Various Artists – Mighty Giant Pinky: Tribute Ugh Yoing / Satanicpornocultshop

5.14.20 by Ryan Masteller

I’m pretty nervous about writing up this tribute album to Ugh Yoing, member of Japan’s Satanicpornocultshop, mainly because of that name. I pretty much can’t do any research on my work computer. And I apologize in advance to my mom about the browser history that now exists on my phone; no matter how specifically I attempt to streamline the research parameters, I can’t type in “satanic,” “porno,” or “cult” without having to scrub my searches like they’re hard surfaces coated in coronaviruses. And, uh, by “mom” I mean my wife. My mom doesn’t care anymore. 

But it’s not about me – it never was, or is, no matter how hard I try to make it that way. Especially now, as one who has not attempted to approach Ugh Yoing and crew’s music before, a n00b out of his league in a sea of rabid fans. No, it’s about Ugh himself, and the experimental music community on which he made such an impact. In fact, he impacted Ergo Phizmiz so much that Phizmiz curated an album’s worth of material from likeminded adventurists, a LONG album’s worth of material, so much, in fact, that it barely fit into one cassette tape. This would never play on the messed-up side of Mike’s tape deck.

Phizmiz harkens back to the “golden days of the internet,” when, “across the high seas of cyberspace, they would wantonly flout copyright law and the limits of genre, making indefinable music with computers that didn’t fit into any comfortable bracket.” And thus “plunderphonics” was born! Or at least improved upon. Regardless, that feels like as comfortable a bracket as any to fit Satanicpornocultshop into, along with IDM and footwork and sick, twisted pop. “Mighty Giant Pinky” hits all of these notes and more, and regardless of whether this was an album in tribute to someone or not, the utter variety and fizzing innovation holds it together anyway. That, and it’s also freaking fascinating.

Playing through “Mighty Giant Pinky” in one sitting is like jamming a fistful of Skittles into your mouth and chawing on that for a half hour, the flavor explosion a veritable rainbow of oral sensation. Er, audio sensation. Because you’re getting treated to wild rides like the kiddie-punk-core of Orrorinz’s title track, QST’s dancefloor squirtmobile “On Her Satanic Majestic Secret Disco Service,” Prawnshocker’s proto-vaporwave collage “Piss Right Off,” and Ergo Phizmiz’s excellent plunder-gabber nightmare “Come Get Me Now.” In between there’s actual experiments, like Peter Wullen’s field-recording (?) “Tribute to Ugh Yoing (Bashung Deconstruction)” and {An Eel}’s sample-trigger workout “Satanicpornocultshop (R.I.P.).” There’s even one specifically for me! Thee Alex drops strange radio-concoction-meets-IDM album closer “Listening to Satanicpornocultshop for the First Time,” and if I feel anything like that while listening to ACTUAL Satanicpornocultshop music, I’m in for the long haul.

This beaut is brought to us by Strategic Tape Reserve, a label you should now know quite well – any tape bearing the “STR” logo on its spine should be on your “must-listen” list. And if you’re looking for me, I’ll be digging into that Satapor discography over on Bandcamp.

Related Links

Tristan Magnetique – 2

5.8.20 by Ryan Masteller

Hey, we live in troubled times. Times that only seem to get weirder the deeper we get into them. Times that absolutely defy us when we say, “Welp, can’t get any worse!” Guess what these times have to say to us when we mouth off like that? “They can, dude, and they will!” And they have. 

Ugh, crap, they sure have.

So what’s there to do about it? How do we feel better about anything? How do we get ourselves out of bed in the morning to face a new damn day when we know we’re just going to get force fed a worse piece of information or encounter a more horrific experience than we did the day before? I know for me there’s nothing like a hot cup of coffee and a jog around the block to get me going. But that’s not for everyone. What IS for everyone is this new Tristan Magnetique tape on Cosmic Winnetou, and you know it’s gotta be perfect because “Magnetique” translates from the French to “magnetique,” which sounds like “magnetic,” which is basically the term that connects any cassette-based conversation. You’re obviously in good hands!

