Future Museums

Future Museums is Neil Nord from Fayetteville (again!), who collaborated with Wandering Lake and Liquid Skulls, both of which you already know. Future Museums' music is rooted in ambient, but expands the palette of sounds to many other instruments and styles, including minimalistic miniatures or slow psychedelic jams and Oriental-styled excursions.

A Solar Gold

Pleasure Cruise

Review: David Andree - In Streams (Sunshine Ltd., 2011)

While the genre of ambient is perhaps the last genre where a term „arms race” should be used to describe the rivalry between musicians (well, maybe with the exception of New Age), one cannot help but think at times that the artists are taking part in an incredibly slow, almost invisible, languid war in creating the most immersive, spacious and vast sound. And the flowering of small tape labels in the recent years brings to mind such Cold War phrases as “proliferation”. Because it’s true – practically every week the listeners are flooded with at least a dozen tapes, each trying to come closer to ambientalist nirvana, whether is purely electronic, synthesized sound or just processed traditional instruments, like guitar or piano.

In Streams by David Andree, a tape released on Floridian label Sunshine Ltd. comes in a pretty standard package – a blurred, nondescript photo adorns the artwork, giving a taste what the tape will sound like. And the sound on the tape is blurred as fuck – not in a negative way, definitely. The opener, “A Front”, alone, is a good contender to be called ambient track of the year. The drifting sound of an incredibly distant piano, so distant that the instrument’s sound can be barely recognized from under the endless waves of reverb and gentle shimmering drone deep in the background, which creates an impression of a half-remembered beach head in the middle of the winter. David Andree understand the meaning of ambient music – it is impressionist, re-creating the nearly forgotten feelings, drifting the listener of to sleep.

While the rest of the cassette might not come to the opening track in the terms of sheer genius and emotional power, it still provides a strong and massive load of beauty through a series of shorter and longer impressions. Things get interesting on side B when he adds some interesting glitch elements to the overall ambience, which may or may not have been inspired by Tim Hecker or the German digital minimalists like Oval. For example, the gentle clicking loop of “Gradually Drifting Along” sounds like a smoothed out version of Oval’s “Do While” off his 94 Diskont album. The closing 11-minute suite “Only to Pass Overhead, Dissapearing in the Distance” sounds truly like a bonus track from Tim Hecker’s 2003 Radio Amor.

David Andree might show us the future. While the endless repeating of a simple synth melody deliberately recorded in a lo-fi quality might start to appeal stale and dead end-ish, the fascination with gentle digital manipulation of glitch-like aesthetics in real-time, while playing (the cassette’s inlay states there were no overdubs) might be making a break in tape scene arms race.

The tape is available from Sunshine Ltd. Purchase it on the store website.

Baldruin

Baldruin is the solo project of Johannes Schebler from Wiesbaden, Germany. Baldruin is both hanted and haunting, blending ritualistic psychedelic folk jams with vast, shimmering ambient soundscapes to create a deeply cavernous sound. For fans of Starving Weirdos and RV Paintings. Check out Baldruin on SoundCloud and Facebook.

Schatten & Lichter (available on Cae-sur-a)

Split with Hering und seine sieben Sachen

Split with Neu Getre

Split with Least Carpet

Review: No Mind Meditation - Face Skull Spirit (GoldTimers Tapes, 2011)

No Mind Meditation is a project I know nothing about but which keeps surprising me with its intricate, hard to categorize sound. I already posted the free download of Paramita not long ago, which clashed with the guy from Gold Timers Tapes sending me a bunch of cassettes (thank you!), including No Mind Meditation’s Face Skull Spirit. Already on Paramita I was enthralled by the rich and textural sound, but on Face Skull Spirit they (he? she?) reach(es) new heights.

