Tabs Out | Introducing Bumpy

Introducing Bumpy
6.5.18 by Mike Haley

Bumpy! Bumpy! Bumpy!

The goblin communities absolute favorite warped-crooner, Larry Wish, has taken his batty and twisted stylings to labels Orange Milk, Field Hymns, and Moon Glyph in the past. He’s sat in their storefront display cases, mixing Neil Hamburger and Sinatra and rejected demos sent to K record in the 90’s, melting away in the hot summer’s sun. In 2018 Larry Wish (real name Adam Werven) is prepared to open his own shoppe.

Bumpy! Bumpy! Bumpy!

GRAND OPENING! Soooooo what’s for sale? Werven has opened up the personal vaults and dusted cobwebs off some golden oldies. Three different monikers, all him (what a prank!). Here’s what we got…

 

Bumpy 01: “The Mouth is the Most Promising” ~ Larry Wish & His Guys

Bumpy No. 1 is “The Mouth is the Most Promising”, the 2nd album by Larry Wish & His Guys. Originally recorded in 2012 in the basement of the Organ Haus in Minneapolis, MN by producer/engineer Steve Earnest, this album showcases Larry Wish & His Guys at their most playful and erratic. These songs are often a strange blend of lulling calm & frenetic energy with the band expressing humor and dramatic emotion around each twist and turn. For this special reissue, “The Mouth is the Most Promising” has been remastered and pro-dubbed in a limited run of 100 high-bias chrome cassettes. Bumpy is excited to have “The Mouth is the Most Promising” as the very first in our catalogue!

 

Bumpy 02: “Kiosk” ~ Used Condo

Bumpy No. 2 is a truly bizarre work indeed. “Kiosk” by Used Condo is the soundtrack to a fictional video game of the same name. In “Kiosk”, one explores an abandoned shopping mall that happens to be under the duress of demonic oppression. The soundtrack reflects the overwhelming nature of this concept as a constantly swirling tapestry of popular music samples, tape loops, electronic gurgles, and plenty of other sounds that never seem to sit still. We are proud to offer “Kiosk” on high bias chrome cassettes for optimum quality listening.

 

Bumpy 03: “Humanoid Humanoid Humanoid Humanoid, Four Humanoids” ~ mangoSleeves

Bumpy No 3. is “Humanoid Humanoid Humanoid Humanoid, Four Humanoids” by mangoSleeves, which was an alias used by Adam Werven before choosing the name Larry Wish. “Four Humanoids” is a progressive bedroom pop album originally recorded in 2008 and can be considered as the first Larry Wish album. This fledgling release comes with a big range. On one end, there are light moments that breathe easy in simple and lulling melody. On the other end, there are dark moments of intensity where one is left wondering if there is light at the end of the tunnel. There is a recurring theme of searching on this final mangoSleeves album; searching for home, love, & identity. We are excited to have remastered this special gem, and are proud to present it to you in an edition of 100 pro-dubbed high-bias chrome cassettes.

 

Wow, it’s like a genie granted us all three Larry Wishes. All tapes are pro-dubbed, all tapes are editions of 100, all tapes are basically necessary unless you want to feel like a fool. You don’t want to feel like a fool, do you? Not in front of BUMPY! Head on over to their HQ and buy.

Tabs Out | Tape Label or Weed Strain?

Tape Label or Weed Strain?
4.20.18 by Mike Haley

If you’re one of these turkeys that listens to “experimental musics” cassette tapes then you must be a real figgin’ outsider – A true WEIRDO living on the god damn fringes of society. Being such a deviant, you must also be POUNDING one-hitters of that primo wacky-green to the dome on the daily. Reeeeeeeal sticky stuff. But are you so far gone that you can’t even friggin’ distinguish between cassettes and cannabis anymore!? Take our annual 4/20 Tape Label or Weed Strain quiz and find out.

