Lanayah, “a ‘fairly unclassifiable blackened screamo’ collective based in Santa Barbara, CA & Seattle, WA” [at the House of Drongo], ought to be a household name. Well, in reality, they were sorta a household name if you happened to know the Santa Barabara/Ventura/805 scene AND/OR Drongo tapes back around 2019 and the fateful pre-pandemic weeks of 2020. Lanayah have long been gestating in that region, with a Bandcamp release dating back to 2016, but a proper Drongo debut from 2019, Forever in May. That later one made small waves amongst a few dedicated individuals–Thom from Planning for Burial, if I recall correctly, was a staunch supporter of the album during that time. And for good reason. Forever in May was an absolutely bonkers lil’ doomgaze tape that seemed particularly focused on finding precarious snippets of downtime, droning and crashing into something mighty. The trance characteristics, amongst the heavy bliss out that was hiding underneath it all, would become especially apparent during an auditorium show where I’d be introduced to the gang of Will (vocals/head screamer), Lynn (guitars), Ethan (drums), and Ari (synths, kyma, organ, tape loops/tactical warfare guru).
Now nearly four years later, and after another era of gestating, the Lanayah collective has returned in new form. Ethan may have left, with Michael Tsang now performs drum duties; meanwhile both Isabelle Thorn (of Dear Laika, half a world away) & Elliott Hansen (CEO of Drongo Tapes) fill in vocal and tape loop auxiliary roles, respectively. Everyone’s contribution reveal I’m Picking Lights in a Field… as an airtight C41 that sees the collective both paying attention to larger shifts in online heavy music, while also dialing in their own ability to cast off ecstatic, divine compositions with immense precision. The kinds that you accept whole and take everything.
A lot happens in four years, enough that renders the tape’s 8 tracks as bonafide genre polyglots. Sewn together to reflect the brilliant, tumultuous pacing shifts that keep yr ears perked up. Lanayah’s capacity for the ethereal had been noted last go around. And now there’s a greater sense of space and varied tension in cuts thanks largely to the auxiliary players and the main lineup’s dedication to explore these textures. Sometimes, like the staunch opener Aspen, there’s a digital crunch enough to carry the tension, and even in the case of Peak and Core, it becomes the framework for its own kind of wobbly, wonky quietLOUDquiet cut. While other times, like in Staring Blankly, it operates as an intricate detail in the mix; an extra crispness that recalls the effortless work Loathe amounted to on their 2020 metalcore masterstroke. This is all but confirmed with Picking Lights in a Field. It’s a highlight, not an interlude, that strips away all tension to revea the production on the loop’s acting as a memory of a memory. The cut itself recalls alternative rock demos, but then strips it down until its wailing effervescence amongst skyscrapers in the distant lights. If there’s one area for heavy, cyborg-esque metalcore music to continue exploring, it’s here.
Yet unlike Loathe, Lanayah can write sub-90 second sludge punk that functions as either an intro to a piece (Insects in their Immersion), or an intricate moment to a song. Knife, Mirror in particular finds that sludgy energy and marries it under a blackened rainbow of a synth line that blisters forward during reverent choruses that actively make me want to melt like a popsicle in the sun. It truly feels like letting everything go. Especially as things pick up on the superblast of a closer, Carrying Fire. It’s an all killer, no filler closer; the kind where knotty riffs and wailing guitars burst into massive fills and uncompromising drones. It’s to the piece’s credit that it repeatedly shifts its bpms and uses everything at its disposal (especially those tape loops and synths) to create an omnibus akin to a steel mill at its most industrious. And it’s fun enough to want to loop back to the start and begin the begin all over again.
Edition of 200 Tapes available now at the Drongo Tapes Bandcamp Page!
Michael Cormier-O’Leary – Heard From the Next Room Over
6.23.23 by Matty McPherson
Lily’s Tapes and Discs has been a quietly upstanding outpost in Rochester, New York, deep in the heart the Hudson Valley. The region’s mass migration (a result of COVID, at least on a secondary level) and ample space has seen it begin to flourish into a real regional community outside NYC happening across the past few years. From the new sounds of Island House to longtime experimental maverick movers and shakers like M. Geddes Gengras and Ben Seretan making it their home (Seretan also recently became Basilica Hudson curator), alongside venues like Tubby’s having successfully navigated COVID era restrictions to hold down a five year festival party. Yup, it’s sort of a powerhouse in new, regional American musics.
Yet, Lily’s Tapes and Discs has been fighting the DIY fight long before, at times circling and encroaching on a variety on gumshoes and mavericks that keep their nose to the 4-track recorder and work on home recording apparitions and sleights. The label sent Tabs Out a handful of their Fall 2022 releases, which came off of a lovely summer 2022 that included the Natural Park Service’s latest slowcore sleeper masterstroke. And as such, I’ve been sort of keeping the tapes quietly to myself and my boombox in the wee-hours when applicable.
I do love Lily’s Tapes and Discs strangely uniform design: a font that’s not quite “grouper helvetia” or “drongo new roman” (some of my other favorite fonts) but often reflects a humble, imperfectly scurried font; color palettes that often employ earth greens and hand drawn drawings that recall crayola tuesday at the elementary; a j-card that folds out to reveal a whole other half of a paper finessed into liner notes; amongst a gold foil on the tape shell. There is a smell that comes with this type of uniformity in tape design, a smell of woodland oak and fine pine wine to be exact. The rustic homemade psychedelia of Lily’s Tapes and Discs can do that to one, I suppose.
