I got about halfway through it: “Why do we make BROKEN/SYSTEMS? Please limit yourself. Be subject to the other. Go without. Create systems that bring life.”

Not without good reason do these tracks follow a melancholy path, with trip-hop/shoegaze rhythms undercutting the dense sheets of synthesizer and/or guitar feedback (depending on what the heck Graieg-Morrison is doing in that studio of his). Everything serves to drench the tunes in maximum dismay, and we are made better by being called out ourselves to start somewhere – be aware of our surroundings, maybe? Treat each other a little nicer? Yep, that’s a GREAT place to start.

“Hereditatem Pt. II” is available now – RIGHT NOW – from Flag Day Recordings.

Death Treat Records – Greatest Shits

3.4.19 by Ryan Masteller

What do you get when a bunch of patch cable tanglers and knob twiddlers decide to play in the death metal sandbox? Death Treat’s “Greatest Shits” compilation, of course! This unholy roster was cobbled together from the remains of a midnight Black Mass, its assorted lineup featuring luminaries like Black Fungus, Venereal Equinox, and Krummholz … which are actually pseudonyms (duh) of a bunch of Field Hymns–adjacent nerds. So basically not born of a Black Mass, but maybe a D&D session gone horribly awry.

How do I know this? Yves Malone told everybody. I mean, uh, CARNIWHORE told everybody. I’m just reporting here.

The result is chaotic fun – chaotic because the metal genre, for those of you in your “safe zone” of harsh noise, tends to stampede without control, or at least with the appearance of not being in control while being so completely in control that it’s terrifying and mesmerizing all at once. Fun because there’s synthesizers in here, adding delightful texture to the high-BPM onslaught. You can’t fool me, you Death Treaters, I can hear ’em! These cats play the game well, never for a second suggesting that they’re play-acting here – everybody honestly loves their metal, and they can make it with the best of them. Whether it’s the overwhelming black blast of Otum Rectepulent’s “Mind Lice Waddle Towards Their Christian Host” (which also wins the award for best song title of the year) or the thick smear of Xenoxoth’s “FUCK BURZUM” (like, for real), “Greatest Shits” propulses until it hyperventilates and caves in upon itself, probably at the point Carniwhore takes up ten minutes of your time with the most demonic samplefest (I’m assuming – Yves surely cannot play drums that fast for that long), the unfortunately titled “The Corporations Have Honed Your Mouth Anus” (“unfortunately” because of the proximity of the terms “Mouth” and “Anus”).

Nothing matters except that everybody on this comp is having the time of their lives. Clearly. I would be too if I didn’t have this balky shoulder following that rotator cuff cleanout.

“Greatest Shits” comes in a “combo pack” housed in a ziplock baggie (like the ones you get your drugs in), with a “vinyl sticker, download code, and 10-page zine/catalog.”

Whettman Chelmets – Giant Eyes & Infant Steps

3.1.19 by Ryan Masteller

I’m a dad – my kid’s seven, an incredible athlete (like me), and reads at a fourth-grade level (in second grade, also like me). No big deal. Whettman Chelmets is also a dad, but he’s got a little one – I mean a REALLY wee babe at the moment, a daughter born in 2018. So, unlike me, who’s coaching soccer and trying to curtail his boy’s runaway Super Mario habit, Whettman’s stumbling around in the dark in the middle of the night, fumbling for nightlights and pacifiers and bottle warmers, praying to whatever deity is up there that he’s swaddled that darling girl just right so he can sleep uninterrupted for the next two hours before she wakes up again.

Oh… that sounds awful. No more kids for me. No thanks.

