Tabs Out | Euglossine – Coriolis

Euglossine – Coriolis

1.23.19 by Ryan Masteller

What were you even doing in science class anyway – sleeping, doing your algebra homework, standing in your open bookbag while your teacher’s head cocks confusedly and eyes narrow in bewilderment in frustration? All of the above? I was listening, paying attention like my life depended on it – and for all I know it does, sometime in the future – and sitting at my desk like a regular person without any weird personality glitches. Unlike Phil in his bookbag over there!

Phil always made me laugh.

Anyway, Euglossine, aka Tristan Whitehill, aka “Gainesville’s finest,” has been studying up on physics, reading a little bit about “Coriolis” and its attendant “Effect,” applying what he’s learned to a guitar-based tropicalia mélange that’s as refreshing as the breezes I’m about to discuss. See, turns out that if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, the rotation of the Earth causes moving objects – in a practical sense, weather objects, like clouds, winds, etc. – to the right, but if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, watch out! Those same objects will move to the left. Check out Wikipedia if you don’t believe me. Who needs textbooks?

As is his wont, Whitehill treats his guitar gently, caressing it, and also using synthesizers and saxophone (I’m guessing – who knows what’s real anymore!), caressing them as well, whispering romance through his fingers and across the frets, over the keys, dancing in the moonlight of a tropical shore. The Coriolis Effect causes the rainbow ribbon of his heart (and tape cover) to gently drift along with the ocean breeze TO THE RIGHT, because this is the Northern Hemisphere after all. Sand and surf and suntan lotion scents drift along the shoreline, and various margarita-based cocktails are served by indigenous crustaceans. Crabs mostly. Very helpful crabs, always slightly listing to the right…

Beautiful work as always by Mr. Euglossine. Pro-dubbed blue C37 tape with black imprints available at Hausu Mountain. Drops February 15, but Max and Doug are PROMISING the tape will ship “on or around January 23.” That’s a PROMISE! For now you can stream “Daylight,” though.

Tabs Out | Bloor – Drolleries

Bloor – Drolleries

1.22.19 by Ryan Masteller

Bloor! I’m not gonna lie, that’s the exact sound I make when I spew all over the place. But this isn’t about me or the awful noises I make or the awful things that come out of my body or the awful mess I usually have to clean up afterward. This is about Bloor, an NYC trio that has, over the past few years, been honing their own set of stinking blurts and blasts while stunned audiences sit in shock … until they’re finished playing at least, then those audiences erupt into glorious applause. Pro tip: this is exactly what you want an audience to do after you’ve finished playing them some of your music.

Saxophonist Sam Weinberg (W-2) is behind Bloor, and he’s joined by guitarist Andrew Smiley (Little Women, Feast of the Epiphany) and drummer Jason Nazary (Little Women, Anteloper). Together they rip through the Bloor playbook, which here consists of ten tracks with names like “Bast,” “Defacer,” and “Liber Scivias,” all of which sound like ways to strip meat from bone. And that’s sort of what listening to Bloor feels like, like you’re heading face-first into some sort of industrial meat processor and you come out the other side with mostly bones showing. Taking cues from Arthur Blythe (to whom “Splice” is dedicated), Harry Pussy, Sonny Sharrock, and certainly the rest of the Astral Spirits roster, Bloor dismantles the ideas of traditional jazz and experimental music and repurposes bits of them for their own monstrous Frankensteinian creations. Always unnerving, never unnerved, Bloor make restlessness sound like the next frontier in philosophical composition – just how thoroughly can one band explore the rocks and crags and fissures of its potential?

Also, “Drolleries” refers to the “small creatures adorning the margins of 13th-15th century illuminated manuscripts.” That’s seems so weird and yet so appropriate somehow, like those little creatures were running around on the instruments and magically making them play with their passage.

“Edition of 150 tapes with ORANGE tape shell. Design by Jaime Zuverza.” It will NOT make you bloor or blurt or spew or whatever. Release date is January 25 on Astral Spirits. Please hurry!

