Permafrost AC – Skärmtiden läker alla sår

9.1.20 by Ryan Masteller

Ol’ Krister Mörtsell sure has his thing. Not only does he run the väldigt bra Do You Dream of Noise?, a massively cool ambient/electronic/post-rock label out of Sweden, he also performs as Permafrost AC, whose output varies from massively cool ambient to electronic to … I dunno, probably not post-rock. But still! Pea meets pod, or pod creates/cultivates/signs pea (to contract), and the rest is history, with Permafrost AC releases dotting the DYDON discography, and the discography of other labels. Including Lamour Records, which is what this one is on!

I have it on good authority (Google Translate) that “Skärmtiden läker alla sår” means “The screen time heals all wounds,” which I don’t understand in the slightest, so I’m not going to give it a second thought. (Translation programs don’t often get what I’m REALLY trying to say, you know? There’s an idiomatic blind spot to them.) What I do know is that we’re all wounded in some way, and we’re all striving to heal those wounds. Especially these days, these remarkably dumbshit, disappointing, and disconcerting days. Heal me, oh Permafrost AC, with your shafts of synthesizer light, with your gleaming cubes of EBow’d guitar!

And there they go – my wounds are fading. There’s something environmentally and psychically friendly about this kind of ambient music, the minor keys layered in the atmosphere, like you’re at the top of a mountain looking out upon the landscape and watching the clouds roll in. It’s not the kind of music that gives you an easy way out, emotionally, but it makes you think, contemplate, consider deep down how you’re going to approach everyday life hereafter. So it gets inside you and becomes part of you, and now you’re a serious thinker with an eye on making the world a better place. Wounds, begone! Now we heal your wounds.

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Moth Bucket / Bridges of Königsberg – split

8.28.20 by Ryan Masteller

As antisocial as it gets. Moth Bucket and Bridges of Königsberg, together at last, for the first time, for the last time. Or maybe not the last time. I have no idea if they’ll hook up again, or even if the individual collectives (Moth Bucket is the duo of Kevin Sims and James Searfoss; Bridges of Königsberg is Christopher Burns, David Collins, and Peter J. Woods) will be able to share the same room in the near future. Who’s to say with all this self-isolation? I haven’t seen another human being in months.

Still, these are antisocial times, and this split is filled to the butt with antisocial antimusic. Moth Bucket gets it though – “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Jazz!” is their track, and I can’t believe it either. Horn is supposed to make it jazz, right? Moth Bucket plays horn, and reeds, and it’s not jazz. It’s a long lament of being stranded somewhere where there’s no human interaction, like a desert island. Like my house is right now – a stucco desert island where I try to drink my own tears for sustenance. (My wife keeps trying to get me to drink water from the Brita pitcher, but I’m not convinced she’s even there.) Horn just breaks up the electronics and sampling and “Fun Machine.” It’s noise, guys. It’s noise. Maybe it’s in my head.

It is in my head! Bridges of Königsberg makes certain of that with their side, a little something called “The Curse of the Second Act.” I had no idea I was in my second act (is that what middle age is?), but heck if I don’t feel cursed right now. And the trio just rolls over me with a mélange of processed electronics that crush my brain and my sanity, and then they just continue on their way. That this thing lasts for eighteen minutes is a testament to how much intensity I can tolerate at one time. Moth Bucket was eighteen minutes too. I might be dead at this point?

Orbit Orb Tapes’s site and orb-grab one of these 50 orbs (tapes) beforb they’re orb (gone)!

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Bary Center – Guide Me Through the Hills of Your Home

8.4.20 by Ryan Masteller

Friends, we’re gathered here today for a somber occasion, one for which fanfare may or may not be appropriate (I haven’t decided yet). See, Mark Williams, the man behind the beloved Bary Center brand, has decided to hang up his spikes, as it were, and walk away from the moniker he made so popular, thereby burying it six feet underground in the cemetery right outside this chapel. See? A somber occasion. 

But it’s also one for joy! Sure, there’s the whole “Let’s remember Bary Center fondly and celebrate his career” thing, but there’s also the fact that he’s dropped one last BC tape on us before he rides off into that big old ranch in the sky. (My metaphors are all over the place today.) Not only that, he’s back at it with Brighton superlabel Third Kind, which is releasing it as catalog number 50 – a milestone! We sure do love our round numbers around here. [Ed: That number isn’t funny at all.]

