The Answer Is In The Beat

Szdanik Tttk/Mexika/A. Kustarnik/Vin Rar: split tape (Psy-Fiction Recordings, 2020)

February 1, 2021 at 10:58 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Limited to 5 copies, this 90-minute tape showcases 4 different aliases of Psy-Fiction Recordings’ prolific owner, Alexey Nakhodkin. Szdanik Tuuutiitak (in slightly abbreviated form) starts this shindig off with what could be grainy loops of at least 5 calliopes playing at once, with faint melodies managing to poke their way out but nothing really changing apart from the tape speed at a few points. The Mexika piece starts out extremely minimal and sounds like a distant furnace that you think is either strangely humming out a melody or your brain’s playing tricks on you, then a louder, more distinct vibration buzzes in. Some more irritated screeching emerges, but then somehow this plunges into a bucket of blue fluid and glitches/freezes for a while. Eventually a swarm of harmonicas cut in, some whirring out with distortion, but generally revolving around the same beehive. Peridically it crumbles and mutes a bit, but then comes back slurrier than ever. At one point it feels like it’s basically been ground into dust, but it crawls back slightly before the side ends. A. Kustarnik, on the second side, is guitar-based, with wayward twangs and clangs splayed across a wasteland. Gradually it seems to lift away from the guitar-based source material, with more vibrations, distortions, and just a creeping ominousness. Like the end of the first side, it gets super smudged and cruddy by the end. After this is Vin Rar, maybe the artist’s most playful, minimal synth-esque project. Bubbly tones quickly whizzle around like a pinwheel, while a drum machine patiently drips away underneath. Like the rest of the tape, there’s periods where it seems like nothing is changing much, but it does get out of wack, getting brighter, less busy, slowing down, piling back in, etc. Even though it doesn’t really progress, it does seem stuck in the same fluttering moment of joy.