Tabs Out | International Surrealist Bulletin – Immanence

International Surrealist Bulletin – Immanence

1.21.19 by Ryan Masteller

I opened up a web browser and typed in “International Surrealist Bulletin,” and I was directed to the Ephem-Aural Bandcamp page. “Huh,” I said to myself. “The Fox News page looks weird.” I clicked “Buy Cassette” on the page, thinking it was a recently archived news story about walls or Russia or something. “Six dollars!” I exclaimed. “The news is worth AT LEAST thirty grand of my hard-earned money!” Three, zero, comma, zero, zero, zero, I typed. Purchased. Ephem-Aural is probably a Fox subsidiary.

Six months later, my tape arrived [Ed.: Tapes usually take a few days to arrive – don’t think it’ll take six months for this one], and I was surprised that it didn’t contain even a hint of my favorite talking heads … look I don’t really watch Fox News, is Hannity still on there? Who cares. The tape wasn’t Fox News, but it was worth the thirty grand. It just was a different International Surrealist Bulletin than I’d initially thought.

“Immanence” is actually an escape from the “surreal” “international” happenings around us, whether they appear in “bulletin” form or otherwise. Taking on an even MORE surreal surrealness than everyday surreality, “Immanence” is the first release by the New York artist since the excellent “Communitas,” and it continues the unrelenting attention grabbing of its predecessor. Building somewhat ambient soundscapes out of a variety of textures and timbres, International Surrealist Bulletin lays it on thick and heavy, a synthesizer cloud of doom and creep, even on the horns-and-melodica-laced “Nigleh” (those are probably not actually horns and melodica). Of course “Immanuel” breaks the spell by the end, a glowing track emerging from the long dark night, just like the Christ child on Christmas morn did hundreds of years ago.

Immanence: God living within and encompassing our universe. Immanuel: “God with us,” a name given to the Christ child. Wait, are we sure this ISN’T a subsidiary of Fox News???

We are sure. We are coated with the surreal until it loses meaning. Then we simply drift along upon the sublime. We are notified of nothing and everything, a paradox of informational awareness.

Grab a copy of “Immanence” from Ephem-Aural, and break your brain upon the unyielding rock of unknowability.

Tabs Out | John Atkinson / Sabriel’s Orb – split

John Atkinson / Sabriel’s Orb – split

1.17.19 by Ryan Masteller

Cincinnati’s Whited Sepulchre Records is amassing quite a catalog in its short existence, and while you might be like, “Hey, those guys release vinyl!,” I’m here to steer you back on track that they also release cassettes too, so … chill. And chill you will, because if there’s anything that WS is known for, it’s their experimental ambient releases, among which John Atkinson and Sabriel’s Orb’s split nestles nicely. Each artist takes their time over their apparently allotted twentyish minutes, and each hits delightful and sustained moods as their audio dopamine courses through your headphones. And yes, do listen on headphones, not on some crummy computer or wherever you listen to podcasts.

It must be that Australian air – all that open space, all that outback ripe for walkabout, all that wilderness that gets inside John Atkinson’s blood and sends his mind on amazing journeys across space and history. The former Brooklynite and onetime member of (personal favorite, god “VoyAager”) Aa (aka big A Little a) decamped to the continent-state and drilled deep into the cosmic vibe, focusing on interstellar ambient synthwork, field recordings, and even soundtrack composition, such as “L for Leisure.” On his half of the split, he stretches the heck out, all the way, all the bloody way until he covers the vastness with his spirit. He becomes one with “Backwaves,” “Rye,” and “First Rain of the New Year,” making an almost spiritual connection with the world around him. There’s only one thing to do with this side – get lost in it. It’s easily done. I’m wandering through windswept grasslands while wind brushes the grain and a storm brews in the distance.

It must be that Salt Lake air – all that open Utah space, the salt flats ripe for walkabout, all that big sky that gets inside Willow Skye-Biggs’s blood and sends her mind on amazing journeys across space and history. Yes, this is a perfect pairing on this split, can you tell? Skye-Biggs has also been around, most notably as Stag Hare (personal favorite, god “Velvet and Bone”), and she a veteran, an absolute hero of the introspective ambient scene. Sabriel’s Orb is a continuation of that vibe, and Skye-Biggs attacks her side like a hornet’s nest of gentleness and empathy, her delicate synth pulses raining down like breezes across open water. Both “Secret” and “Holding” steadily portray the innerworkings of her being like a rain shower at dusk. Both make an almost spiritual connection to the world inside the mind of Sabriel’s Orb. There’s only one thing to do with this side – get lost in it. It’s easily done. I’m wandering down the silent lakeshore while wind brushes the surface and a storm brews in the distance.