So do you see my predicament? I’m not sure I can balance the emotions on this one. Maybe we’ll just ask our organist to play “Guide Me Through the Hills of Your Home,” chock full of beautiful psalms, and revel in its delight. Oh, our organist, Peg, is under the weather, so we have a replacement organist for the day. And I’m now seeing that he brought his own, much larger organ.

Or, uh, his own, much larger tape deck.

As you can hear from its synthesizer euphony and delicate rhythm patches, “Guide Me Through the Hills of Your Home” is a clear-eyed journey into what’s next. Meditative, contemplative, reflective while also looking to the future, Bary Center’s mood here is of the universal variety, one that anyone can slip into and out of whenever they need a moment of relief from whatever’s happening to them at whatever time. And of course, Bary Center and Third Kind simply fit together as kindred spirits – Williams and label showrunner (and awesome musician) Nicholas Langley previously appeared together under the four-way Third Kind split “Puzzle Time,” itself a glorious celebration of timbre and tone.

No circus music or plates smashing on the ground or whistles or anything of the kind involved at all. Just good, old-fashioned delight. 

So let’s give a proper goodbye to Bary Center, and a hearty “Best wishes!” to whatever’s on the horizon. And cheers to Third Kind on catalog number 50. This IS a joyous occasion!

“C60 housed in a black card box, includes three double sided photograph cards and a quality A4 print of Kate Tumes unique embroidery piece ‘A Benediction.’ Box edition strictly limited to 70 copies.”

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Benjamin Vraja – Anthology

7.14.20 by Ryan Masteller

Sometimes treasure is real. Not the pirate kind of treasure that lies in heaps in caves on deserted Caribbean islands, known only to those who possess the right maps and compasses and things, and maybe a dash of magic or a sprinkle of prophecy, but the everyday kind, the kind that unearths itself in the cleaning out of a closet or a garage or a space beneath a bed. Well, that’s not to say it can’t be the pirate kind, what with the preponderance of obviously sunken vessels that litter our eastern seaboard, filled to the brim with Spanish doubloons or jewels or artifacts or, say, Nazi gold bricks. In fact, there’s probably so much treasure at the bottom of the ocean just waiting for scientists and explorers to get to that we could probably eliminate poverty as we know it. Now, let’s get in our diving bell and get down there! 

I got off track there a little bit. I’m actually NOT here to talk about pirate treasure, but treasure a little more within our grasp. See, some of us are already flush with treasure, even though we might not know it. I, for instance, have a lot of clearly valuable baseball cards from the late 1980s and early 1990s, not to mention my stupendous and unmatched cassette collection. I’m one of the lucky ones, completely aware of the value of my collections as historical artifacts and cultural signposts. But others, like Matt Vraja, don’t know what they have until they “clean out the family estate.” 

I’m going to avoid telling the whole story, one you can read on the inside of the Jard of Benjamin Vraja’s “Anthology.” Yes, Matt and Benjamin are two different people, I didn’t introduce a typo up there. Matt is Benjamin’s nephew, who never actually met Benjamin before his sudden death in 1996 – Matt had just heard stories of the eccentric musician his uncle had been. But one day, in 2014, he actually came across his uncle’s recordings, and in matching the anecdotes to the fascinating and forward-thinking sounds he was hearing, Matt realized he had to introduce his uncle’s work to a wider audience. 

That’s where “Anthology” comes in. The tape captures recordings that Benjamin made in the 1970s and 1980s, at various studios and academic institutions, and with various equipment. Focused mainly on synthesizers and other proto-electronic gear, Benjamin experimented the hell out of what he had in front of him, and the results are never less than fascinating. Imagine finding lost Don Buchla tapes, or recordings by Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Wendy Carlos, or Ray Manzarek. Benjamin Vraja compositions might not fetch the millions of dollars these other big names would, but maybe that’s because he’s still a hidden … treasure. He doesn’t have to be so hidden anymore with this release, which should now be a must-have for anyone interested in early synth experimentalists. 

Honestly, though, sometimes it’s literal pirate treasure that turns up. You really never know.

You can grab this self-released beauty on Bandcamp. Edition of only 45. Truly as rare as gold! 