The entirety of side A (both sides are untitled, seamless entireties filling the tape pretty much to the brim) is an electronic sculpture which can be best compared to Autechre’s endless remixing/reconstructing of 2008’s Quartistice. Yes, I just compared a tape release to the fucking Autechre. That HAS to mean something, eh? No, seriously, it’s that good. It’s a slow burner for sure, and it takes a while to get into. The sound is very abstract, the synthesizer explodes at a seemingly random moments, everything else is reduced to weird and otherworldly background ambience, complete with washes of white noise and echoing high pitched pulses. But once you get into the sound, this initial mess just clicks, there is no turning back. On side A No Mind Meditation managed to create a digital painting in the style of the Masters themselves. Congratulations.

Side B attempts to do the same, but with “real” instruments – namely, the acoustic and the bass guitar. The acoustic initially attempts to catch a rhythm, going through a plethora of more or less successful American Primitivist-styled improvisations while the bass guitar strums randomly in the background. But around the 5 minute mark, a breakthrough happens: the bass guitar begins to create a recognizable, looped melody, while the processed guitar and gentle electronics create an ambientalized psychedelic summer jam, a sort of prediction on what chillwave might have sounded like if it did not rely so much on 80’s synth pop.

Face Skull Spirit is definitely a slow-burner – it might demand a few, or even a several repeated listens to finally click. But when it does, boy, is it a jam!

No Mind Meditation - Face Skull Spirit

Review: Sky Stadium - Ancient (Lava Church, 2011)

„See the dawn before the rest of the world”.

When I first heard the name Sky Stadium, my very first thought were that it’s yet another project of a) Jeff Witscher (Marble Sky) or b) Josh Burke (Sky Limousine). But it turned out it was neither – Sky Stadium  is the moniker to the (relative) newcomer to the scene (at least compared to the aforementioned seasoned players) by the name of Jeff R., who resides in Trenton, New Jersey. But the similarity in project names is not entirely coincidental – R. represents the minimal ambient sound Witscher used to make as Marble Sky before he abandoned it to create IDM-ish abstractions as Rene Hell or what Josh Burke used to churn out before he went for the even more New Age sound (complete with tacky album artworks).

The sound of Jeff R. brings up yet another “sky” related project to mind – namely Mark Pollard’s Pale Blue Sky. It seems that sky, without any clouds, is an inspiration for a minimal, obstruction-less sound, filled with gentle gradients and slow melody progressions. Ancient, a 20-minute long cassette released on a Florida label Lava Church Records, is a prime example of such thinking. Containing three tracks, two on side A and one on side B, Ancient flows by effortlessly, and before you manage to properly sink into the lo-fi sound, the tape is over. You just have the feeling to repeat, repeat, repeat and think “this should’ve been a c30, at least”.

The tape listens like a mini-collection of three distinctive moods. The strongest track is unfortunately the shortest, a three minute opener “To Be Free”. Almost foreboding, the track begins Ancient with a darker tone, before it is lightened and given a calming edge in six minute “Down”. The side B burner, “Ancient”, appears to be slightly quieter (as if it was possible!) than the two preceding tracks and is almost comatose in its relaxing qualities.

Jeff R.'s Sky Stadium is a rather new project, yet he’s already making ripples in the tape drone/ambient underground with tapes being released by Hooker Vision, Monorail Trespassing, 2:00 AM Tapes, Gold Timers Tapes or Existential Cloth, and now Lava Church. Watch this guy. He might start really expanding soon (or maybe even exploding!).

The tape is available at Lava Church Records. Get it!

Weed Temple on Twitter

Weed Temple readers who use Twitter can now follow me on @weedtemple. Each time a new album review or download is posted or simply an announcement is being made, a new short message will be posted containing a link to a given post.

A Twitter widget has also been added below the blog description.

Raskol'nikov - AMO

Standing in the stark contrast to the previous post's angelic ambience, Raskol'nikov is an Italian duo who create deeply unsettling, low-end dark ritual ambient. Raskol'nikov is the sound from "somewhere in the bowels of the Earth". Raskol'nikov may be the soundtrack to the anguish and suffering Rodion Raskolnikov himself felt when planning and after committing the murder. Raskol'nikov is the soundtrack to the blackest of nights. Visit their website.

