3 Cherries – s/t

2.20.19 by Ryan Masteller

I’m a two-cherry 🍒 man myself, what with all the Pac-Man, so imagine my surprise when 3 Cherries burst upon the scene with their self-titled cassette tape on Asheville, North Carolina’s Terry Tapes just a week ago (depending on when you read this)! The trio (duh) features TT stalwarts Andy Loebs, Cole Kilgo of Gabor Bonzo, and Devin Lecroy, so basically you’re just going to just have a serious blast with this six-song EP as you load up your cassette deck for your latest Friday-night danceathon. No word as to whether Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde are going to show up.

Doesn’t matter. If you’ve checked out Andy Loebs’s “About Me” or Gabor Bonzo’s “Wad,” you’ll know just what to expect with 3 Cherries. More 1980s throwback synth prog, perfect for the Pac-Man or sci-fi/fantasy movie enthusiast in your life (like me), “3 Cherries” finds the gang slingling pads and patches, with an assist from Loebs on drums. And there’s more than just cherries on this menu! There’s also tot-chos (“Tot-Cho Cup”) and ice cream (“Mr. Ice Cream”), which combined make for a balanced diet, so says the current USDA food pyramid, brought to you by Monsanto, Coca-Cola, and Halliburton. Regardless of your dietary predilections or restrictions, you should have no issue dousing yourself in maraschino syrup and doing the mashed potato while this sweet thing plays in the background.

Cassette available from Terry Tapes in an edition of 50. Do you like fun? You do? Then you should get one of these, otherwise your fun intake may be deficient (again, USDA statistics).

Cameron, Dockery, & Hipólito – Organ

2.15.19 by Ryan Masteller

What does it look like to field an all-star team? Let’s see how Self Sabotage Records does it:

Lisa Cameron: Drummer in ST 37, Suspirians; serial collaborator; Ganjisland (w/ Raquel Bell); Venison Whirled

Lee Dockery (aka R. Lee Dockery): A Bourdon of Bees; Matamoros (with Derek Rodgers); runs the Somatic label

Daniel Hipólito (aka Smokey Emery): artist and photographer (see cover image); releases on Self Sabotage, Holodeck Records, Chondritic Sound, and others.

That’s like the Denver Broncos of ambient drone.

The trio knocked out “Organ” together in Austin on the eve (so to speak) of Daniel Hipólito’s relocation to LA for art school, a decision he BETTER NOT be regretting right now (Daniel’s mother did not return my emails for comment, although this is probably what she was thinking). Their live improv electronics here unfold like thick waves of feedback, oscillating and swirling in dangerous whirlpools at one moment, twinkling like moonlight on the forest floor at others. It’s at once exhilarating and relaxing, and they should do it again (who’s buying Daniel his bus ticket?).

The further you get into “Organ,” the more it becomes part of you, the more it overcomes your senses and penetrates any conscious effort, so that whatever you’re doing is fully clouded by the “Organ” experience. That’s exactly what you want in this type of situation, an ambient recording that doesn’t fade into the background. Cameron, Dockery, and Hipólito don’t let that happen, foregrounding enough sonic interest that you’re compelled to focus on the result. So it’s not crazy for me to call “Organ” a “sumptuous treat, a tactile atmosphere bursting with color and delight as it illuminates fresh environments and promotes uninhibited and novel thought.” (Quotation marks for easy cutting and pasting – who’s NOT gonna want to use that in a future press kit???)

Grab a tape from Self Sabotage’s Big Cartel shop, and stream it below.

HAWN – For a Ride

2.13.19 by Ryan Masteller

What did we do to deserve this? We weren’t that good, were we? We’ve grumbled a lot, acted pretty cynical, didn’t do a good job with voting for government, called each other some names that are gonna be pretty hard to take back (in fact, you should see my Twitter PM thread with TO HQ). And yet here we are with HAWN (no relation), and their latest tape “For a Ride.” See, HAWN not only released their tape on one of the coolest tape labels going at the moment (Strategic Tape Reserve, both a personal and Tabs Out–wide favorite), the duo also features vocalist Michael Jeffrey Lee, who also happens to be half of Budokan Boys, whose “That’s How You Become a Clown” tape on Tymbal last year landed HIGH AS HECK on my 2018 personal lists and also HIGH AS HECK on Tabs Out’s Top 200 Tapes list. You don’t take that lightly – we’re tastemakers around here.

