Crushing Dreams With Some Antipop
10.3.14 by Mike Haley

Normally if you asked me if I wanted to hear some straight edge, vegan music from Kansas I would be like “Yeah, sure! Just let me get something out of my car”. Then, while you were waiting for me to come back, you’d hear a car start and peel out. Because I was lying and actually DON’T want to hear that. Then there is Dreamcrusher.  Dreamcrusher is great. Need proof? Initiate a hard check on his new cassette, Antipop, available now from Dionysian Tapes. Released in an edition of 75 copies about a week ago, Antipop administers staggering amounts of peaking beats and penetrating noise destruction, putting fellow freak noisers to shame. It’s seriously a cesspool of destructive patterns that will send your emotions into a tizzy. Bake a cake with a dash of rat poison (but NO DAIRY! remember, the dude is vegan), dish yourself up a slice, and dig into this mania ASAP.

Taste Test Some Upcoming Giant Claw
9.23.14 by Mike Haley

No secret that Giant Claw is a cherished cherub around these parts, so needless to say my baby blues lit up at the announcement of a fresh Claw cassette in the works. The label bringing the heat is a Cleveland operation (and judging by the logo, a Comedy Central subsidiary) called Suite 309, who’s catalog so far has been that of owner and operator Tim Thornton’s Tiger Village and Les Cousins Dangereux pleasurable synth projects. Definitely worth dipping into if you have not thus far. But come October 7th Suite 309 will be branching out with cassettes from Radio Shock, Splice Girls, and “22M Never Felt So Alone”, a C24 from Keith Rankin’s Giant Claw frenzy.

A 5 minute and 22 second sample is available to check. Try to keep up with it’s nimble, high-fructose incursion of dips, drips, and flips. Godspeed.

Umor Rex Brings The Razzle Dazzle
9.19.14 by Mike Haley

If you ever played NBA Jam (without cheats, don’t bring that shit) then you know that two consecutive scores means you’re warming up and three means that you are ON FIRE. Well, I hope Umor Rex got their latest batch dubbed with flame retardant shells, because they are the Shawn Kemp / Gary Payton / Detlef Schrempf of recently released tapes and can’t be stopped. (editor’s note: fuck you if you think any team dominated harder than the Sonics).

Before you even get to the brilliantly addictive sounds that Derek Rogers, Maar, and G.S. Sultan deliver you’ll be dumbfounded by the lavish packaging. Each cassette, in hand numbered editions of 80 copies, come housed in silk screened black Brad Paks with sleek linear patterns. The colors of ink on the covers coincide with that tape’s shell color and mini-booklet insert. Without a doubt Umor Rex has delivered the finest all-around batch I have seen in a minute. Or, in other words, BOOM SHAKALAKA!!

You can pick up these, and a bunch of other Umor titles, from Thrill Jockey Records. If you don’t you are stupid, and dumb, and I hate you. Listen to each below.

Bernie Sanders Released A Goddamn Cassette
9.18.14 by Mike Haley

I’ve always believed that you can judge whether or not a politician is sincere by how fucked up their hair is. If you’re dealing with someone rocking a super-slick, Rod Serling-esque do like Mitt Romney or Darrell Issa then you’re pretty much fucked. But someone who looks like they constantly just exited a Gravitron; That’s the legit shit. Take Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for example. That man always looks like someone just said “Who’s a good boy?” and tousled his head like a golden retriever. If I needed further proof that Sanders was genuine in his Socialist beliefs, some was just unearthed.

As it turns out, back in 1987 when Bernie was Mayor of Burlington, he recorded a cassette tape of folk songs that would make William Shatner blush. The five tracks were released by BurlingTown Recordings and you should grip a taste of them below right NOW.

Our mailing address can be found on the contact page. When you find a copy of this tape, that is where you send it. Do you understand? THAT IS WHERE YOU SEND IT!!