AMO

The Wandering Lake - In Passage

The Wandering Lake is Brian Kupillas from Fayetteville, Arkansas. Brian himself describes his music as "ambient, experimental folk", but I'd rather call it "vocal ambient". As much as I prefer my music to be vocal free, this one is SOMETHING ELSE. The guitar seems only like a nice and unobstructive addition to Brian's vocals, which, believe me, are absolutely angelic. Add some slight reverb and the result is spiritual katharsis, an absolute nirvana. Highly, highly recommended.

In Passage

Review: Long Pond - A Fog of Unrest (Couples, 2011)

Creative people tend to be creative in more than one area. For example, if one is a visual artist, they will usually make a good musician too. Tampa’s Anthony Record is no exception – his musical project Long Pond (which I’ve posted a while ago) worships the analog, sweeping ambience. A true retro futuristic dream.

In the times when the cassette is seemingly the default format for analog synth/drone/new New Age music a CD may seem to some as a faux pas. To make kosmische musik in the 2010s and NOT release on cassette? Get with the times, man! But Anthony Record knows what he is doing – a neatly packaged digipak houses a CD, which surpasses all cassettes in terms of quality (duh). So, paradoxically, by releasing on CD instead of cassette, Record gave a breath of fresh air in a scene where cassettes were introduced to give a breath of fresh air from CD’s.

While the first two tracks might feel like obscure Oneohtrix Point Never outtakes circa Ruined Lives, mostly thanks to the characteristic synth sound Lopatin re-discovered and revived a few years back (Roland Juno 60, maybe?), the impression fades toward the end of the second track, when a myriad of high-pitched, organ-like notes descends and stacks upon one another and builds a shimmering solo upon the delay-abused waving ambience. Standing in contrast to the majestic “Tectonic Plates”, which is the soundtrack for witnessing the terraforming process sped up a few million times, “The Entire Pacific Coast” is based on pretty much a single, massive, heavy drone which speeds up and slows down, sometimes to stop entirely, just to kickstart a split second later. One can just keep wondering whether the effect was achieved digitally or was it an actual tape experimenting. The closing track, “A Fog of Unrest” is much similar to “Tectonic Plates” minus the OPN sound. This one’s richer and deeply atmospheric – a slowly-unfolding, piercing synth melody shifts notes slightly, almost unnoticeably while a background droning ambience pulses and takes new shapes, never taking the listener’s attention from the surface sound.

Long Pond’s A Fog of Unrest appears to be Anthony’s first physical release, and it’s already an engaging ambient trip. Released on Florida label Couples Records in the number of 100 copies, it’s still available, so get while it lasts!

"A Fog of Unrest" by Long Pond from Couples Records on Vimeo.

Auris Apothecary Free Archive

Auris Apothecary is a Bloomington, IN based label which dabbles in most obscure formats imaginable. Forget the CD, the LP and the cassette (well, they do releases on those formats, but only sometimes!), these motherfuckers release their stuff on 8-tracks, reels, floppy discs, microcassettes, "anti-cassettes", unspooled reel tapes. For all I know, they might have stuff coming on LaserDisc, Betamax or even wax cylinders. Thankfully, if you don't have a reel machine or a 8-track player, you can listen to the music from the label in handy digital format. The archive is available on the label's Bandcamp page. And while I'm at it, let me post the best release (and the longest one, clocking at 60 minutes) - a microcassette by Deep Magic.

Illuminated Offerings

Review: Sound Pressings - The Science of Oblivion (Kimberly Dawn, 2011)

The Science of Oblivion is a strange collage of sound effects, dialogue snippets, out-of-context movie soundtracks and songs cut into little pieces with a good dosage of mysterious drones and frying electronics bordering on noise. Released as a 3” CD-R on Kimberly Dawn, Sound Pressings is an experimental project by Danford Mitchell, who creates seemingly endless, mapless territories.

The first few minutes of The Science of Oblivion can be described as “let’s see how much we can slow down the sound so it can be still audible”. Voices and sounds are reduced to the dying moans of unknown ancient creatures. This is hilariously contrasted with the looped and sped up short music piece which keeps rewinding back and forth and what appears to be a mouse squeaking. For some reason I keep thinking that the almost infrasonic moan is the slowed down sound of that mouse.