Another reason you’re in good hands: ol’ Tristan is actually Günter Schlienz, purveyor of all things Cosmic Winnetou and electronic ambient artist of some renown. This is his first TM release since 2018’s triple-decker self-titled slab on Otomatik Muziek, a cornucopia of unending sonic drift. (Well, it ended at some point, but it was long after I had succumbed fully to its state of mind.) So even though “2” is ONLY a double cassette, it stretches nicely past the hour mark. And I need a bit more than an hour of Tristan Magnetique in my life to get me back on track, get me into a more normal headspace.

So “2” twinkles like stars reflecting of a lake surface, built from synthesizer drones and samples, centering all around that can hear its tranquil tones to a place of sheer comfort. Didn’t I use the verb “need” when referring to a tape like this? It’s such a calming presence, yet packs enough mystery in its shimmering aura to keep the intrepid adventurer happy. It’s also intimate and therapeutic, so you can pop this on while you’re by yourself for a lengthy soothe, or, god forbid, you can use it when you’re not feeling so hot for some curative vibes. Either way, you’ll be better off once it’s over.

Limited to 70 hand-numbered copies from Cosmic Winnetou. Get it!

Related Links

Dylan Henner – A Dingo Crossing a Stream

5.1.20 by Ryan Masteller

Let me stop you right there, OK? Right at “I visited Australia for my day-job as a photographer’s assistant.” Already you’ve stoked the pangs of jealousy in the heart of this wanderlust-struck music aficionado, one who’s never been to Australia and who may never get there. There’s a lengthy flight to the other side of the world that I’d have to deal with, and also it’s probably pretty expensive. I know one, maaaybe three people in Australia (and I may be confusing one’s domicile with New Zealand). And who knows if there will even be an airline industry in a few months. (Oh right, the bailout!)

(Fun fact: my parents were applying for jobs in Australia before I was born, so it’s possible I could have grown up in the outback, by crikey.)

So, Dylan, I guess we’ll have to experience Australia vicariously through your Inner Islands tape “A Dingo Crossing a Stream,” the title a warning for anyone with small children to keep them close at all times. But no, let’s remove all of our humanness from “Dingo,” shall we? Let’s just let the Dingo be, let it lap at the water, let it saunter into the bush. That’s what an Inner Islands release would condition us to do: observe, document, reflect. Allow time to pass. Allow nature to take its course. With that in mind, Dylan, we’ll have to thank you for perpetuating the style, stringing together pools of rippling synthesizer that perfectly synchronize with the time lapse of “A Pool Deeply Gouged Out by Water” or “A River Drying Out,” long-form actions that stretch across generations.

And with so many stretches of space in Australia, it’s easy to superimpose these sounds and imaginings on the place itself. By the time we’re ready to “Take a Feather from the Old Pelican,” the sidelong closer, we’ve been indoctrinated into the geography and ready to go on walkabout. Stuck as I am in the United States, my walkabout must of necessity be a spiritual one. But hey, I need all the exercise I can get! Too bad it won’t be on site Down Under. But thanks, Dylan, for recording your impressions of the place for us. Now, the Dreamtime awaits!

Edition of 100 from Inner Islands.

Related Links

Stuart Chalmers and Taming Power – Blue Thirty-Two

4.21.20 by Ryan Masteller

If we ever find ourselves cloistered in a monastery atop a mountain where our only activities would revolve around self-betterment through meditation and repetitious and mundane daily tasks, then we have found the perfect aural counterpart here in Stuart Chalmers and Taming Power (aka Astrid Haugland)’s release on Blue Tapes, “Blue Thirty-Two.” Utilizing electric guitar, tape fx, and an Indian instrument called a “swarmandal” (essentially a zither), Chalmers and Haugland play and loop their way into our hearts and minds with magnificent ragas that billow in reverence and approval to our routine. They become part of the meditative existence, a subject of it, and an accompaniment slightly removed, all at once. Some might call that a neat trick; I call it the ability to get on the same level with and commune among the existential searchers.