This beautiful red-shelled tape is contrasted quite nicely by the yellow J-card – excellent design there by Dustin Bowen. Edition of 100, get yers!

Tabs Out | CIA Debutante – Waves

CIA Debutante – Waves

1.16.19 by Ryan Masteller

I listened to Clark Gable one time, and it was a bad idea. The “King of Hollywood” appeared to me in a vision as if he had just stepped out of “It Happened One Night” and handed me a cassette tape by CIA Debutante, claiming it was the latest missive from Edinburgh-based Czaszka (Rec.). “Sell me,” I said, not unkindly, but wary of this anachronism of an encounter. He winked – you can totally picture that Clark Gable wink – and said, “CIA Debutante sounds like Dead C on McIntosh but when they were only 25 years old.”

I woke in a pool of sweat with this gorgeous hunk of tape in my hand, and I stared at its lovely risograph-printed artwork (one of two alternate covers!) for what felt like an hour but was only forty-five seconds. Those words hung in my mind as I tried to shake the cobwebs of the experience and escape the apparition that apparently had nothing to do in the afterlife except push expertly crafted experimental outsider music on us rabid fans. I composed myself and entered the artifact into a “boombox,” flicking “Play” so quickly and effortlessly that barely any time elapsed between the time the tape entered the player and the sound came out. I’m that good.

Hits from the future, indeed. CIA Debutante chases the “eternally temporary composition,” running guitar, voice, synthesizer through the duo’s personal ringer, emerging from the trauma with an endlessly fascinating lo-fi blast of headache-made-sound-art. The low purple spectrum of devious fluctuations bubble and merge till it makes so much sense that a ghost whose best work was in the 1930s has to present itself to sell me. Gable didn’t have to go to all the trouble. Czaszka could’ve hired a promo guy (me, even) instead of a medium.

Wait, did I say it was a bad idea that I listened to Clark Gable that one time? I meant it was a GREAT idea.

Czaszka (Rec.) always fascinates. This burner is no different. Edition of 50 – which cover will you get?

Tabs Out | Sparkling Wide Pressure – Love ov Love

Sparkling Wide Pressure – Love ov Love

1.15.19 by Ryan Masteller

I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes …

The latest lovefest from Sparkling Wide Pressure is an actual paean to actual love, like Frank Baugh’s been hanging out at the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport around the holidays or something. More likely he’s been hanging out around the arrivals gate at Nashville International Airport, a 45-minute drive from my brother’s house in Murfreesboro, where Baugh also lives. Come to think of it, why on earth would he want to hang out at NIA? Totally pointless.

Metta meditation. That’s where it comes from, inner peace; also communion with family, friends, loved ones, the earth, the trees, the sky. “Love ov Love” doesn’t take the easy route of simply being a warm blanket, though; instead, it rummages around the corners of love and explores its intricacies, teasing out complex feelings. Utilizing a variety of acoustic and electronic instrumentation along with the human voice (for the most human of feelings), Sparkling Wide Pressure winds a bunch of disparate and fascinating elements together. At times dense and at others weightless, “Love ov Love” is a fascinating examination. There comes a time on the title track, which closes the album, when you realize that you CAN just let it wash over you, the acoustic guitar and the organ/synth/whatever tones. It’s a captivating moment.

It’s a Sparkling Wide Pressure moment. We should be used to those by now.

Pink translucent tape in an edition of 30 available from SWP himself. Maybe a Kimberly Dawn release (kimdawn062), but didn’t Frank shutter that label in 2016?

Tabs Out | Hallucinogenic Bulb – Pulsating

Hallucinogenic Bulb – Pulsating

1.13.19 by Ryan Masteller

What runs down the storm drains in Philly has to penetrate the water table, suggesting a mass psychotic break within the city’s population whose balance is only achieved because of the totality of the mass psychotic break. Sometimes the balance shifts – who throws batteries at Santa Claus? (lazy reference); sometimes it evens out (the 2008 World Series). Always Philadelphia is stigmatized.