After a brief interlude, consisting of a few movie samples and a girl singing in Vietnamese, maybe? another dark and murky part comes on, which is like a strange dialog between a low-end, noisy electric guitar which moans and feedbacks, nondescript field recordings (which sound like a mix of leaves rustling and something frying, most likely the circuits of Danford’s synthesizer) and an exotic, possibly African instrument. The best thing about this EP is the fact that you can’t really tell which parts were taken from the outside sources and which were added by Mitchell himself. The slow guitar clatter gradually rises to a wall of noise which half-successfully drowns all the speech samples, which just keep blaring from the speakers, making an unity with the noise. The wall finally comes down to give way to a final short piece played on acoustic guitar with no particular melody. This seeming lack of melody and the rawness of recording gives a strangely unsettling effect – like a theme from a horror movie covered by a deranged folk singer.

Danford Mitchell made an interesting and engaging blend of found sounds and his own sounds. Demands a focused listening, sure, but the reward for the effort is great. Stimulating for the mind. 

Sound Pressings  - The Science of Oblivion

Review: Bad Indians - Sounds From the Big Room (On the Make Music, 2011)

Bad Indians’ Sounds From the Big Room make me wish I had a tape deck in my car. It is nearly 40 minutes of thumpin’, smokin’ garage psychedelic rock in the vein of 13^th Floor Elevators themselves. Guessing from the liner notes on the cassette inlay the band consists of only two people: Autumn on drums and vocals and Jules on guitars, vocals, organ and harmonica. Which is a surprise, because the sound feels so rich that it makes you think that it’s been made by three or four people. And pretty spacious, too – not without a reason the name of the cassette is Sounds From the Big Room – the “big room” here can refer both to a performance space or the spaciousness. The slight reverb is audible on most of the tracks.

Practically every single track on the album is a solid rock – I just can’t stress enough how incredibly fucking catchy this album this. There are no otherworldly synth excursions, no deteriorating into a wall of noise, no snaking jams. Every song is kept simple and true to the very roots of psychedelia, to paraphrase Jim DeRogatis, this is the sound of suburban psychedelic punk band who didn’t have access to LSD but thought they knew perfectly well what a psychedelic experience was like (if you don’t know what I mean, check out his great book Kaleidoscope Eyes). Bad Indians manage to be trippy without dissolving into a murk of spaced-out guitar solos or bad trip-like atmosphere.

The moods on Sounds… range from up-beat, on-the-road, thumpin’ party anthems with mandatory groooovy guitar solos (“Where I’m Livin’”, “Moonchild of the Sabbath”, “Doin’ Nothin’”, “Haunted House” and the closing “Leavin’ This Place” with a bassline that could make the dead dance), calm male and female vocaled ballads for acoustic and electric guitar (“Babydoll”, “Summersover” and “The Garden”). To keep the spirit of the 1960’s rock records, there is even a cover on the cassette, “Cheree”, originally performed by synth punk pioneers Suicide. But the standout track on the entire album must be “I Can’t”, a dark lo-fi rock anthem, almost gothic at times with its organ lines and distant, slightly muted guitar.

Bad Indians sure know how to rock. In an old school way.

Bad Indians on Bandcamp

Sounds From the Big Room

ĸŋüłł - Jesus Summer Camp

New Weird America has got nothing on "New Weird Russia", if we want to call the wave of psychedelic everything artists flowing from the former Soviet Union. ĸŋüłł is both mysterious and weird. As in: hypnotic/hypnagogic noisy weirdness drenched in distorted guitar drones upon which even more distorted vocals sing and moan to skeletal quasi-techno beats and barely existent melodies. For fans of all sorts of weird, hazy shit.