Amek Drone Ensemble – Op. 1

7.3.20 by Ryan Masteller

So many things are getting canceled anyway, we may as well cancel 2020 in its entirety, am I right? Every public event, unless you live in the southern United States (which I do … sigh), is going right out the window, gatherings of people banned because we’re all disgusting petri dishes made of meat that live to sicken the others. This includes, among a vast array of other activities, sporting events, church picnics, hang gliding classes, and musical concerts. I’m here to rant about my newly hang-gliding-lesson-free calendar.

I kid! This site’s for music, not hang gliding.

Among the COVID-related event casualties was Sofia Drone Day 2020, and if you, like me, were like “That sounds awesome!” upon discovering of that day’s existence and then immediately crushed that (a) it was canceled and (b) Sofia is a city in Bulgaria and you weren’t going to make it anyway, you might be surprised and potentially thrilled that Bulgaria’s own Amek Collective has you covered. Sort of. See, the Amek Drone Ensemble, made up of label vets Linus Schrab (V I C I M), Angel Simitchiev (Mytrip, and Amek honcho), Margarit Aleksiev (OOHS!), Ivan Shentov (krāllār), and Maxim Mokdad (OOHS!), were probably planning a pretty sweet 2020 set when the cancellation occurred, so they had to react fast. And react they did, releasing their Sofia Drone Day 2019 set as the ADE on cassette to tide you over. Tide you over till what? Till everything gets back to normal, that’s what.

So now we have Op. 1, a thirty-minute improvised glowing, hovering, rippling sphere of synths, loops, guitar, etc. that morphs and re-forms itself over the course of its gestation. The players absorb the spirit of Drone Day like it was belief in some sort of dark wizard Santa Claus, translating that faith into wave upon wave of thickly defined sound. Listening to Op. 1 has me thinking that maybe the quintet has set their gear up somewhere near the event horizon of a black hole, but then I realize how silly that is, because none of that gear would sit still enough to play. Still, this is some heavy, heavy drone.

So don’t feel too bad that you missed out on Sofia Drone Day 2020 (because you were anyway); feel good that you can wrap your mind around Sofia Drone Day 2019, because, you know, drone is timeless that way.

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Blotchouts – Lenora Guards the Egg

6.26.20 by Ryan Masteller

I couldn’t even imagine living in Alabama on a good day, let alone during this TIME of the COVIDs. But Blotchouts finds a way, the carnival-punk cacophony of “Lenora Guards the Egg” a greasy sparkle in the festering dirty river of human existence in the Deep South. Blotchouts probably can’t even wear a mask into the grocery store these days without the threat of getting beat up. It ain’t American to be forced to wear face coverings in public places, so anybody infringing on anybody’s freedom to walk into an establishment and NOT see a bunch of goobers covering their faces in surgical apparatus is ripe for a pounding. RIPE, I say!

Not that this has much to do with Blotchouts, or anything at all actually, and that’s before I even question my own preconceived notions of whether Blotchouts WANT to wear masks in public places. They may be the punchers instead of the punchees! At any rate, “Lenora Guards the Egg” is like listening to an itchy rash materialize on your skin and spread as far as it can before the antibiotics begin to do their dirty work. And that’s a good thing, trust me! Guitars irritate tender skin and synths squirt countermelodies like festering lesions lanced with the herky jerky rhythm section. That’s so gross! But that’s what you have to expect when you name your band anything with the word “blotch” in it – skin ailment metaphors are just par for the course here.

Skin ailment metaphors are probably par for the course in Alabama too, what do I know. You think those southerners are into songs called things like “Cockroach Milk” or “Enema”? How about “I’m a Baby”? Come to think of it, those aren’t so far-fetched. Still, the jittery jangle and abrasion of the wacky Devo’d maelstrom Blotchouts kicks up whips across the land, bursting through the borders of the Yellowhammer State and out into the great wider unknown. Weirdos getting picked up on tape decks from California to the New York island, just like Woody Guthrie promised. Did Woody Guthrie promise accessibly punk weirdness on the scale of Blotchouts when he wrote the New Testament? That’s a trick question – EVERYTHING was promised in the New Testament.

Buy Blotchouts and more, more, more from Pecan Crazy Records!

