Toni Dimitrov + Jared Sagar / Derek Piotr – split
7.4.18 by Ryan Masteller

Jakarta’s Tandem Tapes has been a repository of dream collaborations for a while now, and you should be all caught up on their catalog, which now spans a whopping 41 releases. These cassettes, in measly editions of 25, are highly sought after among the tapehead community, holy grails of one-off experimental excursions from some of the most interesting practitioners of sonic mayhem. Just keep an eye on that postage from Indonesia, am I right? High five!

Toni Dimitrov and Jared Sagar’s side filters field recordings through digital processing until they come out the other side so warped and reconstituted that all context is erased. Even birdsong becomes ominous in their hands! “Palabra,” which is Spanish for “word,” does not contain a single uttered syllable, instead leaving it up to me to impose text and meaning upon it. Which I am not interested in doing here! Mainly because the lack of language is actually doing all the speaking for the duo. That and the ominous birds. Among other things. Still, “Palabra” takes seventeen whole minutes to unleash its inner beauty to us, which is perfect because I only have seventeen more minutes before my soufflé is done.

Speaking of seventeen whole minutes, Derek Piotr’s “Live at Crunch House 2018” also unfolds over the exact same amount of time. Gone are the Eastern melodies and glitchy vocal contortions saved for Piotr’s proper album releases, and instead we get the experimental scribbles of an artist stretching out a little bit beyond the comfort zone. Although not sprawling drone in the slightest, “Live at Crunch House” has more in common with “Drono” (2016), a hard left turn in Piotr’s discography that too takes its time to get where it’s going. But where “Drono” stayed true to its titular allusion, “Crunch House” is all over the place, everywhere at once, not staying still, cycling through sounds and territories with abandon. It’s a lot of fun, never a dull moment.

And now my soufflé is ruined.

There’s only a few of these left, so grab one while you can from Tandem Tapes!