New Batch – Obsolete Staircases
7.11.18 by Mike Haley

Staircases. They’re friggin’ excellent for ascending and descending floors. Sure, there are elevators, escalators, ladders, ropes, and I don’t want to abate the importance of ramps, but staircases really get my juices flowing. If I’m in a particularly frilly mood I’ll skip every other step like a maniac. Ahhhhhh, old, trusty staircases. But what happens when staircases become a drag? When they are Escher’d into obsolescence? I suppose that is where Obsolete Staircases enters to morph the mess into tapes.

Their latest three are an exceptional set of climbers.

Since obtaining their medical psy jazz card, Crazy Doberman have been on a cassette releasing spree. “2038” is a tinfoil ball of squelch and gaseous rhythmical anointments splattered onto a C30. This is a rust belt crew who play like they are a shuttered factory, all cold and empty and stained by decade old spills. Their sax attacks predate OSHA. Their gentle rifts drift through the old ductwork. Makes one wonder if we’ll see the year 2038. Connor Bell released a Shedding tape on Obsolete Staircases last year that was really good. I am proud to report that this new one, “Wave to the Wind,” is also quite interesting. I recently had a fruit fly problem and used my new Dyson hand held vacuum thing (shout out to Dyson, please send us free stuff) to suck them up. As they hurled around the cyclone cylinder and concussed to an unthinkable degree, a point where the living most definitely envied the dead, I imagined what was going on in their pin point minds. I honestly believe they heard Shedding in the final seconds of existence. An absurdity of ever flip-flopping tones until – lights out -… Psychic Skin‘s “Island Dreams of Two Songs” is a host of loose sound waves and spoken word bits, presenting itself as the most calm and personal of the batch. This is the first installment of something called Stillness Editions. “A release series emphasizing therapeutic ambient music and calming sound” as it says on the Psychic Skin Bandcamp. “Island Dreams” is still, but not totally. More like a slow motion video of a magician pulling the tablecloth out from under a parties dinner, each frame filled with a hidden vibrancy.

Save a buck and buy the entire batch from Obsolete Staircases.