Hallucinogenic Bulb harnesses the psychosis. What seeps into the water table seeps into the Bulb, the Bulb churns, the Bulb becomes radioactive, the Bulb decays in a glowing terminal half-life. Pulsating with gritty, indigenous fervor, “Pulsating” emanates outward in an unthinking, unmenacing wave of sheer poison atmosphere, its directionless, nonprejudicial molecular makeup breaking down all normal cognitive functions in its path. It doesn’t mean to do this; it’s just there, and we are not adapted to withstand it.

Hallucinogenic Bulb wields “Pulsating” like its own mutated mascot, a rallying cry to embrace the delusion, to normalize this waking southeastern Pennsylvania nightmare. It seeps from the water table to our blood, our hearts, our brains, polluting the whole shebang of our personalities till we’re iceball-chucking weirdos with an affinity for unprovoked hysteria. Are we now part of a growing army of transmuted monsters, our daily existence distorted by psychedelic transmissions?

Want to find out?

Edition of 50 from those PA purveyors of pulverizing power: Orb Tapes.

Tabs Out | Takahiro Mukai – The Passion of Vojtek

Takahiro Mukai – The Passion of Vojtek

1.11.19 by Ryan Masteller

[Looks around, scared.]

There was a bear, a real one.* They brought him from Iran, and, I don’t know, thought that he’d be fun to have around? It was a bear. How much fun could that possibly be?

[Takes deep drag from hand-rolled cigarette. Pinky finger flicks away tobacco fleck from bottom lip. Eyes look up, dart at noise of creaking chair; gaze returns to lap.]

It was wartime, what do I know? What does anybody know, it was crazy, it was crazy. There was a bear, and they named him Vojtek, and the only way they could bring him home was to conscript him. They were fools! Sure, he helped us move ammunition boxes around, he was useful for a while, but things began to change. They just began to shift, I dunno. Maybe it was the salmon drought, maybe it was the honey famine – look, all I know is that Vojtek grew more and more unruly, …

[Wipes brow, quickly takes short drag from cigarette, drums table with nervous fingers.]

And the blood! Oh the blood…

[Sobs.]

[Composes himself.]

I thought I had forgotten it. I thought I had forgotten the passion of Vojtek, but then, there’s this cassette tape! What do I do with this?

[Picks up tape, holds it out accusingly before slamming it back down onto the table, cracking off the connecting hinge of the Norelco case.]

Takahiro Mukai wasn’t even there. He wasn’t even there, yet he mocks us with this document, this “composition,” and I can’t sleep – I CAN’T SLEEP – and all the while I read these numbers and hear these clinical electronic sounds and I feel like I’m part of some kind of laboratory experiment, some kind of drug trial! What more do you want from me? Why can’t I leave?

[Stops. Takes a deep breath, then another long tug on the cigarette. Rubs bloodshot eyes.]

Oscillations. These rhythmic patterns conform to the dance of death, the “Passion of Vojtek” [Plaża Zachodnia] that I bore witness to. He snapped, he slaughtered my comrades, and it was so workmanlike, so mechanical. Takahiro Mukai is so removed, so far removed.

[Looks up. Eyes fix mine. A sliver of a grin appears at the corner of his mouth.]

But there is beauty in the dance, in the performance, in the ritual destruction. Does art imitate action here, or is the action informed by the art? Mukai…

[Shakes head.]

Brilliant. Counterbalanced. Surgical. No chaos, just containment, inevitability. He is juxtaposed against the proceedings, and the proceedings do not disappoint in their importance. There is one thing that I do know about all this, that I shake my head at every time I think about it: we should never have brought that bear back with us. Never.

[Lifts cigarette to lips. Inhales.]

*This account is an alternate universe representation of the story of Vojtek the bear. In our current historical timeline, Vojtek is much nicer and doesn’t kill anyone.