That’s how we begin, anyway: a lonely guitar is joined presently by the swarmandal, the effect like church bells chiming across the hills and valleys. This type of playing bookends the tape, and we breathe it like the players do. The swarmandal is bowed on the final track, which only serves to heighten its ethereality, although both instruments are effected and looped until they become visible rays of the rising sun over the tops of distant mountains. The part of the tape sandwiched by these two compositions is called “Tape Recorders and FX” on the Bandcamp page (no tracklist – or artist, release, or label info – appears on the tape or artwork itself), and is a series of transmissions warped and bleeped and picked up as radio signals by broken receivers. Consider, then, that the monastery’s a front for a Bond-villain-esque world-domination scheme and the center of “Blue Thirty-Two” is a glimpse under the ground into a secret lair. Could happen, why not? Monks are notoriously tight-lipped.

So whether you’re meditating the traditional way or relaxing while parsing the signal to snow ratio of a hidden FM band, you’ll have willing partners in Stuart Chalmers and Astrid Haugland. They can show you the ropes, too, if you need some pointers.

The artifact itself is gorgeous too – full cassette shell printing housed in a printed O-card. Just look at it up there!

Related Links

Tanner Menard – San Francisco: An Audiophony in Four Movements

4.17.20 by Ryan Masteller

Oh, you’re going to like this one. This one is for the nerds, the high-concept lunatics who won’t settle for anything less than full immersion into a subject or practice. Tanner Menard’s cooked up a real winner here with “San Francisco: An Audiophony in Four Movements,” a suite of material for and about (and by?) San Francisco, obviously. Menard solicited their friends Ping Chu and Chris Horgan to capture field recordings and performances in various places around the city’s metropolitan area, and then utilized those recordings, along with a thirty-foot-long piano (with “various experimental tunings by Nick Gish”), to craft the music on this “Audiophony.” A thirty-foot-long piano! That’s like, what, the length of a football* field?

* Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Humans used to play it in the before times.

To suggest that “San Francisco” sounds like a dream of the city would be an understatement – it sounds like a dream of anywhere, with its gently keyed melodies brushing up against and mingling with the ambient sounds of the city itself and its inhabitants. But it’s definitely a love letter to the Pacific coast locale, a wistful paean hovering above the city as if in protection as the sea laps the shore and the faces and bodies mingle in time lapse till everything and everyone is a mass of sentience and blurred motion. The fog rarely lifts, and that’s OK – the fog is part of the San Francisco experience.

Menard effortlessly blends the field recordings with the piano passages, resulting in sheer aural magic that blankets everything in a haze of wonder. If this is how someone perceives San Francisco, then I’m all in for my first trip out there. Of course, I could never live there (too expensive, 49ers, Giants), but I certainly wouldn’t mind a visit. Maybe I could even check out a Tanner Menard installation or two? This is probably hard to recreate live, I’d imagine.

Edition of 100 cassettes housed in a printed O-card on Full Spectrum under the Editions Littlefield series, whose “works … deal with a sense of place.” Obviously! 

my.head – Catharsis

4.14.20 by Ryan Masteller

Our tour of Display continues with my.head, a Marseille, France, producer and musician whose moniker looks like the title of a computer virus if you ask me. For example, if you found a flash drive on the street with a file in it called my.head.exe, would you run the file? If you are anything like the poor dupes Elliot Alderson hacks in “Mr. Robot,” you would. But since you’re a self-respecting experimental music fan, you know better. Honestly, how many Wolf Eyes CDs have you discovered contain only malware once you load them into your computer? That’s right, all of them. How many have you run? All of them, of course. So you’ve learned your lesson.

I have great news, though: my.head is not a computer virus, and the music that you will be hearing from your speakers that originates within the spools of this tape will overtake you in a different way. Call it a life hack, then, like those self-betterment strategies popular media/culture foist upon you, which are almost all sponsored by big corporations. Display is not a big corporation – Display is a tape label. Display releases tapes like my.head’s “Catharsis” because they really are invested in your personal self-betterment. Why do you think all their tapes are so good?

That trend continues with my.head, who plies the dark ambient waters of the emotional deep like labelmate Sangam, or frequent Sangam collaborator Diamondstein, or maybe Burial on his less propulsive EPs. Clocking in at over forty minutes, my.head slathers each heavy minute with cinematic synthesizer, a symbolic soundtrack to those symbolic waves of emotion breaking on the symbolic rocky shore of your mind. The coastline is deserted, desolate; you are the only one there. This might be the plot of “The Lighthouse,” but I haven’t seen that yet (fingers crossed it’ll be soon!) – if it is, I apologize that my.head wasn’t tapped to score it. I obviously wasn’t notified in time.