Let’s get rolling…

Tabs Out | Tingo Tongo: What We Know

Tingo Tongo: What We Know
4.9.18 by Mike Haley

Zingo Zongo, Vingo Vongo, Tingo Tongo. On the surface it all seems like nonsense, but pick a bit at the scab and get deeper down in there. You’ll see that it’s all still mostly nonsense… Let’s leave the Zingo and the Zongo and the Vingo and the Vongo be for the moment and focus on Tingo Tongo. What do we know?

Tingo Tongo appears to be a cassette label, but one that issues tapes the way a blender without it’s lid issues smoothies. They are, in a very real sense, a mess. A very specific mess operating totally below any known radar with the elegance and attitude of a wet sloppy joe. Their awkwardness is, of course, extremely lovable. Tingo exists in the rawest of zones. One where on-point techno and the audio from Freddy Got Fingered get issued in one swoop. With a MS Paint designed logo and tapes that are sometimes vacuum sealed Tingo Tongo have a hefty catalog while sporting a single-entry Discogs page (aka: barely a Discogs page). They also received this handsome review from Cassette Gods.

Who runs the label?
Mike Meanstreetz
Zack Vidal
NAME

Where are they from?
Southern California

“We like to make things difficult.” Zack Vidal said of the operation. “In the day and age of the computer life it’s pretty easy to find the complex emotional expressions and the painfully personal subjective obscurities of our modern society. With something like tapes, and DIY experimentation – to buy/consume media in the physical, to hunt and search the racks, dig through the crates, finding something that screams at you – that is part of the ephemera which fuels this growing interest in the experimental .”

Their Bandcamp page is sparse, as if everyone forgot the password for it (try “password69”) and couldn’t get new releases up, but it’s still loaded with goodies. Poopdood (think about that name for a minute) and Igor Amokian split a tape that sounds like a collection of beats that ate bad rest stop fish. Like, landlocked rest stop fish.

Who are some of the artist they have released tapes by?

BagLady
Bobby London
Bonus Beast
Burnt Dot
BUTTMUNCH
CMMZMMMG
Conrad Burnham
D.O.T.W.C.
Fenkoff
Igor Amokian
JESSOP & CO.
Joanna Swan
Johnny Baxter
k^ren
Name
Nothing Band
Parallax Beach
PRESENT
Psychic Eyeclix
poopdood
Squim
STADIUM
Teeth Gnashers
TENDHER
Unoperator
WHEREAS

Their Bandcamp may be somewhat trim, but the Soundcloud is burstin’ at the seams, clocking in at 167 tracks of tapes, live tracks, mixes, and who-knows-whats. Oh, and I’ve found out how to buy these tapes! And it’s super simple. Here are the instructions listed on their Soundcloud page:

BUY SOME TAPES BUY SOME TAPES BUY SOME TAPES BUY SOME TAPES BUY SOME TAPES BUY SOME TAPES BUY SOME TAPES BUY SOME TAPES BUY SOME TAPES BUY SOME TAPES BUY SOME TAPES BUY SOME TAPES TINGOTONGOTAPES@GMAIL.COM

So there. Email them I guess? Perhaps the mood will strike you and you’ll want to BUY SOME of this here War Hippy tape!? Give it a shot.

A swell place to land this puppy is the Tingo Tongo Youtube page where you’ll find a few music vidz. But the real money there is the animation that rivals the classic Skull Trumpet thing. Void of audio and only a few seconds long… promos I guess? I don’t know, but it’s just occurring to me now that Tingo Tongo IS the Skull Trumpet thing. They entertain and don’t give a fuck. That is what we know. Vingo Viva Tingo Tongo!

Tabs Out | MSHR share new video/tape/universe

MSHR share new video/tape/universe
4.6.18 by Mike Haley

With mediums and methods that pin prick reality, Brenna Murphy and Birch Cooper have been building virtual worlds of sounds and visuals, specifically under the name MSHR, for seven years. In addition to immersive VR situations, MSHR make circuit-burning analog noise. Some of which will be on a cassette titled “Phased Trance Constructions,” released 4/20 (ya know, the weed day!) via Unifactor.