“Giant Eyes & Infant Steps” though – as much as I want to relive parts of those days, this tape’s sort of a warning. Delivered with love, surely – don’t get me wrong about that. Whettman’s nothing if not the devoted father. But he’s clearly letting off some steam here, and it’s really working in his favor. Backing away from some of his post-rock tendencies, he delivers drones with gritted teeth and bloodshot eyes, sleep-deprived and on edge, but with an insanely big heart for this little life that’s so much a part of his world. Readers, seriously, I apologize if you don’t get the appeal of being a parent (and I was one fairly late, comparatively), but these intensely competing outlooks on parenting (zombified waking hours vs. shaping an entire worldview of someone that you helped make) form the dichotomy that defines the life of a parent and, perversely, invigorates them.

Whettman Chelmets just happens to be able to coherently intertwine these things into an artistic statement.

“Interruptus” is easily the theme, but “TFW It’s 4:00 a.m. and You’ve Already Been Up 3 Times” and “MRW I Drop the Passie in the Dark” illustrate the gallows humor necessary to navigate the dreaded “nighttime” with a child. But it’s all offset – how could it not be? – with the shimmeringly manic “Dada,” the bewildering and wonderful sentiments of the title track, and, of course, the hallucinatory wonder of “She Says Dada,” that magical moment in a barely functioning parent’s life when their child finally addresses them through a haze of exhaustion. It’s worth it more than you could possibly know.

“Giant Eyes & Infant Steps” is out now via PDX’s Girly Girl Musik – get one now!

New Batch – Astral Spirits

2.26.19 by Ryan Masteller

It’s not just jazz. It can be, but it’s not just. We’ve come to expect a lot from Astral Spirits over the decades, that paragon of experiment, that bastion of hope in the abstract. Wait, did I say “decades”? Well shoot, it only seems that way, and it doesn’t help my sense of linear time passing or my valuation of “experience” to see that “batch 20” stamped ever so digitally on the website. I see that “20” and I think “anniversary,” “years passing,” “lives lived,” “Mike Schmidt’s jersey number.” Well, not that last one, really, unless we’re talking about Astral Spirits hitting home runs, which they do a lot of with their releases. I guess when they get to catalog number 548 we can talk. (That’s how many home runs Mike Schmidt hit in his career, all with the Philadelphia Phillies.)

Anyway, “20” is still a lot of batches. Astral Spirits is good at what they do.

JACOB WICK & PHIL SUDDERBERG – COMBINATORY PLEASURES

Wick (trumpet) and Sudderberg (drums) provide the two components in “Combinatory Pleasures,” and, like the fable of the chocolate truck smashing into the peanut butter truck at a dangerous speed, thereby creating the idea for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups out of the delusional suffering of the two severely hurt drivers, a new and specific treat is formed, but for our ears, not our tongues. Still, to linger on the clichéd metaphor, Wick and Sudderberg roll their concoctions around in their mouths for a while, allowing the palette to fully reveal the secrets of the ingredients till they bloom in outrageous flavor. The duo does not dive directly in to their partnership, skirting the edges of each other’s playing, feeling out the other’s skills; then, when they’re fully satisfied, they swirl together in rhythmic symbiosis, each allowing the other to break out at points to shower their audience with virtuosic performance. Drums and trumpets! Who would’ve thought.

SPIRES THAT IN THE SUNSET RISE – HOUSE ECSTATIC (COVER YOUR BLOOD)

Spires That in the Sunset Rise, the duo composed of Ka Baird and Taralie Peterson, has been around since 2001, which is crazy, because that was eighteen years ago now, and also 9/11 happened then (#NeverForget). Somebody compared them to Sun City Girls once, and who am I to judge. (Oh right, music critic. Still, carry on.) Now, on their first release for Astral Spirits, the duo get “ecstatic,” that is, “House Ecstatic,” the name of this tape, which has a subtitle, “(Cover Your Blood),” that I guess helps us line up our expectations a little bit. See, each track is titled “X stat [number],” like each one is a hit to the bloodstream, and each piano trill and sax blurt and clarinet run and flute … jab (?) spikes through your heartbeat like adrenalized lightning. There’s the blood! Ecstasy in the blood. There are weird chant-y voices on here too, which sort of heighten the playfulness of this partnership at points, like when they meet the shaker percussion on “X stat twentyfive,” for example. In the end, the pairing of Spires and Astral Spirits is perfect, and why hasn’t it happened sooner, I wonder? Seriously, somebody tell me.

