The Answer Is In The Beat

Stephan Haluska: Empty Room tape (Constellation Tatsu, 2018)

February 9, 2019 at 10:08 pm | Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment

Ambient harp music which somehow sounds darker and more mysterious than most music of that nature. You usually expect it to be all fluttering and angelic, but here’s “Empty Room” sounding sparse and isolated… and yet it’s not impenetrable avant-garde anti-music. There’s some immense beauty to this album, it just doesn’t present itself in an obvious way. The last track, “Ocean Projector”, is over 12 minutes long, and for the first half it’s barely audible, but before you know it you’re being swallowed whole.

Impermanent Projects mega-post

February 6, 2019 at 10:37 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Portland-based Impermanent Projects has been putting on events, releasing music, and creating art since 2017. Their website stresses their mission to add to the cultural conversation rather than the trash heap, and while they might not be the most prolific label around, what they do put out hopefully means something. The first issue of their long-in-the-making Antsy zine is finally out, and while it can easily be digested in the span of a couple hours, there’s a lot of wonderful, insightful information and literature here. Dustin Krcatovich (Impermanent Projects co-founder, along with Micah Vanderhoof) interviews the always-inspiring Space Lady, Fred Thomas and Dominic Coppola reminisce about the ’90s, and there’s an eyewitness report about the Fargo noise scene. Among lots of other stuff. Well worth checking out, very tidy, professional layout but still resolutely DIY in content.
The label’s first batch of musical releases includes a split 7″ featuring two former WCBN DJs (Dustin and Benoît Pioulard). Pioulard’s side is filled with sighing loops which swoop, joined by other celestial sounds, making it sound like far more is going on than actually is, filling the room up with glowing spirits. The label states that it’s 5 and a half minutes long, but it’s so engrossing that it seems to transcend all notions of time, and it feels half as long. Skin Lies’ side is a big jolt after the first one. It’s more abrasive, and also more swampy, filled with bizarre insectoid chirping as well as some nearly poisonous noise attacks. Still, it’s also pretty ethereal and mind-bathing rather than brutal, and there’s even a song buried deep under the radioactive foam.
One of several tapes issued in this particular Impermanent Project is one from Gossimer, consisting of a single gorgeous 15-minute piece using a tuning fork, a white noise machine, a delay pedal, a vibrator (!), and other objects/devices. It starts out sparse, then a melange of scrapes, buzzes, and yes, vibrations all blur together into a much more musical heap of tones than you might expect at first. Then there’s a deep level of bass fluctuating underneath a thick blanket of hiss, but you almost don’t even notice the hiss because of how the bass makes you feel. Then another cluster of sounds expand and begin plucking at the strings of your soul.
Providing a tiny glimpse into the aforementioned Fargo noise scene is the split tape from scene veteran Edwin Perry Manchester and Hopechest. Perry’s “The Evil Spirit That Devours Mankind” is a disturbing fever dream filled with slow, reversed creaks and thwacks, as well as a few hair-raising crashes and shrieks. Mankind definitely doesn’t survive this one. The Hopechest side, however, couldn’t be more different. This one sounds like nothing short of a spiritual rebirth after the doom-spelling first side. And it’s not even all that “happy” or “blissed out”-sounding. It floats and feels light and glowing, yet if you pay close attention it’s actually quite grimy and curdled. A really refreshing blend of meditative truth-seeking and subtly manipulated weirdness.
My favorite tape of the batch, however, has to be Eye Idols by Talc, simply because of how absurd, chaotic, and straight-up fun it is. This one is all mangled, incinerated, and glop-encrusted tapes, with stereo panning action so that it resembles some sort of drunk, absurdist sound clash using far-from-functioning equipment and half-melted cassettes. It’s somewhere between Moth Cock and Invisbl Skratch Piklz Vs. Da Klamz Uv Deth if it was made by rabid mutant gerbils playing singing bowls. And the second side seems to have been partly composed by a dolphin.