Murphy and Cooper have produced a video featuring their unique 3D modeling for the track Wave Guide Edifice. Structures and items that appear to have been forged from glass candy rotate with a mesmerizing purpose. Pinning down their intended use is impossible – decoration? shelter? mind control? ALL THREE!? Either way, the sounds embrace the visuals, the visuals embrace the sounds, and the user is sucked in. Watch the vid above and see what I’m saying…

Preorders for “Phased Trance Constructions” are up now, along with new jams by Christian Mirande and Headband. Each an edition of 100 copies.

 

Tabs Out | Cartoon Forest – self-titled

Cartoon Forest – self-titled
3.22.18 by Mike Haley

At the age of nine or so I decided that I must know what was inside of an Etch-A-Sketch. I quickly devised a brilliant plan: I would smash it with a hammer. To dull the sound I covered the Etch-A-Sketch with a cushion from my parents couch and BAM! Whacked the sucker, heard it crack, gangbusters. Turns out it was filled with aluminum powder. Also turns out that aluminum powder set free from it’s protective case is like dealing with loose spray paint. The cushion looked like a unicorn did a runny silver diarrhea on it. I disposed of the broken Etch-A-Sketch, put the cushion back on the couch, explosion side down, and the stain was never mentioned. Ever.

We don’t get off so easy with Cartoon Forest. Instead of an Etch-A-Sketch, Wooly Willy has been ruptured. It clearly states on the packaging that Wooly’s magnetic dust is to be used to draw three things:

  • Whiskers
  • Hair
  • Eyebrows

Those rules are not being followed here. From the sounds of it, the magnetic dust is experimenting with digestion for the first time. A dangerous move, considering Wooly Willy hasn’t had a body since being created in 1955. Instead of uni brows and mustaches it’s forming ascending colons and gallbladders. Heavy chunks of noise protein break into amino acids as loops degrade. Dilloway devotees know this zone well — A haunting series of celiac cycles closing in on you. The feeling of wearing a bug’s shell. Cartoon Forest ooze right into those degenerative duties. I’m not a detective, but I think it’s safe to assume that plenty of tape manipulation was going down in Edinboro, PA the night this was all recorded.

Who is Cartoon Forest you may or may not have asked?

Ryan Emmett – Co-zoner for White Reeves Productions. His old band, Hunted Creatures, used to send me cute Xmas cards and I suspect he “inhales” if you catch my drift.

Eric Messerall – I don’t know who this is, but if you google their name the Twitter acct @fartsarejazz comes up.

Michael Skz – In addition to Cartoon Forest Michael put out a tape under the name Earth/Vessel. Also his last name has no vowels.

I don’t know who is the Whiskers, Hair, and Eyebrows of the group, but I hope to find out one day.

Cartoon Forest is for ages 5 thru adult. Buy a copy before they are bye-bye.

Tabs Out | Terlu – Big Bingo

Terlu – Big Bingo
3.18.18 by Mike Haley

Happy Harry’s was a chain of drugstores started in Wilmington, DE back in 1962 that was eventually gobbled up by Walgreens. The chain was best known for the cartoon depiction of founder Harry Levin’s head on all of their branded products. A fun thing to do was to draw Harry a body, most likely with his genitals out. Real bad boy stuff, and truly Mr. Levin’s legacy. A lesser known fact about Happy Harry’s is that I worked there for a good seven or eight months back in high school. I once stole a delivery of blue flavored Powerade and drank so much of that chemical mixture my poop turned blue as this tape’s Norelco case. MY legacy.