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Various Artists – Doom Mix Vol. IV

6.22.20 by Ryan Masteller

Isn’t it usually around the time of the fourth installment that franchises start to see a dip in quality? “Indiana Jones,” “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Halloween,” the Pearl Jam discography – nothing good lasts. Yet here we are, four years into the annual “Doom Mix” series from LA vampires Doom Trip Records, who, like clockwork, are celebrating the annual occurrence with a fourth cassette tape of the best the label has to offer. If you ask me, I’d say they’re playing with (gun)fire, spinning the chamber of their revolver in the Russian roulette game of quality musicianship, placing the barrel against their temple, and pulling the trigger.

I’m as terrified as you are.

But I’m also wildly intrigued, because the first three installments never suggested that quality would EVER be a problem, and, thus, the trigger clicks harmlessly and everybody goes back to what they were doing for another year. And here’s the real secret: there were never any bullets in the gun in the first place! It’s all quality, all the time for these Doom Trippers, and now that we’ve got that all out of the way it’s time to celebrate with sixteen more tracks of “freaking awesome.”

And they pretty much started this the way I would have started it if they had asked me my opinion on the tracklist. “Well, Doom Trip, I know this is a big ask, and I feel silly for even suggesting it, but is there any way you could start it with some Fire-Toolz? Angel Marcloid’s a pretty big deal right now, so that would be a guaranteed entry point for the uninitiated. Me? I’d be all over it. Then follow that up with some NMESH. (I know, right? Dreaming!)” 

So “Doom Trip IV” starts off with some new Fire-Toolz and some new NMESH, just like nobody asked me but should’ve. So I can’t stay mad at Doom Trip, because, in the end, I got my way, and isn’t that just how it should be? “Volume IV” keeps rolling with new faces and old, but all of them welcome presences among themselves. Want the alums? You’ve got Pale Spring (watch out for “DUSK,” super soon!), Mukqs, Diamondstein and Sangam, Rangers, and Heejin Jang. Dntel’s up in here, Tamborello in the house! (Sorry.) Personal faves of mine Ki Oni and KWJAZ show up. N00bs include Infinity Knives (ft. Bobbi Rush and Tyler Moonlight), maral ft. A.B.E., Cruel Diagonals, Lighght, Nordra, and Pauline Lay. 

So as usual, come for what you expect and get blown away by somebody you’ve never heard before. (Plus the Mukqs track here is kinda techno-y, which is awesome.)

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, did we break the curse of the fourth installment with “Doom Trip IV”? I think the answer is a resounding yes. Plus this tape’s dropping just in time for the summer, if you wanna blast it out your car stereo. (Which would be weird, I think, given the subdued nature of some of these tracks. Not that you’re going anywhere anyway with the COVID, unless you’re in Tennessee or Georgia or some other place where nobody cares whether people live or die.)

Good luck conjuring this already-sold-out nugget from the label! Use your dark magic on Discogs instead, or the black market.

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New Standards Men – I Was a Starship

6.12.20 by Ryan Masteller

We’re not going to have great ensemble music for a while, I reckon. What with self-isolation and social distancing, who’s gonna get together for band practice? Who’s gonna tour a full band around the country? Who’s gonna allow anybody in a studio? It’s all up in the air right now.

So we grasp what we can. Did I say “instant classic”? If not, New Standards Men’s “I Was a Starship” is an instant classic, a loaded t-shirt cannon aimed in the face of a superfan, and once that trigger’s pulled, there’s no amount of lawsuits or settlements that will make things go back to the way they were. In fact, just suggesting that you listen to this is going to probably set me up for multiple lawsuits. (I have no idea why I have lawsuits on the mind lately – I tend to be a sue-r, not a sue-ee [insert “Deliverance” joke here].)

That’s because “I Was a Starship” is road music for a series of fatal car crashes shot by Lost Highway–era David Lynch. It’s stoner metal and prog and the deepest, darkest lounge all smooshed together like auto wreckage in a trash compactor. Imagine Tonstartssbandht listening to a bunch of Bohren, or Explosions in the Sky getting their Sleep on. But all at once. AND WITH NO GALL-DANG VOCALS. What, you’re gonna mess up this mood with some jibber-jabber? I dare you to. I DARE you.

NSM is a quintet this time around, the core members of Drew Bissell and Jeremy Brashaw joined by Personal Archives’ own Bob Bucko Jr., Ike Turner, and Luke Tweedy (no, not THAT Ike Turner – he died in 2007). “I Was a Starship” is three tracks this time around (and forever), each an eleven-plus-minute jam sesh that finds the players in total kraut lockstep as they stretch and evolve ideas. And it’s loud – you can really crank this sucker up! So if you’re looking into your crystal ball and see a future bereft of awesome records from bands (my friend John: “Next year’s records are going to be the worst”), circle back to “I Was a Starship,” and flip 2021 right off (god, I can’t believe I’ve already given up on 2021 too).