Hopefully all this Budokan love doesn’t detract from Lee’s partner in crime in HAWN, the illustrious John Craun, who not only has a name that rhymes with HAWN but also has the synth game DAWN … er, DOWN, in this crew, “crossing hot wires in the cold mortuary of tradition since 2010.” I wish I had written that, but I didn’t. I WILL write something along the lines of, “HAWN done good on tapes today,” but … no, that description doesn’t hold a candle. Still, when we compile our 2019 lists, we should remember to look all the way back to January to ensure we accurately capture “For a Ride” in our archives for posterity, ’cause we’d be fools not to.

“For a Ride” is definitely a tale of two personalities vying for attention but instead weaving around one another’s contributions, sharing the songwriting spotlight like well-behaved musicians who don’t complain every time somebody crams their awesome vocal take with like a million tracks of backing vocals. (Sorry, that one was on me. Personal experience.) Here, Craun prepares the foundation of sometimes delicate, sometimes swerve-y electronics, heavy, glitchy, fully textured, creating the mood, laying the groundwork. Lee arrives in all his Joel RL Phelps-meets-Craig Wedren glory, undaunted, telling tale after NOLA tale in the heat and the haze. Is there a story about the legend of Tommylee Lewis and that devil Nickell Robey-Coleman? Shh, shh. Time will tell.

Speaking of stories, there’s also this little nugget: “The album is dedicated to Alex Chilton, who, in the last decade of his life, would occasionally appear at the Thai restaurant where Craun and Lee worked to order a Pad Thai, with beef” … which of course is a WAY BETTER story than me running into Annie Lennox at the grocery store that one time. See? Look at me, still grumbling. For no reason.

“For a Ride” is available in an edition of 70 from STR – be sure to just buy, like, everything that’s still available on the Bandcamp page.

Yves Malone – Beyond the Before

2.12.19 by Ryan Masteller

Just because we know what to expect doesn’t mean we can’t act surprised, am I right? Yves Malone is a household name now, an institution, and it seems crazy that he hasn’t already released something on PDX’s Never Anything Records. Although the reclusive maestro can usually be found in his studio way out in the woods somewhere (which was unmitigated hell to wire for electricity and internet), soldering away at circuit boards and plugging various patch cables into various equipment holes, he still manages to lift his head fairly often to eject a new musical release into the “scene.” These of course get gobbled up by eagle-eyed consumers hunting down the most hilarious Twitter memes, algorithms colliding in sheer fortune as an audience is “cultivated.” Whatever that means. Yves Malone is the shit.

Maybe it’s because there’s a cross-section of cynically humor-minded folks that find solace in that very cynicism, and Malone’s work can act as a soundtrack for it. Maybe it’s because escape into Malone’s soundworlds is the only outlet for the daily frustration of daily frickin’ frustration. Maybe it’s because you just watched a good genre movie (sci-fi, horror, suspense) and you realize that the new Yves Malone tape you just got in the mail would be a good alternate soundtrack. And it would be – “Beyond the Before” is a creepy and synthy and otherworldly in its high-tech postmillennium tension, ratcheting up nerves while it slinks, trying to avoid attention but not doing a very good job of it as it goes about its nefarious business. Think about it: what if John Carpenter had scored “Annihilation” instead of Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow, and then released it on Holodeck instead of Lakeshore?

Seriously: think about that for a while.

Then listen to “Beyond the Before,” edition of 50, which you can get from Never Anything right now. High-quality label, that Never Anything.

Dry Bath – s/t

2.9.19 by Ryan Masteller

The cover of this thing looks like Mike’s emails to me, filled with a baffling assortment of emojis and riddled with spelling errors. Well, there don’t actually seem to be any spelling errors on the Dry Bath cover (although let me get my magnifying glass to make sure), I just meant that this whole thing reminded me of those emails, which do contain them. Doesn’t matter – you’ll never see any evidence, as Mike regularly wipes his personal server so the government can’t track down his correspondence anyway, so – there you go.

I think there’s a little more to the presentation here than sheer randomness, as that’s not the kind of vibe I’ve EVER gotten from Angel Marcloid, aka Fire-Toolz, one-half of Dry Bath. I don’t get that vibe from Timmy Sells His Soul – the other half – either. (And this is my introduction to Timmy – digging deeper into Timmy’s catalog is yielding surprise after delightful surprise so far, so that’s good!) There seems to be a lot of emotional ups and downs going on here, which is kind of helpful artistically to kind of see what Dry Bath is going for. Also, the limbless vaporwave torso punctured all over with nails certainly adds to the #aesthetic.