A Giant Fern’s Giant September Furnishings
9.17.14 by Ian Franklin

I love an attention to the details. You can feel when something has been forged with time and planning, it has a certain radiance to it that at first might not seem obvious, but reveals itself through closer inspection. Portugal based label A Giant Fern demonstrates that attention quite clearly with their September 2014 batch of tapes offering up 4 killer releases from Roadside Picnic + Charles Barabé, Hidden Persuaders, øjeRum, and Micromelancolié, each with three different cover options. This all makes a bit more sense when you realize that all of the cover art (12 different collage works over 4 releases) is the work of prolific Danish artist and musician øjeRum, who has a release within the batch as well. Crafting handmade collages of the finest order, each release here has some thematic similarities to its covers, like the black backgrounds on the Hidden Persuaders release, the distorted faces of øjeRum’s, and the flashes of color on the Micromelancolié; but all of the covers follow the theme of inset images on a white matte which creates a clean and enticing package. Brilliant and eye catching design, let’s jump in to the sounds.

Kicking it off with Roadside Picnic + Charles Barabé, these two noisers get right into it with some scurvy metallic swashes and pulsating feedback ringing on a “Worn Paths In Crown Dust” (C66). Nothing feels overly strenuous though, the mood remaining a calm but eerie anxiety. Slow infiltrations of dissonant tones creep up over a misty fog of bassy synth, flickering pops and subdued whistles. Settling in some more, the territory starts to open and give way to sweeping drones and wide open calls. B side continues with a return to the dank and drippy, like hearing the forest from just beyond the cave entrance. More structured flashes of synth emanate from inside the cave while a growing, pulsating rhythm lures you ever farther down. Finishing off the album with a triumphant distorted melody and sweeping static brushes, Roadside Picnic and Charles Barabé develop a wonderfully expressive landscape over the +1 hrs of music.

Existing only in the slightest of exhalations, Micromelancolié expertly brings huge emotional draw out of delicate moods and restraint. “Ensemble Faux Pas” (C38) starts off with soft piano brushes, allowing room for shuffling ticks, high frequency percussive static which dances in the inner ear. Miles and miles of glowing, soft drone lilt on the moonlit riverbank disturbed only by a few brief moments of a howling dog and shadowy plucked tones. The air is so still and tranquil. B side continues with a single burning drone among field recordings of maybe an actual field or swamp area. Insects buzz and chirp along, disrupted by the distant shriek of a young girl. The mood turns very ominous and the synths give way to minor chord moaning swells. Never pausing to explore any specific unsettling moment, Micromelancolié instead weaves an extended drift into an uncomfortable and disparate dream-like existence.

Hidden Persuaders come in next with “The Bone Forest”, a C28 of dark and foreboding conjuring from the project of Andreas Brandal. Short-blast snare drum echoes develop in to a barebones death walk rhythm with distorted vocal growls leading the procession. Mixing in elements of ambient, drone, harsh noise/PE, and electroacoustic flourishes, Brandal creates a new and compelling experience. On the title track, flickering ambiance gives way to a momentous surge of distorted drums and syncopated crunching rhythms. Crumbling synths combine with a steady bass line to throw this groove into semi-structured territory while still keeping a loose and wandering feel. Top notch sound design on this release: knives being sharpened, boots crunching down on helpless objects, distorted synth growls, mic’ed hand drums, broken radio frequencies. Don’t miss this one.

Last, but in no way least, is øjeRum’s C34 “There Is A Flaw In My Iris”, a reflective and well-paced album of tape recordings featuring electro-acoustic pieces for guitar, synth, and voice. These pieces are so delicate, and not in the fragile sense, but rather they never once overstep their bounds or become unwieldy. Moving at a slow and consistent tempo, acoustic guitar melodies provide the shell for other explorative sounds of whistles, bells, plucked strings, chimes, and clicks to develop and swim through the open space. Just like his collage work, øjeRum’s music demands detailed inspection to pick up on some of the intricacies: the faint, glitchy reverberations surrounding the acoustic guitar on “Mist”, the dissonant twinge in the repeating melody line of “When”, the muted trumpet on “Picture”, the backwards glassy synth on “Matka”. The mix was superbly handled, allowing the guitar to breathe on its own while other elements weave and intertwine themselves. The vocals are sung deeply and delicately but retain their overall power in the middle of the spectrum. It’s my new standard for electroacoustic mixing reference; a simply beautiful work.

Each release comes in a pro-dubbed edition of 50 and is for sale through A Giant Fern’s Bandcamp. There doesn’t appear to be anyway to select which cover of a specific release you may want, but rest assured, all of the artwork here is truly outstanding. I highly suggest you take a listen and pick up what you can.