Jesus Summer Camp

MH - Black Animal

Simple, psychedelic-ish folk from Chicago. No, it's not lo-fi - the production quality here is top notch, which is nice, because it makes you appreciate all the little elements in this man's music. The main instruments here are obviously an acoustic guitar and the voice, but there is some interesting experimentation with electric guitar and even the studio equipment - like "Aces" which sounds like something between early Animal Collective and Christian Fennesz. The tracks range from typical singer-songwriter stuff (with a slight, SLIGHT delay) to relaxing guitar passages set to field recording (or maybe recorded in the middle of the forest)? Recommended. You can download the album for free or e-mail the guy for a physical copy.

Black Animal

Robel Synthesia - Indica Float

Possible summer jam for 2011 (along with upcoming Sun Araw and Peaking Lights' 936)? Deconstructed hip-hop beats, synth extravaganza, squeaky clean production, overwhelming ambience and wonderful use of samples. Truly eclectic and very psychedelic without resorting to the "druggy", hazy sound.

Indica Float

Gimu

Gimu is the moniker of a mysterious ambientalist from Brazil. Droning, immense, sometimes dreamy, often haunting, Gimu often combines sparse field recordings with rough, metallic textures. Good drones. Apart from three free digital EP's, Gimu also has releases on Audio Gourmet and Heat Death Records.

A Piano Piece

E.K.

The Sacred

Review: Dusted Lux - Attic Visions (Kimberly Dawn, 2011)

The words "dusted" and "attic" seem to be the major indications of what this beautifully packaged 3" CD-R from Kimberly Dawn sounds like. At mere 20 minutes, the two tracks pack more emotional impact than most cassettes or CD-R's manage in 30, 40, or even 60 minutes. It is a beautiful, melancholic journey through memories and feelings falling apart and distorted, yet still vivid and strong.

Forget the retro-futuristic, analog synth sound. There are almost no electronics to be found here. Although the sound is heavily processed and modified after the recording, the main components are the distortions and interruptions gradually growing on the main theme, looped into oblivion. Such is the case on the first track, "Through Old Growth". An almost ridiculously simple, oneiric piano loop is laid with crackling field recordings, which give the impression of imitating a vinyl record. The piano loop is soon buried under the plodding, glacial electric guitar feedback – but it’s never buried entirely – the single notes can still be heard from the dead amplifier noise. The piano loop soon regains consciousness as the electric noise dies out. And the listener witnesses the most beautiful (or beatific?) part – the wonderful interplay of distant, daydreaming piano loop and acoustic, peace-of-mind guitar impressions.

Track two, “The One You Love” is way more abstract. It’s hard to find traces of melody here, the whole thing feels more like an electric guitar/field recordings electroacoustic experiment with looping, repeating patterns folding and “attacking” (quotation marks, because the changing structures are too lethargic and calm to be considered actual attacks) one another in the great minimalist manner. Scraps of guitar melody try to make their way through hiss and subtle distortion, but are soon swallowed back into the mechanized skeleton of the track.

I think the EP has been described best in the short blurb from the label itself, which called the work of Dusted Lux “an unraveling tapestry of crumbling textures and far away sounds”. The textural reference is more apt than ever – the sound is deeply textural, full of interesting factures, and, above all, fascinating and beautiful. Like Sean McCann at his most personal without the weird electronic intrusions.

Dusted Lux - Attic Visions

Review: Greg Davis - States (2) (GoldTimers Tapes, 2011)

It appears that with the shift to the more vintage cassette format the synthesizer veterans also shifted to the more vintage (or maybe more “raw” and experimental) approach to their music. While Keith Fullerton Whitman, who was creating sweeping ambient vistas for CD’s, switched to experiments with algorithms and removing the human factor from the creation of music altogether with his Generator cassette series, Greg Davis moved from his trademark laptop glitch folk to New Age suites and abrasive, abstract improvisations in the style of earliest electronic champions. Old-timer music in the times of the old-timer format? It appears so.