“Catharsis” is the sound of processing great existential turmoil. Voices appear and flee, pulses race and recede, and skies darken and clear. In the end you crash through that barrier of tension to the releases of catharsis. … Make that “Catharsis.” Hey, that’s pretty appropriately titled, now that I think of it! Virus or not.

This is a fun one: “Transparent Grey/Smoke Cassette; Hand Marble Swirled; Printed Sticker Label; Printed J-Card; Clear Case; Labeled Black Bag; Sticker Included.” Only 40, available from Display!

Related Links

RNL – Conquering King Kong

4.3.20 by Ryan Masteller

Look, I’m not up on my Kong lore (that whole narrative just doesn’t do it for me), but wasn’t King Kong a misunderstood animal that was captured, removed from his home, and transported to New York City for the entertainment of rich white jagbags? That doesn’t really sound like a thing I’d want to “conquer,” but I guess if the gigantic ape functioned more as a metaphor for seemingly insurmountable life obstacles, then it makes a little more sense. Still, I feel really bad for that monkey. He had it so unfair.

I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise for me then that the idea of “Conquering King Kong” really does serve as a metaphor here, as RNL, aka Berlin-based Jesse Farber, has dug through archives of material he recorded as far back as 1984 and as recently as 2019. What better way to process the passage of time and the buildup of psychic baggage than by sifting through the past and processing it (sometimes to an insane degree) until it all makes sense to you in the present in some form? That’s what Farber does: he tackles the King Kong of his past and wrestles that great beast to the ground until he can live with it.

You hear that, naysayers? He COMES TO TERMS AND LIVES WITH the monkey. Poor movie monkey, shot down by helicopters and whatnot.

“Conquering King Kong” itself is a fascinating listen, as the tape is split into two lengthy suites with an intermission (“Interregnum”). “Eyeholes” begins with some excellent drone before it builds in intensity and volume, finally dropping out and breaking into warped rhythmic passages, finally ending on spectral ambience. “Chopping Off Every Finger” drops right into the rippling ambience, processed sound sources spiking and receding, then drifting through the ghosts of sonic architecture. Speaking of ghosts, digital squirts appear through a digital mist by the digital end, sounding like Pac-Man’s nemeses on the prowl.

RNL sounds like he’s conquered his past, his “King Kong,” by the end of this tape. Now let’s just hope he doesn’t get marooned on Skull Island for any length of time. 

“Conquering King Kong” is available in an edition of 100 from RNL / VONCONFLON.

Related Links:

Primary Mystical Experience – Space Dust

3.30.20 by Ryan Masteller

This is almost assuredly what I’ve been waiting my whole life for. This is it: that moment when my entire body breaks down into its constituent atoms, the electrons holding everything together losing their charge, allowing the building blocks of my body to drift apart and expand outward, just like the universe. 

“Each speck of dust is a world within a world within space.” Ain’t that the truth, Primary Mystical Experience. Ain’t that the truth. If you think about it, it’s all about perspective, about the relation of one thing to another. We’re all hurtling through space – as a sentient human being, I perceive size and motion and self and relate that to the rest of the universe, however daunting and overwhelming that is. And it is daunting and overwhelming, so much so that I myself can be considered a speck of space dust, just as the specks of space dust that make up my body are also specks of space dust. Same goes for Mike and Dave and Joe B, maybe Ian. Not Jamie though – Jamie is pure light.

And that’s where Primary Mystical Experience comes in. PME adds sound to the dissipation, to the expansion, to the space in between. Zooming in on miniscule particulate floating through space that would be utterly unperceivable in any circumstance – well, except in this one, in our imagination – PME explores the infinity of space and time through the unlikely encounter. As the glistening synthesizers fill our mind and enhance our senses, we’re able to explore with him the minute details of existence and ponder the secrets of the universe – “secrets” here meaning size, distance, probability … basically anything math-related that plebs like me have no business contemplating. 

Still, we are human, are we not? We contemplate what we want.