Tabs Out | Various Artists – Splixtape

Various Artists – Splixtape
1.9.19 by Ryan Masteller

We take notice sometimes. We don’t have our heads so far crammed into the earth like ostriches that we are unaware of unusual instances that happen outside of our immediate frame of reference. No matter how often or how thoroughly some of us clean the HQ studio or pat ourselves on the back for it, our job remains the same: to report back to you on the rare and exciting occurrences coming to a boil on the hot stove of independent underground tape culture. We are heroes, in a sense.

And so it is today that we have something rare and exciting – a new tape label, fresh-faced and enthusiastic, not at all ground down yet by the rigors of its operation. Hypnic Jerk (great name) out of Birmingham, Alabama, a place I only know because I pass its exit sometimes on 75 when I’m heading north (otherwise the whole of Alabama is just a peripheral dream to me), is looking ahead to a perfectly stupendous 2019. In this season of year-end lists and other ephemeral nostalgic nonsense, Hypnic Jerk slides “Splixtape” across the counter with an icky wink, ensuring that they’ve made some kind of impression on us music writers who now wearily have to create a “2019 year-end list” Excel doc before 2018 even kicks the bucket.

But we’re not all such a cynical bunch (OK, sure we are, who am I kidding), so it is with some semblance of seasonal joy that I can report “Splixtape” is ACTUALLY worth starting up a new best-of list – its five tracks by four artists expand like atoms across the expanse after some bang of a big type. All four are legends in the long-form guitar/synthesizer evolution field, and all step up big time and deliver: Prana Crafter, ragenap, Tarotplane, and Horse Apples keep you hanging on every second of “Splixtape,” hoping against hope that you drift forever on their vibes. Ranging from celestial ambient to overdriven post rock (guitar only), you’ll find something for every itch you’ll ever need to scratch. Unless of course that itch is some sort of hip hop, metal, indie rock, R&B, vaporwave, EDM, Cheesecake, Afrobeat, etc. itch… that’s actually a lot of itches. You should go to the doctor.

You may have to wait till February 6 for the physicals to drop, but you can enjoy streaming “Splixtape” on Hypnic Jerk’s Bandcamp page right freaking now!

Tabs Out | Forget the Times – Winter Haven

Forget the Times – Winter Haven
1.8.19 by Ryan Masteller

Forget the Times is dangerous. Sure, their freeform skronk is as serrated and jagged and explosive as it gets, and the “collective” happens to employ one of their own for “guitar processing” (Josh Miller; core dudes Sean Hartman on guitar/tenor sax and Andrew Buczek on drums round out the band on this release), so you know it’s going to be at least a little noisy, a little unpredictable, a little perilous. Listen at your own risk kind of stuff. It’s up to you to chance it.

But Forget the Times is also sneaky, dropping a little botany lesson on us as they whip themselves into a frenzy over two long tracks, one per side, improvised to within an inch of chaotic self-destruction. (I can’t stress this enough – this is the kind of energetic output that caused all those Spinal Tap drummers to spontaneously combust; I’d be careful if I were Forget the Times.) On “Nasturtium Blues,” they’re down about this little edible thing (because “blues” signifies that something’s got you down). Maybe one of them had a urinary tract infection and nasturtium wasn’t doing it for them? Those infections are painful – I don’t blame anybody for savagely jamming for seventeen minutes because they were pissed at how bad one of them hurt. (Oops, shouldn’t say “piss” in this situation I guess!)

“Bergamot Swirl” is a psychedelic examination of the bergamot orange, a green, Ionian Sea lime-looking number that “tastes less sour than a lemon, but more bitter than a grapefruit.” First, I thought oranges were orange, so can someone clear that up please? Second, I like lemons and grapefruits, so I’ll be sure to try one of these when I can. Anybody brewing IPAs or anything with bergamots? Mixing them into smoothies? “Bergamot Swirl” is the sonic equivalent of the results of chugging a bergamot smoothie on a dare.

See? Dangerous: Forget the Times wants us to eat our fruits and our vegetables. And how’s Big Sugar gonna take that? Not sitting down, that’s for sure not how.

Avoid scurvy this wither over at NULL|Z0NE as they maintain some kind of healthy eating propaganda machine through sound. Edition of 50!