PIERCE WARNECKE & LOUIS LAURAIN – PHONOTYPIC PLASTICITY

What is this, the batch of long partnerships? Proving that the number 20 may in fact be a big Masonic number after all, Pierce Warnecke and Louis Laurain have ALSO been working together “for almost two decades.” As such, they can conceive layered concepts with ease and “lay it on us,” such as they do with “Phonotypic Plasticity.” A play on “phenotypic,” which is a relation of how organisms react with their environments, Warnecke and Laurain get tactile on us and allow their compositions to interact with the environment, molding and shaping them (plasticity!) till they take true physical form within our imaginations. Utilizing electronics, coronet, and “objects,” the duo, sometimes in tense stasis, at others in screamingly harsh shifts, builds incredible, vibrant monoliths that feel both organic and clinical. Whether droning or spiking the EQ meter, Warnecke and Laurain push ever farther into harrowing scientific territory. Maybe their work will result in some kind of breakthrough in advanced physics? You never know.

CALOIA / CHARUEST / FOUSEK – MAPS TO HANDS

When they made the movie “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” they blew it when they didn’t hire Nicolas Caloia, Yves Charuest, and Karl Fousek to consult on the soundtrack. Their intricate compositions as a trio would be perfect for any close-up scenes of insects running around the lawn, those entities roaming undetected right beneath the surface and out of our immediate vision. Or maybe they’d be more at home with a nature documentary – I don’t know, I’m not the idea man! “Maps to Hands” builds off their 2018 Mondoj tape “Residual Time” by breaking the ideas down into more bite-sized chunks rather than a live sidelong excursion. Caloia’s double bass and Charuest’s alto sax vibrate against each other, each one flitting lightly against the other while Fousek provides a foundation of electronic sonic experimentation. Or is that the other way around, and Fousek’s flitting lightly over the acoustic instruments? It’s all interplay in the end, so we should probably not worry about it too much. Microscopic chaos resolves into cellular beauty over seven tracks.

The Lincolnshire Poacher – Frequency Disruptor Volume I

2.25.19 by Ryan Masteller

The Lincolnshire Poacher done named itself after an English folk tune, the unofficial county anthem of Lincolnshire, a song that celebrates – wait for it – the “joys of poaching” (presumably) royal game. Well, that seems like nice little factoid to end on – I’ll catch the rest of you later. [Whistles around the corner]

…

…

…

[Peeks head back around the corner, looks furtively back and forth]

They gone yet? They are? Excellent! Now you and I can speak freely. See, the Lincolnshire Poacher was actually a shortwave numbers station based on the island of Cyprus that was presumably operated by the British Secret Intelligence Service until 2008. I’ll let you click on that Wikipedia link to learn more, but we’re talking about spy stuff here, real-life “Mission: Impossible Fallout” stuff, the kind of intrigue that would make someone like Alex Jones cock his head thoughtfully as he looked off into the distance to contemplate its importance. (Emphasis on “Alex Jones is a cock.”)

Anyway, this THIRD Lincolnshire Poacher, the one with the swell new tape on Prague’s Baba Vanga, is sort of a human numbers station, except instead of reading out numbers, this LP fucks with frequencies until you don’t know what’s up or down, right or left, ally or commie. That’s right, with “Frequency Disruptor Volume I” you’re thrust right back into the Cold War, pockets filled with codebreaking devices depending on which handler contacts you. Voices break through the surface of the electronic wastelands, full of meaning if the message reaches the right ears. Even if you don’t have the proper security clearance, you’re bound to find some nuggets of importance, even if these sometimes sound like the aural equivalent of redacted documents. Plus, anything with a track titled “Scanning for Scanners” knows to watch its back – that’s how you can tell this “music thing” on this “cassette tape” is being handled by a professional. Remember, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you, or haven’t already hacked your mainframe or broken into your apartment building or planted that car bomb. Keep your ear to the ground. The Lincolnshire Poacher is.