Such is the case with one of the best DIY-tape modes that I’ve been a bit privy towards recently: the homespun rehearsal tape. Michael Cormier-O’Leary’s “Heard From the Next Room Over” is one such tape, a sudden spurt of January 2022 recordings that seemed to just drop out of a hat and into a C25. I was drawn to the tape by merit of its title, which almost seemed to become a daring desire of how to approach these tunes. Up close with headphones, and well yes you’ll be especially attuned to the pedal clamps, the studio set-up sounds, and the small quivers that each key provides. Tune it out and play it over the hi-fi, in another room over or underneath whatever anime boxset you have out that the library will let you keep for half a year, Cormier-O’Leary’s keys become a sound bath, if not just fulfills a sort of utilitarian purpose its title promises. Really there is not a lot I can emphasize about Cormier-O’Leary’s playing or MO on this recording besides that each cut carries a velvety finesse and familiarity. It happens to reflect a particularly strong day of piano rehearsal.
The mode that tapes like this provide, from Tara Jane O’Neil’s 2021 sketches for Orindal or Ross Hammond’s guitar practice tape from last fall on Full Spectrum, is one of both intense listening as much as a window into the past. A strong day of rehearsal can sometimes just summon such stirrings. The kinds where my minds recedes towards when I lived with a piano. Its sound filled the house and its hallway. Was it pleasant? I suppose so, especially at the age of six. Do I wax nostalgic for it really? Well it never was delivered with the delicacy that a six year old can provide. At least nothing that Michael Cormier-O’Leary could not have found with the dazzling key changes and cooing haptics of a rehearsal well spent.
Edition of 75 pro-dubbed gold foil tapes. Packaged with full-color j-cards with artwork by Francis Lyons (circlechange.net), numbered and assembled by hand at LTD Headquarters available now!
Have you ever watched your famous empty pond become…well I guess an unempty pond? One filled with winter rains that slowly evaporate across spring? But have you ever had it evaporate so slowly algae starts to suddenly grow and turn the granite colored water to swamp granite? That empty pond…it’s aging well in its late day life; never thought I’d see a day where it would mature enough to have algae here on the property. But today, it does.
I suppose there’s something within that paragraph above you could untangle a connection to the KSR/Wind Tide split from January 6th of this year, released by the sterling, PHYSICAL, tape label of New Mexico. We come nearly half a year after its release, as my ears have continued to mature (and bubble like algae?), once again finding myself back to craving the gaps and the space between the noise; they bubble like algae I suppose. Anyways, K/S/R is comprised of Abigail Smith, Justin Rhody, and Ben Kujawski, and they happen to keep their feet low to the ground. They’ve been working with PHYSICAL before on releasing other 2022 recordings at the No Name Cinema and the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe. This time their work in the venue sees the trio laid down three inquisitive, low-rumbling improvisations of wind instruments and stringed playing. It maintains one hand in free-jazz and another in rudimentary slow finger picking. Smith and Rhody often complement themselves thanks to their flute and violin playing, respectively; it’s the kind where both of the performer seems to be trying a tickle of a flute or a ghastly high-wire chord crash out of each other. All the while, Kujawski hangs underneath with impressive electronic bass or free form pedal steel and unkmept percussive. Together, the trio’s free forms on Side A are nothing short of a small ruminations. Fit for dusk or dawn, these are pieces that labor slowly in their space, beckoning to be beamed on your porch in the comedown or come-up of a scorching desert day. The energy of the pieces themselves reflect low desert plains and the tourist traps of lost wisdom found within, tangled lethargic balls of energy that keep you a minute and seem to take you somewhere further out.
Of course, Side B will lead us to perhaps the best non-tourist trap in the plains of West Texas: the Wind Tide studio in Littefield’s downtown. Have you ever visited Wind Tide studio? It’s quite the spacious endeavor. Wind Tide, Gretchen Korsmo & Andrew Weathers, keep the endeavor as an open-book affair, which is what makes Wind Tide (the project) a rather exciting, enticing proposition. The 2020 era releases from the two were obsessed with the studio space itself, turning their home loft/studio/etc into one grand musique concrete tribute and experience to the time and place. But as that energy has furthered back into Full Spectrum’s land art MO, Wind Tide has found themselves industrious as ever. The resulting tinkering with synth almost-pop and drone works (most notably 2021’s haunting surprise, Saturation Dust) has given the project’s longforms their own sense of adventure. Turn Up the Periwinkle is a serendipitous experience for Korsmo & Weathers, pushing away any traces of the project’s naturalism or intrinsically sweetness for a relatively brevity focused speculative fiction oriented soundtrack soundscape. Both the duo utilize synths (of an unknown source), as well as clarinet & tenor sax (respectively). With further instrumentation including lap steel and piano keys with even microcassette (loops?) and a shruti box being brought in, the duo work refinements towards a strange kind of monolithic entity. The synths radiate like plutonium, with a glisten that sugarcoats the ear. As such, the shruti box and microcassette loops maintain prescient buoyancy in the mix, as the horn and clairnet paint oblong shapes amongst their cryptid notes. Its calming though. Especially in the moments the synths drone at their lowest and leave them just playing off each other. The kinship to that moment, two souls on the Texas prairie just rehearsing their own prairie jazz. A fine day’s work.
Edition of 100 copies w/download code, professionally dubbed with gold printed shells, are available now at the PHYSICAL Bandcamp Page
Don’t anticipate to find much information on groffic currently. A twitter that indicates a presence between Texas and Oklahoma with work that dates back to 2021, a groffic gorilla logo by Jordan Kelley, and a bandcamp page that ponders “Does it think of me as much as I have given thought to it?”. All is mystery to my eyes, but the truth is that Bad Luck Comparing Hands, the groffic debut cassette self-release, untangles the mystery a bit. There’s a picture of a friendly looking individual inside, someone who likely haunts the country fauna of the Texas plains. It was mastered FOR CASSETTE by none other than Angel Marcloid, whom is thanked alongside glitch[dot]cool, God is War, Semantix, Little Mountain House, and a few other artists that possibly suggest a semblance of a scene–part meatspace, part digital–of likeminded individuals working together in realms of “hyper”-glitch, high-pitch jitterbug electronic listening music, and deconstructed rave textures.