States (2), one of the first cassettes released on Chicago’s GoldTimers Tapes label continues the path of bleeps-and-bloops odyssey witnessed on his Eyebright tape I’ve reviewed a while back. But while on that album side B offered a rest from the somewhat brutal noise assaults with a lengthy dream zone, States (2) is a full-blast excursion into 40 minutes of angular, brutalist improvs. The sound crackles, hisses, whirrs, rises and falls in a series of rage fits, like a ferocious little animal trapped and trying to fight its way out of the cage while taking short breaks to rest and gain some more energy for another attack. Side B begins like a bastardization of Eyebright dreamzone, attacking the eardrums with a relentless, harsh, monolithic drone which later disintegrates into scattered and disorganized signals. The whole cassette is filled to the brim with such conflicts. The dissonance reigns, the synths are frying (or are already fried) and there’s no remedy and not a slightest trace of melody in sight. Pure chaos.

States (2) is a very adventurous tape. Definitely not for falling asleep (unless you like falling asleep to the soundtrack set to a micro-war of little furry animals or robots inside a concrete bunker), but a nice change from all the melodic, structured albums out there. Greg Davis seems to be taking our fear of chaos and dissonance and stuffing it in our faces over and over again.

Download link removed on request by Greg Davis.

Review: STRNGLV - Psychotropia (Fabrica, 2011)

As the name suggests, STRNGLV’s Psychotropia is a highly trippy concoction of psychedelic electronic sounds set in a tropical jungle. The tape, released on a young Brooklyn label Fabrica Records, begins with a series of pulsing, sunlit drones descending from the canopy. The cassette insert lists an impressive list of both synthesizers and computer software. And for a good reason – the tape is amazingly multilayered and rich, almost pregnant with sound, existing more or less in the same dreamy equatorial headspace as High Wolf or Dolphins Into the Future. “Waking Up in Amsterdam” is a looping abstract piece, featuring some nice work delay work and “Sonic Teleportation” is a 30-something second harsh draft, rising and falling in a series of noisy convulsions.

The following tracks, “Standby” and “Thirst” are class on their own, the first gradually mangling the calm guitar loop into tribal drone with ghostly vocals humming in the background just to end up being a full-blown rainforest discotheque (ultra-psychedelic processed bird samples included). The second piece is an almost lo-fi, introspective aquatic zone which sounds like floating down the river and finding a cool shadow to shield oneself from the scorching sun.

But the icing on the cake and the tape’s tour de force comes with the title track, “Psychotropical”, which takes up the entirety of side B. With the thumping tribal drums and organic drones, the first part of this epic suite sounds like an electronic rendition of No Neck Blues Band’s trippiest moments or Golden Jooklo Age’s Tropical Trip. Because hell yeah, ain’t “Psychotropical” one big tropical trip. Around the middle of the track the drums fade out to give way to haunting, mossy drone in the vein of Loren Chasse’s Of side-project or what Barn Owl would make if they used synths instead of guitars. The very end of the track gives a murky, almost suffocating atmosphere with distant moans and drums buried deep in the mix, sounding an awful lot like The Skaters’ best moments.

Psychotropia is scorching hot, well produced and incredibly trippy. Can’t wait to hear more from this guy. Grab the tape from Fabrica Records while it still lasts!!

Quiet Evenings - Transcending Spheres

New album from Rachel and Grant Evans, who also make music under the monikers Nova Scotian Arms and Motion Sickness of Time Travel. Beautiful, ultra-calm meditational zones, late night listening. Winners of the "most perfect fitting band name" award. Released on Preservation.

 link removed on request

Review: Red Electric Rainbow - Surfing the Breaks (GoldTimers Tapes, 2011)

Red Electric Rainbow’s Daniel Smith is a man of simplicity. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he does not settle for intricate synth overkills (case in point: latest Emeralds), instead choosing often the most basic elements possible and gradually working his way with them. For Surfing the Breaks, his latest cassette released on Chicago label GoldTimers Tapes, Smith chose two simple sequences, which fill both sides and constitute the foundation for all the other sounds.