Terlu is giving me Happy Harry flashbacks. Specifically to the 15 minutes spent cramped in the break room each shift. It was a classic break room, meaning outdated safety posters featuring Randall Cunningham drooped from the wall by yellowed tape, every open surface was slick to the touch from years of spilled milk, and the store radio came through a 5″ intercom speaker propped in the drop ceiling that sounded like it was brushing it’s teeth. “Big Bingo” is full of that. This tape of unreleased 2011 recordings, Not Not Fun‘s 344th (!!!) release, jaunts like an ice cream truck circling a cul de sac. Tervu scoops some straight forward Casio melodies with 1990’s convenience store charm. The absence of interruptions is noticeable, in that I mean you almost expect the music to mute for a moment and the pharmacy to chime in with a ‘prescription filled’ announcement. Moods shift over the dozen tracks, but it’s forever playful and bright, I suppose themes that make people want to spend money??? Like those break room surfaces coated with dairy film, “Big Bingo” is encrusted with a similar amount of tape hiss. Hiss so sharp it’s nearly upgraded to an instrument, all attention grabbing and stained to the music. A pleasant and lo-fi time slide to $1.99 packs of cigarettes and camera film drop offs.

I would suggest hanging a poster of Magic Johnson holding a cardboard box with the caption “Real All Stars Lift With Their Knees!” but I wouldn’t dare hide the beautiful cover art by Britt Brown. If you want a copy of “Big Bingo,” and you should,  grab one of the 50 made here.

Tabs Out | New Batch – Ascetic House

New Batch – Ascetic House
3.9.18 by Mike Haley

Seeing a new batch drop from the drastically prolific Ascetic House is like being served a subpoena. It’s all a bit overwhelming, with a ton of information that needs to be digested and acted upon within a constricting deadline. The A.H. label, which could better be characterized as an artistic cult centered within a larger cult, discharge their tapes (or ‘materials’) in bulk. Their 2018 materials come from 15 frost bitten freaks with unhealthy obsessions and damaged auras. They employ knotted samples, icy synthesizers, and paranoid vocals to muster up high grade nihilistic magic, pulling listeners into their snafu. Individually they are…

UBK – Victoria
Titan Arch – Spiritual Entertainer
Roper Rider – Motion Profile
Rabit – Supreme
PLYXY – Gloryland
Lower Tar – self-titled
King Vision Ultra – Pain of Mind
Kali Malone – Organ Dirges
Jon Edifice – How Much is Your Life Worth
House of Kenzo – Bonfires of Urbanity
Free the Land – Global Ecophony: Audio Transmission from the Exhibition
City – Only Borders
Celular Free – Soft Grunge
Andrew Flores – Sesto San Giovanni
4 – Rows

A loaded up grouping of all 15 was available, but sold out in the 20 hours since announced. They can still be purchased separately from Ascetic House.

Tabs Out | Odd Person / Cool Person – Odd World, Cool World split

Odd Person / Cool Person – Odd World, Cool World split
3.4.18 by Mike Haley

So which is better to be: A cool person or an odd person? The internet suggests that being a cool person is being someone like Brad Pitt. On it’s face that appears to check out, because Brad Pitt was in the movie Cool World. But that movie was sort of odd. A search for the world’s oddest people brings up folks that can puff their eyeballs out or fit a remarkable amount of golf balls in their mouth. But those talents sound pretty cool to me. Cool can also refer to temperature. Is the coolest person just always a bit chilly? No, that would be odd. Odd also describes a number that leaves a remainder of one when divided by two. An example of that would be 69, which is practically the coolest number.

Turns out it’s not a competition. To prove that once and for all Odd Person and Cool Person teamed up for this here split on the Permanent Nostalgia label where the pair get odd in cool ways. On the Odd Person side August Traeger gets a stew going, his crock pot modded to rapidly change temperatures. The meal bubbling inside is a tangy sitar soup, found and fragmented, seasoned up with recalled Mrs. Dash mystery powders. Traeger’s “pure data + field recordings” snag as they simmer, all stringy like a bad piece of celery, resulting in abscessed loops. The Cool Person side see’s a temperature change with “Yamaha synth-jazz” served up in a virtual walk-in freezer. Contended, sharp notes tumble out like ice cubes, often melting into puddles of glistening sounds. Hot/cold. Odd/cool. Win/win.

66 copies (NOT an odd number) are available now.