If those genre labels sound enticing (or you like early PC music), well Bad Luck Comparing Hands, is likely going to be an incredibly smooth soulful listen. groffic’s thirteen tracks are giggly, bubbly romps; illuminating synapses in the process that construct a pathway out of the club and into the psychedelic tropics of that j-card. A lot of which is the result of groffic’s pacing across the 13 cuts. Tenacious and high-wire like Orange Milk or Hausu Mountain sleights streamlined into a full fizzled DJ mix stuttering on command. Tracks sort of collapse into each other, united by a whatever thread was last on the mix: a vocal texture, a fizzling high bpm drum, or a synth line that keeps the eye on the prize. The result is that downtime on Bad Luck Comparing Hands becomes a rarity, but its not to be treated a luxury; groffic’s one-track mindset is such a draw itself that the tape’s consistent punchy textures and dopamine jackpot deconstructions. It’s other worldly big sounding music. Less focus on the low-end package, with a greater emphasis towards vocal frys, metal sounds, and hyperrealist urban blights in mid-end that wake one from a pre-conscious slumber. You’ll seem to have a greater realization of where you are as you hear the tape.
As such, it makes natural sense that groffic didn’t just do a cassette release. There’s still a handful of “DIY VHS includes the entire album accompanied by visuals for each song which combine AI visualizations with other video”. These kinds of releases are rare–calling back to Already Dead’s release of Muave from early 2023–but I cannot help but endorse the release full stop. groffic’s tunes at their best moments on the tape carry that kind of potency of wearing the “THEY LIVE” sunglasses, realizing everything around you isn’t what it is. To marry that to new images, like the one suggested on the cover, only seems to hint at where groffic is further taking the music towards.
Edition of 100 tapes and 10 VHS tapes are now available at the groffic Bandcamp page.
I’ve found myself finally coming out of a bit of a crunch period, recovered and back to hearing esoteric sounds with gusto once more. Being in touch with label pals also helps, but the recent era of Dinzu Artefacts has been notable for its consistent peaks and tantalizing potential that the batch promises. Unifactor used to hold this power more so, but I truly cannot anticipate what Joe’s curation with the artists he’s working with will happen to build off a mental crumbs or notions of what dedicated tape label curation can afford us. For the 2023 June batch,m Dinzu Artefacts calls to certain “otherness” found within geological accidents, both manmade and of natural evolution, ending up with a definitive era peak.
Mattie Barbier – This is What People Think Mountains Look Like
San Diego’s marine layer was in full force during the month of May. Enough so that it appears to be staying into a traditional “June Gloom”. The kind that imparts a morning mist, rather unfavorable laundry drying conditions, and a long standing call for the slowest of cinema. Your “El Sur”s and Leviathan (2012, although 2016 is upstanding work). Mattie Barbier has successfully concocted the kind of drone akin to the diving rod of the former, as much as the camera cinematography of the latter, within this one outstanding piece, This is What People Think Mountains Look Like.
40 minutes of sustained trombone drone is going to seem like an appetizer when you’re coming off of 3 hours of pondering just whether or not Spring Does Hide Its Joy. But over recent evening, I’ve come to desire keeping this in rotation. Barbier’s recording, dated from June 2021 a the Tank Center for Sonic Arts in Rangley, Coloado, is an unequivocal production dream. It also just happens to reflect a fragment of 20th century Americana repurposed into something beyond this mortal coil; a futurist silo of sound. What could have been turned into scrap metals, saved by a consortium of local & east coast composer and deep listening music enthusiasts, has become an “impossible sanctuary of sound on Colorado’s remote desert, perched atop the oil fields about 90 miles north of Grand Junction”.
The Tank itself has a lovely website listening many of the activities, although I suggest further reading the AP web piece which provides many other insights. This space can be a mecca for the artists that with which the famed underground Cistern of the Deep Listening Band is unattainable. And to think in its local history of the Rangley area, its history as a sort of pilgrimage site for teens and ne’er do wells, before becoming the venue that it is today, feels eternally cool.
Anyways, Barbier’s trombone is just beyond engrossing. There’s a majestic, stately tone to a few of their early blasts, the kinds that mutate and swirl in a quixotic blend until its alien garble. It’s sets up the 41 minutes that follow as Barbier pushes towards metallic textures and slight tonal changes and strange rattlings that make the heart skip a beat. It sounds of garbled radios or giant locust crushes; insect buzzing and rocks tumbling on the high desert. It’s a type of drone that in spite of its naturalistic title, both the sound and tape cover reveal Barbier’s underlying rural psychedelic approach to the mountains. Perhaps that’s why coming off an early Plotkin cd and the FSA/Roy Montgomery collab, this tape hasn’t left the boombox so easily. Heady trance depths indeed, especially on side B.
David Donohoe – Fen
The dirty little secret about freeform radio? We’re suckers for a good hour of field recordings. And when we have none to offer, the computer is loaded with bird sounds. The Dublin, Ireland based sound practitioner, David Donohoe likely would feel the same way just based off his latest surprise treat for DA. Fen opens like a podcast, as Donohoe takes his Bandcamp liner notes and recites them directly to the listener. It’s a nifty act of priming the listener for what the tape is to hold: “Grasshopper Warbler, Sedge Warbler (both Summer migrant breeders) and Snipe (resident breeder), alongside tuned percussion and synthesizer textures,”. Donohoe is earnest about seeing an otherness and eerie factor to these birds that mimic 20th century developments in editing. He chose these particular birds noting their capacity for exceptionally alien sounds; the kinds that human electronic music of the 60s and 70s happen to mesh with splendidly with low synthesizer bass rumblings and percussion noise.