Oh – they’re just renderings of the song titles. Gotcha.

Dry Bath is electro-pop if it were metal and microwaved for a while. Sure, the melodies are still there, and there are still traces of the shapes it was once formed in, but it’s also scored and fried and electrified and dangerous to touch. Maybe if you magnetized the term “R&B” by rubbing it over jagged shards of industrial scrap before hovering it over a wide swath of metal shavings and paperclips and AA batteries and stuff, you’d get close to what Dry Bath is up to. Yeah, there’s Auto-Tune. Yeah, sometimes that vaporwave torso becomes vaporwave song. Yeah, that heap of old computer parts gets shot through with electricity and comes together like a Frankenstein Voltron, a semi-sentient amalgamation that only wants to love and to be loved. Yeah, you nod your head and tap your feet, because that’s what you do, dammit, when the music gets into your bones and your soul! And also you’re more machine now anyway, so all this music infused with metal (the substance) and electricity is just … right.

Oh! These song titles form a thought:

“Computers like the unborn” “Or dreamless sleepers know” “Neither pain nor suffering”. “To bring them into conscious awareness” “would be a gr8 act” “Of cruelty.”

That changes everything – I’m gonna go back and rewrite this whole thing, now that I have a much better grasp of the concept. I’m gonna keep the “Mike ribbing” part though – that’s gold. Now, where’s that “Delete” key…

“Dry Bath” is out now from Flag Day Recordings, limited to 70 copies.  

GUiLT – Anthology One

2.8.19 by Ryan Masteller

Guilt. It sits there in your stomach like a lump of undigested beef, festering next to the liver and the kidneys and the duodenum until you can’t take it anymore and are forced to do something about it. Admit to whatever it is that’s making you feel guilty, maybe. Apologize for it. Anything to alleviate the pressure of despondency it’s causing, the claustrophobia of its menacing presence. It’s suffocating living under a veil of total guilt.

Here on “Anthology One” we’re living under a veil of tonal GUiLT, capitalized weirdly because I’m now referring to it as a proper name, and tonal because we’re hearing it. GUiLT specializes in experimental drone, the kind that keeps you on edge, that makes you grit your teeth upon hearing it, grinding away at those molars for the entire hour GUiLT’s recorded oeuvre is playing. At times ominously drifting, at others ear-splittingly intimidating, at even others scolding in its use of samples, “Anthology One” plays like a song cycle for the inner demons hammering away at your black heart. It’s hellish, but not in the fire-and-brimstone-y way popularized ever-so-effectively by Dante Alighieri. No, this hellscape is crafted by the absence of reason and logic, by the fear of the unknown, by the feelings of being alone with your internal pain and suffering for eternity. Here, GUiLT/guilt reigns supreme, an ever-present reminder that something’s gone horribly amiss, and you’re now powerless to rectify it, no matter how much you want to.

That’s real GUiLT.

Or you can turn off this tape and go say you’re sorry and immediately start feeling better about yourself. But why would you ever want to do that???

Why would you indeed. You can still grab one of these from Lurker Bias if you’ve got the stomach for it.

Penance Stare – Solanaceae

2.6.19 by Ryan Masteller

Does atmospheric black metal with goth and shoegaze aspirations get a bad rap today? I mean, there’s pretty much only one band that comes to mind when we’re talking about this in conjunction with “bad raps,” and that’s Deafheaven. Real talk: I’ve always been a Deafheaven fan (more so their early stuff), but man, they really seem to get thrown under the bus a lot these days.

Penance Stare is not Deafheaven, not even remotely, but that’s not a bad place to start the discussion. It’ll help orient you – and I know there are some of you out there (not me, obvs), who are like, “Black metal? Isn’t that Satanic music? Isn’t it just a maelstrom of noise and hate?” And I’ll respond with, “‘Maelstrom of noise and hate’? There’s no way you’re smart enough or articulate enough to come up with such a poetic thought. You’re quite misinformed, and you also live in the 1980s, probably at the evangelical church I grew up attending and have now outgrown. But to answer you, briefly: no.”