Tabs Out | New Batch – Umor Rex

New Batch – Umor Rex
3.1.18 by Mike Haley

My grandpa loves to corner me while I’m playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater on my Zune and grumble about how difficult shit used to be when he was my age (ie: a teen #youth). One time he said that television used to be black & white, and that there were seriously only four channels! I gotta admit, I was kind of shook. Then Umor Rex released this latest batch, and #Whad’yaKnow: Four tapes, all black and white, with sprawling energy that could go on for months. Years! Hell, I may NEVER grow weary! SO maybe this “Greatest Generation” or whatever they call themselves just didn’t have the fucking gumption that Umor Rex is sporting. So sorry all you could come up with was Howdy Bootie puppets and racist portrayals of native people to entertain yourselves. Cause we (ie: the teen #youths) have Byron Westbrook, LogarDecay, Kohl, and Rafael Anton Irisarri at our disposal.

In total seriousness, this latest batch from Umor Rex is weighty as hell, with artists never leaving the clouds of smoke they create. Also I’m nearly 40 and only found out about these tapes by searching “Kohls.” I got some Kohls Cash expiring soon and need a nice pant. Enough about me, let’s dive into this batch…

 

BYRON WESTBROOK – CONFLUENCE PATTERNS

Byron Westbrook is an artist and musician based in Brooklyn, NY. His work focuses on dynamics of perception using sound, lighting and video to interact with architecture and landscape, often pursuing routes that involve social engagement. Confluence Patterns is an eclectic collection of recordings, containing both the sharpest and most pastoral material Westbrook has released. The pieces range from the textured drones of “Vanishing Action” to the Tony-Conrad-plays-Black-Sabbath riffing of “Perception Depth” to the Maggie Payne-influenced “Fractal Shift II”. Westbrook is interested in how sharp contrast can shape the perception of a sound. Working with texture and frequency in relation to listening duration, he considers sonic analogies as to how an afterimage affects the experience of sight. For example, the pillowy “Drifting Well” has a particular softness after experiencing the fatiguing frequencies and activity of “A Continuous Slip”; and the density and detail of “Glorious Mess” plays in a particular way after the static textures of “Vanishing Action”. Westbrook considers these sequential contrasts as integral elements of the work and has performed this sequence as a live set numerous times in recent years. Confluence Patterns is his third music release –after previous works in Root Strata and Hands In The Dark– and his first one in Umor Rex.

LOGARDECAY – FRGL

Leslie García and Paloma López (Mexico City) have been working for several years around the intersection of music, art-installation and science, with sound being the primary objective of their analysis, acting their roles as composers/creators and observers of the physical phenomenon. Their work ranges from experiments with bioelectrical sounds created by living organisms like bacteria and plants, to the use of custom-made sets of hardware they call ontological machines. They usually operate within their own platform Interspecifics, and FRGL is their second release under the moniker: LogarDecay. The sounds contained in FRGL might be their more musical work to date. It is not far from sound art, yet the bright accidents coming out of their improvisations seem to exist in the limits between harmony, rhythm and pure noise as a construction. Its tension sometimes soothes, sometimes mutates into a state between drone, ambient and abstract techno. FRGL is an exercise in transparency that does not seek to hide their errors but to maximize them and turn them into an aesthetic statement.

KOHL – LEANED ETHICS / IMPOSED ETHICS

Kohl is the dub-based project of New York City artist and musician Nathaniel Young. With Kohl, Nathaniel focuses on enveloping melodies and sounds that are often contrasted with subtle and evolving minimal textures and the rhythmic patterns generated from them. The resulting music is contemplative and warm, invoking reflection while maintaining a sense of motion/evolution. The Kohl project is an outlet for personal transformation; it is Young rewiring his understanding of morality and ethics. Interpretations of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘good’ and ‘evil’. Musically, Learned Ethics / Imposed Ethics is a fine collection of ultra-textural ambient pieces with minimal changes like “The Possibility Of The Infinite”, slow tempo tracks like “Moral Supposition”, the dance-floor focused “Resolution (Empathy)”, and “The Inquisition”, which displays Kohl’s signature dub-techno style.

RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI – SIRIMIRI

The NY-based producer returns to Umor Rex with a new album, in which the musical discourse and the physical form of the release have an equal, crucial importance. Sirimiri is made of four long and mid-length pieces, each composed of different perspectives, processes and identities. However, Rafael seeks to blend subjective time with the listening experience. A sort of loop and repetition, sub-sequence-based sound. Following Eno, nothing happens in the same way twice, perception is constantly shifting, nothing stays in one place for long. The sum of the four pieces is 36 minutes; the cassette edition lasts 72 minutes in total, since both sides have the same four songs joined together. Physically, the format allows us at least two automatic repetitions. In the digital version the songs are independent, but we also include a bonus track made of the 36-minute loop. The desolation and despair (in a sort of positive way) that we got to hear in The Shameless Years (Umor Rex 2017) is present in Sirimiri, but the impression is concrete, with cruder, less rhetorical landscapes. If The Shameless Years was located between beauty and active tragedy, Sirimiri travels inside the beauty and melancholy of an observing eye, a quiet rebel insurrection. Another substantial difference is the distance from general and globalized concepts; in these unfortunate times, Sirimiri looks for personal sorrows, and places its focus on the particular. Even the names of the songs evoke this in small ways, like in “Sonder”, the feeling of realizing that everyone, even a complete stranger, has a life as complex as one’s own. Rafael has two guests in this album; Taylor Jordan in “Mountain Strem”, and Rafael’s hero Carl Hultgren (from Windy & Carl) in “Sonder”. Sirimiri means ‘drizzle’ in Basque, and we cannot find a better word to describe its content.

All tapes come packaged in hand numbered (out of 120) custom, fold-out cases made of 100% recycled paper. Grab them now.

Tabs Out | New Batch – Hasana Editions

New Batch – Hasana Editions
2.23.18 by Mike Haley

You know that feeling of coming out of a daze, face down on a factory floor, discovering as your mind unblurs from it’s snooze that the workers around you are half robot, half bug? No…? Familiar or not, Hasana Editions has bottled up that tender confusion like hot sauce and wants to dose your eggs with it. Based in Bandung, Indonesia, Hasana is not a new label, but one that has been reimagined.

“Originally started in 2010 by artist Duto Hardono as Hasana Private Press, its project has evolved from publishing the artist’s own works to releasing seminal projects such as Bin Idris. It was defunct for a while before being revived in 2017. Now operated with partial support from the Faculty of Arts and Design, Bandung Institute of Technology, Hasana Editions attempts to tap into and reflect on the creative acts around the region, while fostering and connecting these acts to global scene.”

The two new tapes they have for us, all nestled in metallic paper with artwork far more straight forward than the audio, are a trip. Riar Rizaldi goes into deep Mr. McGoo zones on “I Only Have Visions for You.” Power tools rev and glasses of water spill, but each step taken across the scaffolding or through the kitchen avoid total disaster by a nail clipping. With McGoo, we ended up with a Leslie Nielsen movie. With Riar Rizaldi, we get a blustering, disjointed collage that almost spills boiling lobsters on itself. I’ll take Riar Rizaldi without flinching. And I fucking LOVE me some Nielsen. These sounds were laid to tape in 2017 in Seoul, South Korea.

Mahesa Almeida is more laid back. Not in the sense that they are relaxing pool side. No, more like they never got up off of that factory floor. “A LT O/P A N” is a dehydrated cassette tape that Mahesa chisels sound onto with a jeweler’s hammer and loupe. Sounds ruffle around like lumps being flattened out of a carpet. On the B side, Mahesa hints at his love for video games, sounding off miniature nods to arcade classics, but the motherboards have never been dustier.

Both artist find time to toil, clatter, and shake various objects, bringing fidgety racket front and center. Or maybe that is the bug-robot workers? Both are editions of 100.