Thus, if you come to Fen with a particular desire not for bird sounds, but to see how Donohoe fuses it into a soundbath, then you have likely come to the right place. These are the kinds of songs I imagine the Birds of Maine in Michael DeForge’s latest donate for their library system–both wholesome and uncanny yet wit. There are periods of actual bird sound and environmental rainstorms that practically call to the immense pleasure of having something outside typical time conditions. Although, the tape is best for pitch black level listening, appreciating the timbres ability to create electronic esque tones. As the tape goes on though, greater focus on Donohoe’s electronics do take shape. Yet, the birds remain precarious and reveal how well Donohoe has achieved matching his sounds to their frequencies.
Not too long ago a bizarre (in a complimentary way) video emerged. One featuring a young woman, Ichiko Aoba, playing a festival in Europe backed by the post-Ants configuration of Black Country, New Road. The entire thing looked like a fever dream, or in the case of rym denizens, a wet dream. For on one hand, this whole thing is baffling; a real case of 21st century internet communities having their cake and eating it in the form of a dream collaboration that only a select few even saw in person. Yet on the other hand, that this entire thing exists is undeniably pretty and moving. So few opportunities for something as otherworldly like this to exist happen; even with the connections of internet and new generations of tastemakers. Truthfully though, one’s choice in flannel or one’s adherence to trolling new music lists may long term create such circumstances that end up leading to any kind of western recognition and touring capacity for artists ranging from Aoba to Parannoul.
The resounding performance of Aoba, whose focus on acoustic guitar and piano keys, acoustic fables and stories outside of regular time and place (landing closer to a folksy ghibli world), lends itself beyond her immediate intimacy. This folk can scale with immense finesse if the right backing (chamber) band happens to present itself–as BCNR proved rather distinctly. When she played Big Ears at the St. John’s Cathedral to a full audience, the back half of her set featured four women on violin and other stringed instruments providing that sublime chamber energy. Watching Aoba with her backing band, I felt back in Escondido, watching bunnies leap over the greenery that’s emerged from a hectic el niño. There is something absolutely otherworldly about her capacity for naturalism the silent rumination that powers her work and converts a listener one by one.
It’s also known that because Aoba self-releases most her music and has an immense online fan community, her albums become hot collector commodities. Only Ba Da Bing has seemed to take any note of issuing her material in the US, and yet Windswep Adan/Adan No Kaze remains only a double LP on its 3rd pressing, with no CD or tape edition. Cool! Such things often end with me creating blindspots instead of downloading. So, when I walked in to see her Big Ears performance, I was not anticipating that she’d have a merch booth with a limited 500 copy “Sketch” tour tape. One that currently remains unlisted on Discogs, without a torrent on Soulseek, and only about 3 folks on RYM that appear to know it exists and have listened. Make me the fourth I suppose. And also let me put my hat in the ring here to join the chorus of “Ichiko Aoba makes fantastic music that we should cherish” with a resounding grin.
Taken in first during a delirious jet-lagged capacity coming out of SAW II looping, “Sketch” has quickly become one of my favorite listens of 2023. This is owed not as much to the exclusivity of the tape itself, as much as the raw power and trust Aoba has in her lo-fi set-up resonating an astounding everydayness to her recordings. The tape is split into two side long recordings: A side’s “sea horse” (she uses images for the release) is piano improv that seems to hint at a recording of “Seabed Eden,” a one-off single precursor to her 2020 release, near the end. Meanwhile, Side B’s “garden snake” actually features recordings of “hello” & “asleep among endives” and then another round of increasingly ethereal and warped piano looping and water noises. On paper, this 20ish minutes really could be nothing. Merely a stopgap or small holdover for the heads. Yet, Aoba really understands her space and silence, and uses the tape more or less to reintroduce her capacity for recording and just see what comes from a day of work. It is simply, music to stare out at the yard to; music to do the dishes to; music that you take in all the details of a room at 11:11 to. What a heavenly surprise.
As I sat with the release I’ve come to note that it reminds me of a staggering body of work. On one hand are Dan Melchoir or Ross Hammond, private press folk maestro’s that follow their thoughts to brilliant endpoints. The other hand includes Jessica Pratt and Wendy Eisenberg, who’s early recordings also treated the fidelity as a tool to presenting their own worlds and tales outside typical boundaries. Aoba is of her own accord as all these mavericks are, especially on the b-side. Her two originals recorded on this tape just feel like they could have been on On Your Own Love Again as a moment outside Pratt’s own lost wisdom. Still, as she moves beyond chord change improv towards loop manipulation that would not have been out of place on Pizza Night many moons prior. Her mic’ing that captures the patter of keys, the extra thump of pedal, and a voice that lowly croons knows exactly what the fuck its doing even if it wants to call itself a “sketch.” It evokes just how punchdrunk and out-of-body this kind of recording process, when treated as a sincere treat instead of a gimmick, can be.
What a resounding and deeply resonant sketch for spring, to say the least.
Find it at the next Ichiko Aoba show in Europe. Or on discogs in 5 months for exorbitant costs. Or on Bandcamp if and when it ever shows up.
E: Only months later have I realized the tape is on youtube. 50,000 views? Quite an audience!
What time do the readers of Tabs Out wake up at? I’ve never asked that and I take the whole asynchronous thing with a whiff of serendipity. I imagine most people who read this get up sometime around 6-9 AM local time. 5:50 AM is just out of that range and too bloody early, but I used to pull myself up then, or at 5:07 AM and walk in darkness to the job site to either deliver pastries or brew a giant vat of coffee. I do miss the colors of those spring skies by the lagoon. Unfortunately, the color of dark twitter DMs at 5:30 AM don’t hit the same. Most days now, I wake up sometime shortly after 7 and if the house is empty, I fill the walls with sounds.