Plus, the artwork. You see that octopus? *chef’s kiss* That’s courtesy of Daria Tessler/animalsleepstories.

Did I also mention that ol’ Warren Defever of His Name Is Alive fame mastered this thing at Third Man Pressing, home to human vampire bat Jack white of Edward Scissorhands fame? Now you know.

Edition of 100 out now on Personal Archives!

Max Zuckerman – The Corner Office

5.26.20 by Ryan Masteller

We’re not going anywhere anymore. At least I’m not. I’m staying home. There’s germs out there, and by golly I’m not going to get any of em on me. Luckily, I work from home, so I don’t even have to worry about braving social spaces like a workplace environment – my corner office is literally the office in the corner of my house. No public transit, no elevators, no lunch counters or cocktail hours – all that stuff is FILTHY with the COVID.

Max Zuckerman probably doesn’t have to worry about public transit or lunch counters. He probably has an exclusive, personal elevator to his glass-walled “Corner Office,” one that looks out over Manhattan. Cocktail hours? Forget about it. Everything in his wet bar is imported and sanitized long before it’s in his presence. He doesn’t share any of that, either – that’s his own personal stash. Why sully his presence with other people? That’s just folly in this day and age.

So he whiles away his time presiding over his business empire, and also making some great Steely Dan–inspired soft rock on the side. “The Corner Office” is how it happens, where it happens, why it happens. Truly success makes the man, etc., and Zuckerman oozes success. And not just success, but confidence too – and why wouldn’t he exude cascading showers of self-worth? All this is pumped through the PA, the atrium absorbing “The Corner Office” and ricocheting it at the perfect volume for all to hear. 

And so we’re left to ponder Zuckerman’s worldview, one where the most extravagant things are the norm and where a not-insignificant amount of money – say, $240 – can get blown on a trivial thing rather than on two weeks’ worth of groceries. It’s the penthouse life, and we can only dream of it. That’s what happens when you have Galtta cash.

Now, somebody get me $240 worth of pudding – I need to rub my silk-dinner-jacketed ass in it, just like Max Zuckerman does.

Available right now in an edition of 125 from Galtta.

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Matthew D. Gantt – Diagnostics

5.21.20 by Ryan Masteller

“Patella I GM Expo” ends its 18 seconds at the beginning of Diagnostics with a cymbal crash, a digital exclamation point on the track that seems intended as a “ta-daa!” to the introduction, a curtain call at the beginning of the album instead of at the end of it. It doubles as an announcement, something along the lines of, “If you liked this teaser, you’re going to love what comes after it!” Matthew D. Gantt’s not wrong in feeling proud of his album, even after only 18 seconds. He proves over the rest of Diagnostics that he deserves a little applause already.

The “procession of nested MIDI architectures, clip art serialism, and hypothetical kinetic sculptures suspended in virtual space” spirals out from there, assuming that someone like me is smart enough to get it, that my brain has been sensitized enough to compute the details and get what the heck Gantt’s trying to accomplish here. Good thing I’m up to the challenge. While you may assume prior to listening that Diagnostics is going to be a clinical trek through exhaustive (and exhausting) experimentation, often at a deeply scientific level, you’ll be pleasantly surprised that it is, instead, a diverse and, dare I say, inviting listening experience, in the most Orange Milk–y way possible. Sure it’s got the requisite digital mayhem, percussive hits and plosives ricocheting off in chaotic polyrhythms. But it’s also got heart, it’s got soul, which is something that’s intended to exist in a virtual realm should not necessarily have. Maybe the AI’s becoming self-aware?

Regardless, Gantt’s got an ear for off-kilter melodies (or maybe it’s his programs’ doing), thus removing cold, hard science from the equation. He’s able to produce and inhabit miniature sound-worlds, allowing imagination to soar through the landscapes. That he does this while at the intersection of experimentation and accessibility is no small feat, and proves that Gantt’s on the leading edge of technological sound art. Maybe that’s what happens when you work for Morton Subotnick as a studio assistant (as Gantt did from 2016 to 2018). It’s also me being extremely jealous.

Grip it and rip it from the source!

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