Tabs Out | Max Julian Eastman – Pygmalion Styled & Out Of Vogue

Max Julian Eastman – Pygmalion Styled & Out Of Vogue

Record loops, intentional or not, are one of my favorite elements in experimental music. The first time I heard NON’s Pagan Muzak on YouTube, I was hooked. Other discoveries like Gum, Ironing, and AMK solidified my love for this facet of repurposed consumer goods. I even flirted with aspirations of becoming a hip hop DJ scratcher in my early twenties. So going into this tape I wasn’t a newcomer to this corner of the sound universe.

The opaline keyboard textures of “Pygmalion” collide with short loops that cut in and out of the mix in a disorienting fashion before the listener is pounded by short rhythmic loops on top of an A.M. static salad (Anyone remember that project A.M. Salad?). “Styled” has a lot of old fashioned stylus abuse going on and flanged snapshots of bygone eras. Lots of movement, asymmetry, and outsider art scratching.

The personality on the second side, “Out of Vogue,” is much closer to my experience with Wolfgang Voigt’s project Gas, where reverb drenched loops hover unchanging for long periods of time. This one really gets me in the zone.