This morning is one of those fortunate mornings, currently being soundtracked by Mute Duo. Do you remember Mute Duo? They were a band that definitely existed pre-pandemic on a fledgling American Dreams. Skyler Rowe on Drums/Percussion/Vibraphone & Sam Wagster handling the Pedal Steel amongst a drum machine, using their tools and the warmth of a studio space as canvas to impart naturalistic, rugged Americana. The kind that shimmers rays of sunlights and shakes the bristles of its tree needles with it. Well, Mute Duo have had a rather busy reemergence this April. There are new compositions for American Dreams, as well as this most curious 34 minute pre-Pandemic (2/29/20) live realization at the Empty Bottle; Chelsea Bridge, Matthew Lux, and Andrew Scotty Young join as auxiliary members that turn the Mute Duo into a Mute Quartet encroaching on a particular jammy sunday I’ve come to admire over the past few years. A thanks to the Sea and Cake as well alludes to a greater lineage that Mute Duo themselves are chained to: intersectional Chicago jamming
5amSky is grounded in a pulsing motorik, the kind of a steel engine on a flat plane where anything can happen. Mute Duo, even with these added members, are steadfast to that particular kind of jam. One that parallels Jake Acosta’s Rehearsal Park or one of the many Unifactor pocket worlds, but with a greater sense of anthemia guiding it. It only takes about half of the rather acute side A to lock into its devious jam as Rowe provides a steady beat for Wagster to draw out all the curls of the clouds and deepest of blues that a pedal steel’s chords can provide. It’s fluffy music, complete with a footwork to its beat that begs for revelrous dance; I sure hope those patrons pre-pandemic did so. Although I must admit the outro’s sudden distorted twang and electronic honkery is more…an electrified rodeo than the piece’s first ten minutes.
Side B meanwhile brings in the whole auxiliary band one piece at a time, slow burn. The nearly 22 minute affair has a whiff of a heist being pulled off, the kind of heist that you always imagine Tortoise would’ve soundtracked in ’99 but were never afforded. It’s opening minutes focus intently on a minimal rattly drum beat, augmented by bass effect and actual bass dancing off it, while a cymbal skips over it unhurriedly. It soon moves to focus on the drones of the bass n’ pedal steel while introducing the vibraphone that doodles about and compliments the drum beat. Chelsea Bridge’s strings meanwhile create these dustbowl arpeggios (that soar) that help complete the piece and move it to its sleek final form for the majority of the run time. Suddenly, the mute duo have concocted a loungey chill out dance track; one rather based in Americana. A dustbowl disco (well, for the mind) if you could imagine that. One that actively integrates wind chimes and electronics (and even noise splotches!) like a DJ finessing live samples into the mix. The B side’s groove is a particular kind of revelry and dance character that has not been effectively considered in recent American tape releases. The kind with such a viscosity to its character! Even as it turns into a deep fried lazer guided melody burst in the final third and drones out Charalambides style.
There’s been traces of a cosmic Americana in the curation that Unifcator and the newfound Astal Editions. Although, I’ve struggled to use or consider the term to describe the loose happenings in these (mostly) midwestern folk music that has its ear turned to krautrock-indebted jamming. There is an incredible canon of work that the last three years of Moon Glyph, Unifcator, Astral Editions, and a few other scattered releases have been dialoguing with one another. Yet, even as these folks have shared bills or acknowledged one another, the capacity for outright trance has been inconclusive, or at least are grounds that are only starting to be really acknowledged. Pulice’s work with Powers/Rolin feels like a groundbreaking here, as does the Power/Rolin certified curation of Mute Duo’s 5amSky. For a recording that’s 3 years old and uncirculated until now, it feels of the moment; a perfectly encompassment of electronic intermingling in jamming that stays grounded to its roots and isn’t afraid to shake its ass. Consider it amongst the year’s best.
Edition of 200 Available at the Astral Editions Bandcamp Page
Tongue Depressor & Weston Olencki – Don’t Tell No Tales Upon Us
3.13.23 by Matty McPherson
Dinzu Artefacts continues batch processing and curating of the highest magnitude. New titles in the month of February have been making their way to the hi-fi. In between bouts of anime and Bandcamp tape filing (have you ever tried to catalog DIY tapes? It’s sort of impossible! And you can’t make entries on the mobile app! Flop-ass software!), I have been giving late night samples. The three this month are deep longforms. Two are pushing near or past the hour mark. If there’s anything I’ve noted about a Dinzu Artefacts bundle, it’s that the variety with time often means either the LONGEST or the SHORTEST tape of the month is highlight; a most unusual circumstance akin to picking sticks. This time, I find myself most enamored with the latest from the Tongue Depressor duo & their collaboration with Weston Olencki; a brevity-laden affair of drone harmonics. The kind that glistens at the witching hour and ignite a strange set of surrealist mantras and images to go inward, before returning outward with force.
Henry Birdesy and Zach Rowden are longtime conspirators, with ties down the New England coast and with Crazy Doberman, amongst a longstanding career of dronery as Tongue Depressor. Birdsey’s career across a magnitude of labels, monikers, and instrumentation has seen him develop a rather strange beckoning towards a kind of land-art induced gospel for masses between 1 to a few dozen folks. For the two piece, Birdsey turns to Bagpipes & Rowden takes up Bass. Meanwhile, the South Carolina born, Berlin-based Olencki brings out Trombone. Try to make sense of this formation, it’s not supposed to be a crystal clear harmony in ultraviolet you may tell.