Clean Heads: A Look At Some New Labels Of 2014
9.12.14 by Mike Haley

It’s common place to see cassette labels with catalog numbers up in the triple digits. Even for relatively fresh operations, those monthly batches start adding up like mice offspring. In that deluge of tape madness are crews taking their baby steps with only a handful of releases under their belt, sometimes just a couple of tapes. Here are six scrappy upstarts from this year that I’ve been crushing on.

Phinery
There’s been some highly sleek activity from this Denmark imprint with their six cassette releases to date. Included in that half dozen is some gorgeously murky, textured sound sculptures by Hollowfonts, the 7th appearance of Daniel Leznoff’s meticulous synth work as Demonstration Synthesis, and some game changing nuggets of designer sound by Karl Fousek on his imaginative “Relative Position of Figures”. Phinery’s editions range from 50 – 75 copies and look stunning.

Castle Bravo
A C30/VHS by Czern and C30 Doberman (dubbed on Maxell brand blanks) is all this label from Indiana has to offer so far, but quality outweighs quantity in a serious way. both projects grapple with cold and shadowy synthesizer conditioning with art and sounds that are both minimal. You’re probably thinking that planet Earth is flooded with this sort of stuff, and you wouldn’t be wrong. But trust me, Castle Bravo is bringing compelling vibes to an overcrowded scene.

Oxtail
Full disclosure: The guy who runs this label is a former Delawarean with relatively close ties to the Tabs Out enterprise, but he has since moved to the big city and has probably forgotten all about us. Oxtail dropped their first two releases over the summer, A C20 from label head Nigro and a collab he did with Ian Franklin (note: also a TabsOuter / aka Shredderghost) under the moniker Primitive Fiction. Both are dense and impressive bombings of noise with snake oil salesman smoothness. The artwork for these are mega-striking, something you have to hold in your hands to fully appreciate. And in their editions of 25, ya should probably act on that.

Aught
I wrote a bit about this mysterious label a couple of months back and their crystal like presentation of clear tapes in poly bags. While we don’t much about who’s behind the wheel, we do know they are doing a fine job at releasing sobering, post-life dance music by Elizabethan Collar, Topdown Dialectic, and De Leon.

Adhesive Sounds
The most active of the bunch with 10 release thus far, this Canadian operation kicked things off with a left field organ grinder by Japanese Treats and hasn’t missed the target since. Peppered through the catalog are offerings by Hobo Cubes, Wasted Cathedral, and Will Kaufhold aka Form, who’s glossy monument “Trips” will skip gems across your mind. Find what you can from this label and gobble it all up.

Aubjects
This is another new guy with only two cassettes available, but they’re super sized and super tight. Both are 4-way, 2xC60 packaged in those double-thick Norelco cases. Titled “Noosphertilizer I” and “Noosphertilizer II”, they feature a yummy buffet of tunes by Dmitri Zherbin, Tired Light, Gods of the Dead (Geoffrey Sexton & Frank Baugh), The Big Drum In The Sky Religion, Gushing Cloud, Arma & Refusenik, Nigel Samways, and Homogenized Terrestrials and artwork good enough to eat. I’m hungry. Buy these tapes.

Tranquility Tapes Fall Preview
9.8.14 by Mike Haley

If you’re anything like me, you’re probably in the market for a soundtrack to go along with that extra tall Apple-Smoked Spiced Pumpkin Soy Latte. After all, you can’t chug that sucka straight out of a gourd in silence, now can you? No, you can’t. Well Tranquility Tapes has your back. It’s invariably splendid news when this Brooklyn imprint announces a new batch, and this fresh clique of five for fall is shaping up to be an ultra-pleaser.

TT’s corn maze of jams will include some super sprawled-out lounge music by Jake Webster’s always relaxed Tuluum Shimmering project, spanning over a 100 minute epic titled “Dark Star”. A half hour splintered nostalgia buzz on Bluesharp’s “Sinkhole Flora”. Label head Franklin Teagle going solo with his caramelized meditations as Cenote Glow on  the “Musa Paradisiaca” C60. Pooling ooze by cloudsound (no affiliation with Soundcloud, that I am aware of) on their “asperatus” C38 droner.  And the ever prolific Charles Barabé rippin’ & tearin’ unlimited laser logic on his 50 minute “Dates & Confessions”. That is 278 minutes of pro dubbed sensory juice that you will most likely NEED to funnel into your ear holes. But don’t take my word for it, watch this Planet Earth style sampler by Eric Brannon of Tranquility alumni Glass House.

