New Batch – Vitrine
11.2.15 by Bobby Power
Boy, oh boy, was I late to the Vitrine party. The label, run by Allen Mozek (who also records as No Intention and is a member of both Good Area and Twin Stumps), has been around since 2013, slowly picking up speed and issuing only a handful of releases for its first two years. But while its output was meager, compared to other like-minded esoterica cassette imprints, the sounds and modest but striking packaging were – and are – downright necessary at this point, which choice highlights that include Safe House’s “Region VI“, Three Legged Race’s “Rope Commercial Vol. 2“, and Good Area’s “Dilettante” Cassette.
But Copley Medal’s mesmerizing and low-key hysteria on “Marble Cage” (VT08, Feb. 2015) was what finally got my attention, and I’m happy to report I’ve been hooked ever since. Each small batch, generally including two or three new tapes at a time, includes a range of sounds and contexts, ensuring some enjoyable level of discovery and intrigue.
This latest round of cassettes highlights both the label and Mozek’s uncanny ear for gloriously tattered sonics that nod to a number of ghastly sounds and ideas. VT15 brings the latest set of bizarrely mutated musique concrète by Tom Darksmith, the beloved tinkerer with past releases on Hanson, Kye, Chondritic Sound, and his own Mom Costume imprint. “Everyone is Welcome In My Room” plays true to Darksmith’s penchant for listlessly foreboding collages, constructing massive but desolate scenes of vague despair and almost guaranteed doom. Found sounds seamlessly intermix with Darksmith’s anonymous trove of instruments (?) and noisemakers, creating an immersive, 30-minute slab of disorienting bliss broken out into two equally engrossing parts.
Next up, 010001111000 (whether it’s pronounced “oh one oh oh oh one one one one oh oh oh” or “zero one zero zero zero one one one one zero zero zero” is yet to be confirmed) brings “lmof”, a slightly more optimistic survey of tape machine fuckery and distant, weary-eyed beauty. For tape’s opening section, dimply pastoral chords waft from some malfunctioning reel, intermittently interrupted by pure electronic signals and mis-firing wire connections. It’s a pleasantly jarring experience that leads perfectly into the tape’s wallowing meander through quietly hellish vignettes. Estranged guitar ditties and apparition-like vocals saunter into frame while other characters and distant textures take form and dissolve from moment to moment. Segues begin to fold into one another, rendering things both grotesque and beautiful obsolete.
Vitrine closes out this particular trio with a captivating tape by Mel Bentley, Philadelphia-based poet, writer, and designer. “Red Green Blue” appears to be Bentley’s debut audio recording, capturing a number of live readings, plus one piece featuring Jim Strong. Bentley’s work here revels in a visceral spew of urbanism, commercialism, identity, social media, and false sense of accomplishment. At times recorded in pure, live readings while elsewhere haphazardly lifted from a MacBook broadcasting from the other side of the room, Red Green Blue might be the perfect middle ground between the avant-poetry and experimental cassette worlds.
Make sure you follow Vitrine’s YouTube channel, perhaps the most reliable way to grab their tapes before they each disappear.