The trio both enforce and reject the roles of their respective instruments. Side A’s Tapping Season is perhaps TD and Olencki’s standard MO. Tongue Depressor create a blackened tar of a drone, with a viscosity thick as imperial stout. The bagpipes harmonize with a thrilling electricity to their harmonics, an all out assault bolstered by the bass! Olencki takes to the wall of sound and attempts to find a place to scowl and grovel with the trombone, creating a cracks across the surface of the piece. You can opt to follow the noise or lay awash in the drone and strike a pre-conscious image from there.
If Death Be Printed On His Face opens the palette outward instead of the intense inward focus of Side A. There’s droning cassette loops that are plague-stricken and gloomed amongst a flicker of water. Coils and sawblades, even creaky gates(!) rummage amongst the wastes of this soundscape, rustling and looming omnipotently. It recalls the bad-acid psychedelic beaches that have come to define Bill Nace’s 2020s works, or gloomscapes of Arvo Zylo and German Army. A banjo is summoned, but so taken out of its immediate sonic properties it only adds to the apocalypse of the b-side; it sounds closer to pedal steel wobbling and budging through a stomachache. When you do zoom out of the piece, considering the slow lumbers of it’s movement instead of the moment-by-moment blows that make it a hat trick of a sprawling piece, it’s clear to see that the trio was creating an inverse to the drone of their first half; especially when it strips itself halfway through to open those stringed drones. There’s an aching beauty to that back half I’ve found. The kind that document the emotions of a cowboy who’s “too old for this shit” and wants to ride off into the sunset, but also knows that with the heat-death of the sun approaching sooner and sooner, it’s just more convenient to soak in the moment. Nothing cruel about it, just ruthless pragmatism.
And that’s what perhaps makes the trio’s release so damn rewarding and the highlight of the the Dinzu Artefacts batch. It cuts to the heart of the label’s strange tightrope walk between “free jazz” and “free field recordings”; the grey area/no man’s land where soundscapes exist as small zones to contemplate feelings that aren’t exactly compressible nor can be abstracted. They’re just experienced like old tales from times long ago.
Limited Edition of 200 Available Now at the Dinzu Artefacts Bandcamp!
I had to call out sick to work last Saturday. I genuinely don’t like doing that, but for about the past year I’ve been having repeated bouts of Sciatica in the lower left side of my body; I was limping out in socks at 5pm and straight up unable to bend down and pick up a King of the Hill DVD I dropped later that night. When you are 24 years old, this shit wrecks you. Trying to pinpoint the triggers that start the cycles, the recovery routines that work, and the mobility patterns that uphold stability have become mental focuses crucial to my ability to navigate the world; the feeling of what’s going on and what could happen in the span of a few hours can mean the world to me. One thing that I know works is the hot water and jets of a jacuzzi. Water revealed a talismanic quality in that it seems to loosen and shift my joints in the worst bouts.
About this time last year, I found myself suddenly tuned towards a rather unique EP release from Nyokabi Kariuki. There were numerous reasons why I found something to latch onto with Peace Places: Kenyan Memories. Firstly, Kariuki was born the same year I was and has lived a completely different, spatially omnibus life; one cut between family in Kenya and the US east coast. The title alone was enough to reinforce this, the sense of a different space from my own. Secondly, the EP had a strong sense of personhood that was less reliant on synthesizers than traditional instrumentation and field recordings. Kariuki was legitimately moving beyond just merely recording utilitarian spatial music and seemed to be breaking the fourth wall to deliver a personal truth, a situated knowledge that this style of ambient often waves and hints at but often fails to deliver. Kariuki had an incredible mastery of analog elements that sought to inform a listener “you can escape your Leibnizian monadic lifestyle if you take stock of the surroundings around you.” And it really liked water!
Kariuki’s sudden turnaround–this time for a “debut album” on cmntx records, FEELING BODY, solely released on tape right now–struck me hard when I heard it last month. As far as C32s run, this is a brutally efficient, deeply precocious open book listen (and yes, there is a book edition shipping with the tape). Returning to Peace Places after listening to FEELING BODY, what strikes me is the space, the open zone quality to these field recordings, often tied together by water. She is building off of the immense space and vagueness of that enticing release, but Kariuki has turned deeply inward.
There is a small, but burgeoning reaction to long COVID showing up in a handful of releases on Bandcamp. When I talked to Paul Dickow (Strategy) last fall, Dickow revealed that he had been working through long COVID and the fatigue the onset produces. Dickow’s latest Strategy releases have not quite responded to this temporal fatigue if only because they were developed over the last decade before this disease existed. FEELING BODY makes it rather clear in its Bandcamp notes that this is a long COVID album–and Kariuki has recovered from it to a manageable level. This shift inward is a purposeful reaction to trying to pinpoint the resonance, the feelings of a body in a moment of catatonic chronic illness. Documenting that is a radically vulnerable task, as much as an incredible display of finding healing in novel capacities; cycling for the right sounds, the necessary mantras, and the otherworldly spaces that a mind can imagine outside the pain it finds itself in.
FEELING BODY is not much different than its predecessor. 6 tracks running slightly longer, albeit this time the title track is a whopping 12 minutes; instrumentation is less regionally diverse, but still focuses on a chamber set (from bass to violin and now trumpet) amongst delicate vocal harmony that radiates its own unique ambience. It’s a greater focus in classical composition that allows Kariuki to tell her story in manner while experimenting Opener “Subira” is built off of those vocal harmonies and glacial pauses akin to a breathing exercise. One that welcomes you while coming to terms with a deft truth “your recovery may take longer than you think.” Yet, herein lies a promise of recovery and a shift to a new understanding of the body.