Tangent aside, Penance Stare, the solo (!) moniker of UK-based shredder Esmé Louise Newman is a heavy affair – heavy atmosphere that is. Utilizing definite shoegaze tropes (those guitar tones) and post-rock progressions, Newman builds up worlds of static and fuzz and shatters them with machine-gun beats and dissonant breakdowns on her new album “Solanaceae.” Her voice floats above it all, Cocteau Twins style, in a gentle counterpoint. She even drifts (literally!) into ambient territory near the end of the tape, with “The Remains of the Wooden Icebreaker Lie Submerged” sounding exactly like the title implies, following that with another dense and frigid slab of drone with “Bensedin Petrichor.”

In short: beautiful, heavy, intense. Edition of 50 from Crow Versus Crow.

moduS ponY & VLK – split

2.4.19 by Ryan Masteller

This cassette is evenly divided. Perfectly. Right down the middle. On one side, the white one, Strategic Tape Reserve stalwart moduS ponY brandishes multiple implements of sonic construction, combining them in unusual and powerful ways, sometimes like weirding weapons in “Dune” (but not dangerous). Strategic Tape Reserve stalwart VLK eschews Sean Hannity and Avril Lavigne samples for the red side, drawing on a much more democratic array of sound sources and matching moduS ponY’s side vibe for vibe in a true spirit of camaraderie.

Yeah, yeah: this is a two-tone cassette.

What we do know: Sound files shot back and forth across the internet, from California (moduS ponY) to Cologne (VLK) and back, serving as inspiration and source material for this split. Nevermind that hackers can totally rip through your computer system with malevolent code and steal these brilliant ideas – the two intrepid artists threw caution to the wind. With moduS ponY you get a surreal instrumental slurry, both acoustic and sample-based, sounding exactly like what you would imagine something like “Black Lasagna” sounds like: meaty, dark, confusing, dystopian, and ultimately satisfying. VLK shakes a “Mario Party” jar until all the candy comes out, variously colored, tactile, smooth, generous, “Dizzy.” Disorienting? Sometimes. Who the heck is laughing on “Gallic Shrug”?

What we don’t know: What “Adriatic ports,” “gymnastic displays of groinal flexibility,” and “low-temperature banana confections” really sound like – no point of reference. Although I can guess on the flexibility one, what with my all-star levels of athletic ability.

This gnarly split comes in an edition of only 22 from Strategic Tape Reserve, so act fast, or I’m gonna email you and call you dumb to your face!

Already Dead drops their third Retrospective

2.1.19 by Ryan Masteller

This is the 185th “VIP” (Very Important Piece) I’ve written for Tabs Out. Why is that important? It’s not a round number. It’s not even a funny one. But the point is, it’s pretty big. Think about this: there are only 138 Tabs Out episodes (editor’s note: there’s more if you count Laser Focus and Bonus episodes like this one, but whatever…). You can look at it as if I’ve lapped the Delaware crew. Also, it takes me at least 6.9 hours to write one of these things too, just in case you think “more goes into” a podcast or whatever.

Point is, 300 is also a big number (unless you’re from Sparta, then it’s unimaginably small). And we’re here today to celebrate the 300th release by Already Dead Tapes and Records, now based out of Atlanta. There’s been some Already Dead coverage on this website before, perhaps most notably Scott Scholz’s Space Age Pressure Pad writeup on a bunch of AD releases – almost a year ago? That can’t be. Anyway, as is the label’s wont, they’ve dropped a massive compilation on us as catalog number AD300, which they’ve done before for catalog numbers AD200 and AD100. And it’s a doozy!

I don’t know how you all can keep up with all the stuff AD releases, but these “Documents” serve as a reminder that I often only scratch the surface of their catalog. Sure, I’ve written things about Comfort Food, Curt Oren, Complainer, Cop Funeral, Claire Rousay and even artists that DON’T start with the letter C, such as Alien Trilogy, Michael Potter, A.M. Stations, and The Myriad Ones. … OK, turns out I’m actually pretty familiar with the last 100 releases, so I can vouch for them. But you – YOU, newbie, you’ve got to catch up!

Fortunately there’s a “cheat code” for you to do just that.

Each physical copy of “Document III” comes with a “Golden Ticket,” just like Willy Wonka put in his chocolate bars in Tim Burton’s hilariously original film retelling of Roald Dahl’s beloved book. This “Golden Ticket” takes you to a magical URL (if you have a computer), where you’ll be able to skip and dance around a playground of download links for AD101 through AD199, a veritable wonderland of MP3 files that will allow you to catch up on all the amazing Already Dead releases you missed. Then you can buy the tapes for the ones you like – since this is a cassette website after all – presuming they’re in print still, of course.