Scope Tranquility’s site for these later this month.

Deep Sea Navigating With “Oceanic Triangulation”
8.29.14 by Ian Franklin

Ok, now here’s a real traveler. Sonic companion for The Journey. Super lush and mega-dense 4-way split over two tapes (C22 & C37) featuring Hakobune, Oliwa, Former Selves, and Panabrite titled “Oceanic Triangulation” out on the mapmaker of zones, Inner Islands. I just threw a lot of information at you, you can go back and read that last sentence again (I did). If you’re familiar with any of those names, and you should be, by the simple fact of their conglomeration here, you can guess what type of experience is in store across this hour’s worth of sonic landscape.

Jumping right into tape 1, side A is Hakobune, a Japanese ambient/drone artist with a lengthy back catalog of excellent work, with “Kakogawa”. Beginning with a slow moving cadence he builds a shimmering drone that sways ever so slightly. Dripping with reverb, but not overly cavernous, he introduces wave after wave of flowing notes that sustain and fall in a circular pattern, creating a wider web of evolving sound. Never settling on a specific point works very well here and the effect is the perfect beginning to set the mood of the overall split.

On the flip side of the first tape we find Buenos Aires based musician, Oliwa, with “After Night, Before Sunrise”. Radient synthesizer chords are presented with a heavy melodic drone undercurrent and just a splash of solo exploration. The soft pressure of night time is felt as the track slowly fades and pulses with a fiery ember. But sure as the sun rises, morning comes with deep and thunderous awakening. Rising from yesterday’s ashes is the pulsating rhythm of new life. Brilliant composition here on a simple joyous track.

Jumping off to tape 2, side A kicks it off with Former Selves’ “Triangulate Upon Paradise”. Former Selves’ track is like an ocean all to itself. Tranquil synth tones extend outward in all directions and float through everything. Plucked and drippy notes sprout up like islands in the glistening waves. New territories are discovered and sections blossom into beautiful open fields. But this place won’t hold you for very long and it’s time to venture back out on the search. Tentative and anxious are the tones now. Everything has a bit more bite to it. The wind stings your cheeks and warns you to turn back. But the only way is forward, and paradise beckons your arrival. Gorgeous spacing across this track; an incredible journey.

Panabrite’s “Digest of Botanicals” rounds off the last side, starting with a walk through the forest into a damp and drippy cave. Arpeggiated square waves emanate from the base and bounce off the cave walls, flashing and dancing in the shadows of a freshly made fire. All manner of wildlife bristles with activity just outside the entrance, their echoed calls venturing closer towards the warmth. Pots and pans clang as the preparations begin to cook the day’s harvest. The cave illuminates with the glow of life.

Sean Conrad provides some dope artwork featuring some inverted triangulation with a day and night mirror across the two tapes. This is a seriously fantastic split between 4 excellent artists, check out the Inner Island store to grip yourself a copy for $12 + postage.

Magnetic Collages –
The Cassette Artwork Of Terence Hannum
8.23.14 by Mike Haley

Studies show that 88% of the time the magnetic and leader tape is unraveled from it’s shell it is a total bummer [citation needed].  It’s a totally different story for musician and visual artist Terence Hannum. Terence, who teaches Art Foundations at Stevenson University in Maryland and spends time laying waste in his band Locrian and solo, creates remarkable works of art using the tape, leader, and dust from the magnetic coating of unspooled cassettes. The results are outstanding. I spoke with Hannum a bit about what he is doing.

How long have you been working with magnetic tape like this?
About two years now, but I have been messing with tapes for about 22 years, dubbing, looping, etc.

What was the catalyst for working with it to create these pieces?
Well I use a Roland Space Echo, and I have for a few years with Locrian. I was replacing the tape and artistically I was in a bit of a funk, I just had this show close of some drawings and collages and wasn’t happy and like everything I tried wasn’t going where I wanted it to. So I was replacing the tape to record something and I share my music studio with my art studio, and the tape unspooled across some of my drawing paper and the surface just caught my attention. It was like that 1/4″ brown tape, I always make fresh loops for my machine. It just got me thinking, like how do I adhere this, what will it look like?

How did that first experiment turn out?
It was like a search for the perfect adhesive, so many of the first ones are rough. But within a few weeks I got it to work. I mean they maybe look tight from a far but what I like is that they get marred and break and have problems. Some of the mistakes are important.