…

…

…

Oh, ahem, I didn’t see you there, Mr. President!

[Whispers to YOU]

We never spoke!

Edition of 70. Scare yourself back to the 1950s with one of these!

V/A – Doom Mix Vol. III

2.22.19 by Ryan Masteller

Look, I don’t get hyped for mixtapes, which is weird because I also write for a different site with “Mix Tapes” in the name, and I won’t get into the size of those “Mix Tapes” right now (not very big), but that’s not the point. The point is, although I don’t get hyped for mixtapes, I get hyped for the annual Doom Trip compilation, even though it’s less a label retrospective than a “tape that one might make for a friend,” which takes us into pure paradoxville if you ask me (and you did), because even with this information at your disposal, you still don’t know where the heck I’m coming from.

“Doom Mix Vol. III.” That’s where I’m coming from.

Not without reason, my hype meter whanged all the way to 10 (on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being “Barely Conscious,” 10 being “Mega Hype – Grab Handrails”) when I first perused this thing, the needle breaking free of its moorings and flying at dangerous speed toward the other end of the lab, while ejected springs and sprockets ensured I’d be spending the rest of the afternoon trying to put everything back together before listening to another cassette and measuring its hype. This was before I even hit Play on “disco” Eartheater, a track recorded SPECIFICALLY for this release. Alexandra Drewchin is INSANELY generous.

But if you’re like, “Whoa, Eartheater!,” my response is, “Yeah, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg – wait’ll the rest of that iceberg rips into the side of your ‘Titanic’ taste in music and sinks the hell out of everything you thought you knew about anything,” which is kind of a jackass thing to reply, but it sounded OK in my head. But still, Swan Meat’s gonna gouge a hole in somebody’s hull, right? Nmesh is gonna blast through metal, yeah? And how about Mukqs? Electro-psychedelia like a wrecking ball to the front of a seagoing ocean liner. Couldn’t pin that dude down if you tried.

And what about HOTT MT? Vinyl Williams? Pale Spring? R23X? Swinging the pendulum of the somehow now-metaphorically-prevalent wrecking ball into that sweet melodic zone and smashing through your personal barriers, the walls that keep your feelings hidden from everyone. Not harsh smashing but cathartic smashing, falling in love smashing, dystopian dreamworld smashing, smashing reality in favor of make believe.

Gosh, “Doom Mix Vol. III” has everything. [*Checks tracklist. Panics*] I’m only halfway done!

The flipside features a bunch of Doom Trip alums (most of ’em are a bunch of weirdos too): Diamondstein & Sangam, Niku No Sekai, Heejin Jang, and Skyjelly (that fuzztone!) make appearances, as does TALsounds (last seen around these parts on “Doom Mix Vol. I”), which sort of makes this a Good Willsmith/Hausu Mountain party too, I guess? Heck, invite ’em all! But some of the best entries are from the Doom Trip n00bs, with Tim Thorton as CDX bouncing his own samplemania around your speakers, Equip slinging some psycho vapor madness, and Paige Emery dreamweaving clouds of cotton candy.

Pant, pant, pant … whew.

To say this is the best “Doom Mix” shortchanges the other “Doom Mixes,” so here’s my advice: combine all three into a gigantic whole. You’ll never get tired of it, and it’ll probably never end. See? I’m also good for public service. You’re welcome.

You can stream a few of these tracks already, but you have to wait till April freaking 9th for the whole thing to drop on your head like Santa’s bag of presents eight months early or that wrecking ball of gentleness or whatever I was talking about up there. Go with Christmas. Christmas in April.

Preorder or else.