The 12-minute title track that follows is amongst the most adventurous compositions so far this year. There’s a return to the motif of water that shifts in pace and tension throughout the piece; yet the quality is that of a drippier, more hypnotic texture. There’s a subconscious dive across the track. Her vocal production leans towards that of ASMR-defusion and immediate focus. If it can drift peacefully, it’s amongst faint clouds of vocals that sound akin to harmonic engine whistles. Yet, there’s a stress and tension to the opening fourth; tightrope strings that want to collapse on themselves. It culminates in one moment Kariuki considers the dissociation of how her body may feel for a while. It’s enough to create a beckoning, fleet feeling in its back third; radiant horns and bird sounds amongst the harmonic chorus, a euphoric spring.
Side B’s “fire head’ recalls recent text-to-speech works of Lucy Liyou. Kariuki fucks with the voice as if to prime the listener to a buzzing, not-quite temporally tuned mind. The repetition becomes a storm in itself, lashing and gaining a BPM as Michael Denis Ó Callaghan’s horn races to an unsettling, sublime climax. “quiet face” is a duet between the violin and its feedback and Kariuki’s haunted, dissociated voice that seems to wander across in search in the silence. When it finds itself out of that black hole, “folds” creates a sense of stately dread from what seems to be an insect rustle, that Kariuki defuses with an operatic lullaby and clarinet; it feels of a narcotized pop that’s been missing dearly, especially as her voice approaches a vaudevillian dream. Its low drone, functions akin to a detente, disarming all the while.
“Nazama” (“I sink” in Swahili), the only other track capitalized outside the opener, reintroduces the water motif. One that returns faintly but noticeably at the end as Kariuki seems to surrender into the water and its potential for healing. It ends the tape on an empowering note that reveals a pertinent resolution.
Edition of 100 Available at the cmntx Records Bandcamp Page
I’m not on Bandcamp’s Tape Label Report. In my opinion, the whole thing exists as a ghetto to allow a handful of writers to say “wow look at this label” without really ever getting into the meat of the whole thing. It’s publicity for small endeavors, which is always a good thing I believe, although it also feels like you’ve got writers taking a nominal fee to either a) tell you a label with 400 releases is “really cool” (see Marc Masters writing about Already Dead, which seriously dismayed me in how it boiled Muave down to far too few words with a limited perspective) or b) tell you a label with 5 releases and a barely defined aesthetic is “the next big thing.” This is borderline windowshopping “scene celebrates itself” shenanigans I see all the time in San Diego beer journalism, except it is online on the Epic Games owned website that’ll now have a radio station in Fortnite. As such, I rarely feel like i’ve learned anything at the end of the day or found a new salience. Why do these labels being highlighted…matter?
In truth, move beyond my my finger wagging and bellyaching above. If you want to figure why something matters, well you should go out and find for yourself! Such was the case I found myself with Island House. Self-described as “a little label based on a little island in the East river,” run by a cool dad who’s a self-described member of the post-wook revolution and has released to this day…9 releases.
But it is with a light heart that I can say the 9 releases are THAT terrific; against the grain, what Tim McManus is curating has legitimate heat and stakes. He “started [the label] in 2022 at the behest of his guitar teacher and online friends,” which again perhaps explains how Island House probably made some absolutely insane mogul moves so early on. Getting Steve Rosborough of Moon Glyph to do art on your first release is a power play. Having M. Geddes Gengras, Jeff Tobias, and Jen Powers of Astral Editions write liner notes are also huge net gains. He has European Distribution for select titles. At release 5 Island House did a comp where 37.5% of the material was just German Army cuts alongside Andrew Weathers land art + Prana Crafter “going psych mode.” Like pretty much all he needs is just ONE Patrick Shiroishi tape by the year’s end and Island House officially acquires the “American Tape Label Triple Crown Hat Trick” award good mother of god. Maybe Joe WAS right!
Now, I was able to share a lovely phone call with McManus back on Sunday 2/19, as he stepped out of one room where he was staying in the Hudson Valley that weekend, to talk shop about the label. McManus has had quite the past 3 years, both through new fatherhood and slowly taking account of both local rumblings in New York City & the Hudson Valley; he had moved from a tiny apartment in Roosevelt Island out to Harlem when an opportunity for more space presented itself. There were quick, snappy mentions of a new Kent Ave space, 411 not 285, where David Watson’s Shift has taken up space for eclectic arts, as well as the Pit, a space run by Jim McHugh from Sunwatchers. McManus has been going to these shows, clocking names and faces, partially thanks to one extroverted conversation after another started by Zack Hale; all while even jumping into amateur DIY gig booking that included a rather successful donation gig.
McManus’ ties to both the DIY rumblings in NYC and the Hudson have been crucial in garnering the courage and gumption to go deep into his own label. At the moment, Island House would not exist without the immense support and keen ear of people running from those who are booking at the spaces above, Mr. Hale, Ryley Walker, Jeff Tobias, Mike Horn, numerous Twitter mutuals (including one Aquarium Drunkard writer in the city), amongst many others have all played a role in McManus taking the label to this current stage; it’s an era of mutual help and the strength of weak ties being played to its fullest. There’s a wealth of information and resources these folks have tapped into, reinforcing a belief both McManus and myself share, the kind that “any kind of experimental scene that’s not from your normal…that’s where im happy.” McManus is humble though, repeatedly emphasizing during the call “I’m just trying to get the music out there” working with the goodest of good goobers he can afford. CDs may be coming soon, although vinyl is a pipe dream; the expense and sourcing right now is too hard to make the calls for. Oh, and he’s a stay at home dad wrapping up a college degree; I can attest to brief blips of that struggle!