“Space Dust” assists in the contemplating. It provides the backdrop for deep meditation and introspection. It wraps us a in a pressurized cocoon so we can travel through the vacuum of space, zero-g, just floating there with nothing but pinpricks of starlight to keep us company. This is it – this is how we get out there too, how we experience it. All while staying safe here on terra firma of course.

Tape available from Aural Canyon.

Related Links

Secret Boyfriend – Memory Care Unit Vol. 2

3.25.20 by Ryan Masteller

Existential crises – we all have them. They can manifest at any given time and affect us in a variety of ways. Sometimes they make us think that anything we try to do, any plan we make, will be rendered useless in due time, often quickly. At other times, they make us think that everything we’ve done has been for nothing. And at OTHER other times, they just make us feel completely irrelevant in a grand universal manner.

All these things are the same.

Secret Boyfriend dabbles in a little bit of the Gramscian, in that “the old is dying and the new cannot be born. … In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appears.” “Memory Care Unit Vol. 2” charts a course through this arrested progress, where tones beget tension the longer they’re allowed to hover in the air. Normally I’d call the whole family into the living room to gather round the hi-fi and enjoy the latest primordial synthesizer masterpiece as it drizzles in from the speakers of the hi-fi, but I think this one might just set everyone on edge a little bit, grind a few sets of teeth. That may be one of the symptoms, though: avoidance. Facing our fears and future head on is probably the healthiest thing we can do, because we can look to each other for help and guidance through the tough times. But fuck that shit – I’m sticking my head in the sand.

“Memory Care Unit Vol. 2” moves from crisis to full-on breakdown as the tape tracks from side A to B. At first the synthesizer follows you around, stalking you from behind and ramping up the creep factor as it overstays its welcome in your consciousness (“Memory Care Unit”-as-physical-creeper, not “Memory Care Unit”-as-musical-artifact – I don’t want THAT thing to stop). The drones get under your skin and in your head. But when the second side hits, we get into a nightmarish tape-manipulation game that begins with a stretched and screwed field recording that contains an unearthly scream. The “Forgotten Choir” reminds us that there’s still thick slabs of synth awaiting us, but as soon as it becomes the “Fossilized Choir” it glitches out again. From there it’s spooky horror soundtracks to the end. Horror soundtracks to our unholy existential crises.

That is until “20th Version” ends the tape like it’s the rapture or something. Well, a rapture straight into a supernova, anyway. We’ll all hold hands around the table and enter into oblivion together, and all the crises and cancerous symptoms will dissipate in a flash of fission. Sweet freedom!

Available from our weird friends at Hot Releases.

Kris and Tavi – Lines in Dirt

3.19.20 by Ryan Masteller

Yet another German Army project on Skrot Up, eh? It almost seems like the Bermuda-based imprint is a vanity label of sorts for GeArheads, featuring not only offshoots like Q///Q, Final Cop, and now Kris and Tavi but also German Army itself, who released their SELF-TITLED TAPE on Skrot Up back in 2013. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if it proved to be a secret GeAr headquarters, like a remote island where Bond villains set up shop. But of course German Army are the heroes here, so it’s a good island. Well, once German Army takes over the world, that is.

Peter Kris here joins Tara Tavi for some heavily treated guitar-and-voice-and-sometimes-not-voice meditations, the tracks drenched in reverb like they’re playing in an echo chamber. Think Dirty Beaches without the swagger, or James Hurley’s “Twin Peaks” tune with a little bit of self-awareness and depth. (Shut up I love “Just You” and I don’t care.) If I were going to slap a genre on it, I wouldn’t be able to choose between shoegaze and folk, because neither are right but neither are far off either. Maybe if, instead of the titular heroes in “Honey I Shrunk the Kids,” Mazzy Star got shrunk by the shrink ray and set up their gear inside a shoebox instead of spent their two hours together running from ants and bees we’d be closer. But without drums. 

Still, it’s hard not to think of Peter Kris wielding an ax with “This Machine Kills Fascists” emblazoned on it. That just seems right. Except this ax is plugged into an effects board. Ol’ Woody’d be so proud.

Hey, only 3 left from the original run of 29! Don’t miss out!

Related Links