“Document III” is still in print. Edition of 100, though, so act fast!

Comfort Food – A Cordial Warning
Mu Vonz – Hypnotize
Curt Oren – Moab
Complainer – Fucking Droid
cop funeral – try
Mezzanine Swimmers – Black Cat in Heat
Excessive Visage – Verwöhnt von Happiness
The Hell Hole Store – Musician Street
Michael Potter – Can One Make Two
YMDSIH – Legacy of Nothing
Painted Faces – Keep on Rocking in the Freak World
the binary marketing show – daydream (i cannot)
A.M. Stations – Attic Money
NONZOO – GREAT AMERICAN TROUGH
Coastal Car – Ultraviolet Light
Claire Rousay – Definitive Attributes
Alien Trilogy – Barlow
Imbue – Ghost Stories Pt. 1 (ft. iAlive & Carl Kavorkian)
The Myriad Ones – La Luv
SHOTO – Worship Nothing
Dead Tenants – Rubbed Out
Unsung – Bowl of Honeydew
About a Million – Wakin’ Me Up
Forget the Times – Some Tolerance for Silence (Document III Edit)
talk midway – night

OGRE and Dallas Campbell – All Hallows’ II

1.31.19 by Ryan Masteller

I know this is going against protocol, but…

THIS TAPE IS SO SCARY AND I LOVE IT!

OGRE (aka Robin Ogden, not the one you’re thinking of) and Dallas Campbell are transatlantic buddies who just want to frighten the bejeezus out of each other. Fresh(ish) off their rescore of George A. Romero’s classic zombie flick “Night of the Living Dead” (Lakeshore Records, whoa!), the boys are back in town, virtually, through a secure internet connection. This time they’re cooking up a sequel to their hit “All Hallows” with another soundtrack to an imaginary thriller. And this one’s real nightmare fuel, check it:

“35 years ago investigative journalist Ellis Ledstone admitted himself as a patient to an alternative healthcare facility, The Shepard Institute For Psionic Inquiry. 6 months later, police would break down its doors to discover the remains of a dozen patients in The Institute’s basement.”

Oh snap! That sounds terrifying, in all the right ways. Not uncoincidentally, this is right up your alley if you’re a “Stranger Things” fan, as that soundtrack was also released on Lakeshore – Lakeshore is like a genre film soundtrack hall of fame! Delightful synthwork conjures fabulous moods, and you can pretty much imagine how the “film” “All Hallows’ II” is going to play out, just by listening. You thought John Carpenter knew how to cook up the heebie jeebies, make your skin crawl, but you won’t be disappointed with OGRE and Dallas Campbell, not even a little bit. Plus, we all know it’s better to celebrate Halloween in January anyway – it’s sneakier that way.

And hey, you guys are a bunch of fucking nerds, right? Then you’re gonna love the equipment listings:

Dallas’ Gear: ARP Axxe, Odyssey｜Casio SK1｜Crudman V2｜Doepfer Dark Time｜EHX Deluxe Memory Man｜Farfisa Syntorchestra｜Kawai SX240｜Maestro RK4｜Multivox MX312, MXD7｜Pioneer RT707｜Roland CR78, CR8000, Dimension D, Juno 6, MKS 70, SH101, SVC 350｜SCI Pro One, Prophet 600｜Star Instruments Synare 3｜Tape Loops｜Tascam Portastudio 424｜Yamaha SK30.

Robin’s Gear: Arturia Microbrute｜Doepfer, MAKENOISE & Mutable Instruments Eurorack System｜ Kawai SP-100｜KNAS Moisturizer｜KOMA Field Kit｜Korg Mono/Poly, MS-20, Poly 800 MK II｜Moog MF Delay, Mother 32, Minitaur｜Novation Bass Station Rack｜Roland VP-330｜Tape Loops｜Tascam Portastudio 414｜Voltage Controlled Walkman｜WEM Copicat Super IC｜Yamaha TX81Z. 

Preorder from OGRE now: “pad printed shell, loaded with pro dubbed Type I ferric grade tape. Made in the U.K. Also includes original Shepard Institute Of Psionic Inquiry Flyer and a digital copy of the All Hallows’ II Case File as a 38 page .PDF.”