So what were some of the trial and errors you went through before getting it right? And what is the process like now?
Well it wasn’t just the adhesive, but the surface too, so finding a great flat paper and perfect flat surfaces. That became important, I really wanted it to be like this mass of time, where typically you think of time and audio in they linear fashion, but laying it out parallel in this mass can allude to painting but also when you learn of the material maybe make you think of time differently. One of the errors that I use all of the time now, is I tried to fix a line once and all of the ferrous dust stayed behind, and I thought, well that’s a neat way to make a line. So now I essentially use the adhesive surface to peel off the mylar coating and leave behind this magnetic dust trail. Some brands fail better, but it’s been a great discovery.

Do you ever record any audio onto the tape, specifically to make these? Or make loops out of them afterwards?
No, sometimes I’ll use something that was significant to me. Or something that it being destroyed would have a new meaning or the context changes. But typically once they’re on the panel or paper it isn’t to be played, like do you know Nam June Paik’s “Random Access”? That was a big inspiration for me.

That’s interesting because most of your work seems organized and somewhat structured. Do you go in not knowing what patterns you’ll make or where the leaders will land?
Sometimes I don’t know, but I do a lot of sketches and drawings. I always work on pieces as variations, I was really influenced by early 20th century composition, like try this set of ideas again. I think John Cage did that with David Tudor. And obviously in like modern art and the history of abstraction that is a method to work with. Sometimes the leaders I try and save them to punctuate at certain points, and others I like to be exactly where they showed up so that sense of time is really expressed.

Do you look at cassettes differently now? Do you ever see one with a red or green leader and start thinking about wrapping it around a canvas?
Oh yeah, man I am an obsessive, I go to thrift stores and I am positive they think I am insane because I open all of the tapes and see what color is the tape or the leader, or is there something weird on it that I don’t have. I collect a ton of vintage head cleaner cassette too, like I have maybe 50 of them.

That’s amazing. Were any of those obsessive traits, or your interest in head cleaners, present before making these?
I mean I obsessively would follow labels or designers, I have a collection of the tapes Peter Saville designed for Factory in this luxe packaging. I always do research, maybe its obsessive, but I think of it as research.

Are there any ideas you have to take this project a step further that maybe you haven’t figured out how to execute yet?
Size. I’ve been trying to go larger so I am figuring that out. I’ll be getting some custom panels built. And I’ve been exploring two new ideas from my recent residency that were surprises to me focusing more leader. So like minimal color studies. I recently did a two week residency in Vermont at the Vermont Studio Center, essentially working 12-14 hour days in a great studio near a waterfall. Drinking sweet brews, but it was great, I made a lot of work and had some great studio visits.

You can view more of Hannum’s work here and follow him on twitter here.

Preorder Fabrica’s End-Of-Summer Batch
8.17.14 by Mike Haley

“Summer’s almost gone.”

That’s what it said in a recent email blast from Fabrica Records and, after confirming with a calendar, totally checks out. Another summer wasted. I didn’t experience a steamy summer romance, I didn’t find myself while backpacking through Europe, I didn’t even join forces with a rag-tag group of youths to save a camp from an evil corporation who wanted to bulldoze and build a parking garage. Ugh, what a waste.

The next line in the said email from Fabrica gave me summertime hope though.

“There are 4 new tapes containing new music by Parashi, KILT, Sindre Bjerga and Luciernaga/La Mancha del Pecado and they will be shipping before or by the second week of September.”

Huzzah! My bullshit summer can now be partially salvaged by some colossal sounds, all of which are preorderable right now. Curious experimentation from Norway’s Sindre Bjerga, live grumbles from the ALL CAPS trio of Bob Bellerue, Raven Chacon, and Sandor Finta known simply as KILT, Mike Parashi’s glorious sonic sputtering as Parashi, and industrial darkness split up and housed in 5″ x 5″ reel boxes. Let’s examine…

FAB033: SINDRE BJERGA “FUTURE JAZZ LOOPS” C60

FAB034: KILT “SHE’S GOT THE EVIL IN HER EAR” C60

FAB035: PARASHI “TOVARICH” C30

FAB036: LUCIERNAGA/LA MANCHA DEL PECADO SPLIT C30

All of these will be editions of 50 pro dubbed chrome tapes. Grabbing them right now is something that you should be doing. So do it here.