So in 9 releases, as a result of these connections & reception, the label has actually been able to position itself at a stronger advantage than other tape labels I’ve noted. Most notably (and centering everything), there’s the tape j-card art. While the Steve Rosborough design of IH-001, a Seawind of Battery release, was a one-off (planned to be reissued to match the current aesthetic), McManus quickly sought inspiration and design aesthetics from Astral Spirits. As such, Island House quickly sorted out a design that allows for artists to submit their own art, while also keeping a uniform “peachy” label. Such is going to standout, especially when Island House has taken the bold steps to garner European, Australian, South African, and even Japanese distribution in varied capacities (one tape even made it’s way to Palace Music HQ). Tapes down there that quickly? Well, McManus is going a day at a time though, as he considers which release is next on the docket, who’s to pen the liner notes, and just what kind of local community he wants to spring from Island House. The roster right now stands as a result of a web of connections and admiration; for example, it was J. Moss of the Modern Folk who was the one who shepherded that aforementioned compilation to the label for last year. Two releases down the line set for spring are to feature…vocals! McManus is wagering they may have a stronger reach than the instrumental folk sounds the label has chased so far.
As such, it explain how Island House has been able to practically blast off in under 9 months. A wealth of connections, ample good will, and most necessarily, the space and (personal) time to take on this endeavor have given McManus’ label a chip on its shoulder. To me, Island House is the timeless story of DIY being played out in the best of ways: someone realizing they can be their own curator and documenter, using a web of connections to jump into the fray, and going one release at a time. We’ve lost some great labels over the past two years: Ingrown Records had to shut down due to life changes, FTAM finally decided to close up shop as Peter Woods moves across the pond to teach in academia; meanwhile, Garden Portal’s terminal hiatus doesn’t exactly inspire hope for what the Athens, GA maverick’s trajectory is. Yet, what I’ve listed above gives me ample hope that McManus has picked up that torch and will hopefully continue to ignite happenings around the Hudson, NYC, and far around the globe for as long as possible.
Anyways, here’s 3 quickies on the January, February, and March releases.
David Cedolin – Ligurian Pastoral
Genova, Italy-based Davide Cedolin brought Island House into 2023 with Ligurian Pastoral, an acoustic guitar release with the harmonic potency of sounding akin to being nestled up in the guitar. Half a world away, Cedolin has been settling into the Ligurian region, and Ligurian Pastoral is a tribute to that “tight and bent strip of land between the Ligurian sea and the Apennines mountains”; you could call it a mediterranean climate. The 7 cuts are simple instrumentals that unfurl with brilliant grace; a small drone or reverberation here, a touching astral projections from Seawind of Battery on cuts 2 & 7 there, a gorgeous litany of rustic harmonies at every turn. For a Pat Metheny head, you’d probably find a smidgen of jamming here too! Everything works to create a situated response and mapping of Cedolin’s current homestead, while also leaving an incredible amount of space for pondering and considering. This tape is autobiographical after all, refractions of daily routines, faces, and landmarks that words often falter when attempting to explain the gracefulness of; the vibe is something that you make of it. This winter, San Diego county has had a bounty of storms this winter. Ones that which our rapidly disappearing (see the word “aridification”) Mediterranean climate glisten back to life for brief spurts. When I listen to this tape, all I see are outside are a rainbow of greens, my own pastoral that that this tape gives me thanks for.
Emergency Group – Inspection of Cruelty
The quartet of Robert Boston (keys), Andreas Brade (drums), Jonathan Byerley (guitar), and Dave Mandi (bass) sat down on November 2nd, 2022. This is what followed. And what was that exactly? A 46 minute krautjam rock sesh, one held together by motorik drumming and an absolutely free-wheeling sense of open armed love and magic. Of the three releases spotlighted here, Inspection of Cruelty, is the deepest of deep zoning sessions the label has provided to date. The two parts of Inspection of Cruelty are ample enough to work on their own without the connecting piece, yet taken together you have an ample piece that sees each member figure their own aura. Over the course of the 46 minutes, each player is offered ample time to excel at a solo moment as their brethren tune down and lower their instruments either to a one-track mindset or fade out entirely. What results is a fully-fleshed, breathing document of the Emergency Group. In its best moments, Mandi holds down a bass groove, Brade locks into a cymbal rush or lays down a new fill-line, and Boston cranks out key noise or Byerly takes the guitar and wails. Or…they just enter that Autobahn cruise mode where you ride a riff out because it just sounds so goddamn pleasing and flush with flavor. Inspection of Cruelty is not going to create any new krautrockheads, but more or less just confirm how deep of one you already are if you’ve made it this far.
Joseph Allred – For the Fallen Dawn (to be released… soon!)
A tape of acoustic guitar (not quite, there’s more than one stringed instrument)? Takoma school indebted (perhaps, have you seen his CV)? Featuring a poem by Jen Powers (they’re label alum after all)? Are we sure this wasn’t an Astral Edition?! No no! For the Fallen Dawn is a continuation of Joseph Allred’s slick guitar acoustics and natural ambience that have been featured from Garden Portal to Scissor Tail and even Feeding Tube; he’s not exactly a celebrity, although you garner the sense Allred’s style is “discogs bait price” worthy as many of his tapes have become collectables. For the Fallen Dawn has the same pleasure that I found when I was deep into Ross Hammond’s brilliant cassette for Full Spectrum last year. Over 36 minutes, Allred plays to the night sky and ambience of the local crickets and rustling critters in the bushes. 8 cuts are split between 2 modes: short snippets, duets meant to bring in space for the ambience to fulfill and counter, amongst wild sprawling 7-9 minute guitar epics that contain all the stoicism a mighty fine 10 gallon hat can afford. The pleasure are simple and ample, overflowing even as Allred unites strains of country and folk into a sprawling psychedelic vision of his own accord. Ladysthumb and None Are Born or Die are favorites, cunning moments where he launches into an acoustic freakout that sends a jolt to my system.
