3.21.19 by Ryan Masteller

Aisuru, no!

Aisuru died and went to heaven. That’s the only thing that explains it. I mean, “Lonely Psalms,” am I right? Tis like the singin’ of the angels themselves. In fact, that one time I fell asleep in my breakfast cereal (I’m a heavy sleeper, and a breakfast enthusiast) and couldn’t breathe past the milk (skim), I actually left my body and approached the light and ascended to the clouds and heard the heavenly host, a great mass of voices resolving its chord progression in sheer power so gentle that worlds were created and destroyed as I observed. Such is the power of the almighty sustained tone.

The delicacy of an Aisuru track could also do these things if given the amplification, which is why I think Aisuru is either dead and an angel or in hiding in a cathedral. (Aisuru’s not even missing and is in Austin, Texas? Never would’ve guessed.) I’m going to guess a cathedral, because I have a tape recorded by Aisuru whose contents made me write all this dumb stuff about angels and the afterlife. You give me this gorgeous ambient stuff and I immediately take off into flights of fancy, imagination working wicked overtime.

And this ambient stuff is truly gorgeous – these eight tracks don’t disappoint in any way. And they don’t overstay their welcome, as some long tapes tend to do – no, most are short, less than three, four minutes, even though there’s an eleven-minuter in there. So you’ll still have time to go about your day after listening, time to go to the grocery store or the laundromat or to call an ambulance to get blacked-out me revived from my cereal mishap. In fact, of those scenarios, I encourage the latter.

As is Histamine Tapes’s wont, these babies are recycled: the j-cards were hand-cut from a book on ancient architecture, and the cassettes were repurposed and dubbed over – mine came on a “Christmas on the Border” tape. Cool! Edition of thirty.