Side A, “Surfing the Breaks” is based on a slow sequence, which echoes and bounces back and forth with a bassy drone building in the background while exploding in slow-motion with shimmering synth tones, building walls upon walls of piercing (yet pleasant) electronic sounds with a bitchin’ synth solo lurking behind the pulsations. The whole thing sounds a bit like a guitar-less Sunroof! at their most trippy or de-technified Astral Social Club. The idea of working with a simple sequence by playing around with effects is very similar to his own Fluorescend Landscapes series.

Side B, “Water Acrobatics” follows the same formula, modifying the skeletal sequence and making it more and more psychedelic, adding echoes and turning knobs like a madman without losing the lush, relaxing quality of the music. Side B is also more restrained than side A, offering a rest from the multi-layered nirvana of the first side. As the name of the album, the tracks and the cover suggest, the theme revolves around the ocean and the aquatic adventures. But don’t expect any of the murkiness and lo-fi quality of Dolphins Into the Future or Super Minerals. Surfing the Breaks is crystal clear, like a crisp, cool wind blowing in the face, or like ocean spray spreading in the morning air.

What I really like about Red Electric Rainbow, especially Daniel’s latest albums, is his attention to detail and clear production. This sets him apart from many of the “psychedelic drone” artists who release their stuff on cassettes, with whom RER gets often lumped in. There is no murkiness, no smokey, suffocating quality to his music. Listening to the clear and polished production on Daniel’s albums is like getting high on clean air alone – taking a deep breath and feeling different and better, but without the munchies and clouded judgement.

Here's the ripped tape, since the original tape is already sold out:

Red Electric Rainbow - Surfing the Breaks

And here's the rip of Come and Melt Your Face Off I've reviewed a while back. Great and underappreciated tape, it's still available on Sacred Phrases. I hope that after hearing the mp3's you'll feel the need to buy the tape. :)

Red Electric Rainbow - Come and Melt Your Face Off

Review: Tailings - Live (Eternal Solitude, 2011)

From the same label that gave us Stitched Vision’s Open Palms  and Ocean Glow comes another offering, this time it’s cassette by Tailings, the duo of J. Campbell (Mr. Stitched Vision himself) and K. Robinson. As the name suggests, Live consists of two live tracks recorded to 8 track in winter 2010. Stylistically, it’s somewhat lo-fi drone in the vein of SV, although a little harsher. Still, it’s not as abrasive and sandpaper-like as certain moments of, say, Infinite Body, but the low-end, almost physical sound is to be experienced.

“Roaming Bax” takes up the entirety of side A and is a series of rising and falling glacial tones accented by pulsing synth stabs mimicking futuristic, dystopian alarm sirens. But this isn’t drone for the sake of drone: beneath the wall of distortion lies a melody, a very slow melody, but still, a melody. This seems to be an emerging trademark of Campbell’s analog shoegaze, which he also employs in Stitched Vision. The harsher synth sounds are an interesting and intriguing addition, like strange rock formations in an otherwise largely flat and detail-less desert.

Side B, “Razed Earth”, is harsher, setting itself apart from the side A with its post-apocalyptic, foreboding mood. Unrelenting drone towers above everything and a wind-like texture rises and falls throughout the track, like dead wind blowing in the scorched wasteland. Considering those guys are from Australia, the country which is responsible for one of the greatest dystopian/post-apoc  movie series of all time, it’s not hard to imagine Max Rockatansky stumbling across the barren, alternative version of the Seventh Continent set to this “fan-made soundtrack”.

Live is an intriguing and though-provoking venture into the microcosm of harsh, richly textural drone. At 22 minutes, it can be merely considered an introduction, although an interesting one. Jason Campbell shows some real potential and here, together with Robinson they created two slabs of deep fried mind-zones. Want more.

The Tailings tape is probably still available at Eternal Solitude. E-mail Jason for availability.

Mist - House

Newest double vinyl from Cleveland's John Elliott and Sam Goldberg. Dense and melodic analog sound. Something for sequencer lovers! Similar to Mist's previous LP on Amethyst Sunset, but this one is even richer and more layered and, of, course longer! Highly recommended. Released on Spectrum Spools.

House

link found on Akteon shoutbox.