January 21, 2018 at 7:32 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Paul Steven Ray’s BlueBlack Dream: Maps
The first part of this dream, “Prerevmoon”, starts with cooing, whispering, warbling, hushing, and a heavy fog of churning guitars. Eventually it gathers some more demented voices, a crunchy, skipping beat, hand percussion, and upfront guitar soloing. And then eventually a flurry of frantic Spanish chatter. It’s pretty dense and chaotic, but it doesn’t seem tethered to anything (even with the skipping-record-style loop) and floats like an apparition. “Map Before” has some guitar drifting, but it’s mostly ever-evolving layers of scattered vocals, with some fast, choppy techno beats constantly being interrupted towards the end. “Northern Boys” adds some theremin to the sinister fever dream of uttered thoughts and guitar plucks, creaks, and exhortations. “Seven Corners” is much shorter than the preceding tracks (4 minutes instead of 10 or 11), and it’s more of a straightforward free jazz freakout, but there’s still a dark spaciness to it.
January 19, 2018 at 10:53 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
FP-Oner: 7
Fred Peterkin has been crafting some of the most exquisite deep house on the planet for over a decade now, either as Black Jazz Consortium, Fred P., FP-Oner, or a handful of other names. His second FP-Oner album,
6, crept up on me after it came out in 2016, and its sequel is just as lush and immersive. His brand of house is calmly euphoric, taking pleasure in simple things (“Smiles” is filled with children’s laughter) and reaching for a higher level of understanding without losing sight or awareness of the present surroundings. It’s incredibly dreamy, but it maintains a consistent rhythmic focus and progression. Apart from the brief intro, the tracks are generally quite long, although “Follow the Sound” is a more concise 5-minute track which is also one of the poppier ones here, due to its sugary vocal hook. “Light Years” is a fantastic 11-minute daydream featuring Minako, who sings longingly in English and speaks in Japanese. “Beyond Understanding” is filled with harps, brushy drums, and rising/sparkling synths, coming close to Four Tet or Floating Points territory. Some of the later tracks seem to get a bit more gaseous, but there’s still strong kick drums on “Simple Things”.
January 15, 2018 at 12:49 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
C-Schulz: Frühe Jahre
Carsten Schulz has recorded several albums of abstract collage music for Mouse On Mars’ Sonig label, as well as Australian label Extreme. This CD is essentially a reissue of his first LP (1991’s
10. Hose Horn) plus several other tracks from other releases dating from around the same time. Very heavily inspired by H.N.A.S., this is a series of surrealist collages using animal/nature sounds, strange voices, oddly recorded instruments, and occasionally some groovy rhythms. There’s some parallels to Nurse With Wound’s knack for sound design and infatuation with easy listening/exotica, but this is still very much its own entity. “Meister” is probably the best introduction: 10 minutes of a coiled, buzzing rhythms, uproarious applause noise, buzzsaw guitars, and yelling in German. Aside from the first two 10-minute tracks, most of the pieces on the album proper are short vignettes, painting a brief scene and focusing on one or two samples or moods. “Tri-Top” mainly consists of an evil distorted voice straight from a disturbing sci-fi movie, and then “Barbapapa” is a finely sanded ’80s drum machine rhythm with some sinister synth pads. Following brief tape experiment “1972” is “KreuzChor”, which may as well be the Residents singing in German. “Kurze Flitze” is a brief but fun trip with a racing rhythm, scratched-up CDs, and free jazz saxophone blurts. “Aus” is a minute of silence with a brief, sudden burst of sound at the end. The non-album tracks at the end of the disc are longer, more involved pieces. “Wir Beide Sind Verwandt” is more of a free-floating soundscape with children’s voices and flutes, but “Schwellen” is more of a locked-in industrial rhythm. “Meisterschaft” has more of a fun spy groove with what may or not be kazoos on top, and German speaking mentioning new wave and rock’n’roll. “Spacer” is a more hi-tech track with early ’90s dance beats mixed with cartoon sound effects and vocals which sound like the Shamen in German.
January 13, 2018 at 2:59 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Robert Haigh: Creatures of the Deep
Somehow I was completely unaware that the guy behind atmospheric drum’n’bass project Omni Trio had actually been making avant-garde and modern classical records since the early ’80s, and even contributed to some of Nurse With Wound’s best albums. He retired Omni Trio in 2004, but he’s continued releasing work under his own name. Most of the tracks on this album are relatively short, compact, and melodic, although “Koto Line” and “Sunken Pavilions” are longer and drift out more. There’s enough implied rhythm here that you could imagine heavy rolling beats backing them up, but here they’re left to float free and weightless. “Birds of Cadence” is clear and direct, and definitely the highlight for anyone who loves “Avril 14th”. “From the Mystery” has a gentle layer of reversed notes surrounding its effortlessly pretty melody. “I Remember Phaedra” has more of a sad mystical forest atmosphere to it. The album doesn’t last too long (about 40 minutes), and it ends pretty faintly and unassumingly, making for an easy tansition back into the real world.
January 12, 2018 at 10:36 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Ueno Takashi: Smoke Under the Water
On this solo instrumental album for Room40, Ueno Takashi (current member of Tenniscoats, once of Maher Shalal Hash Baz) plays guitar in such a manner that it’s hard to tell he’s even playing guitar. It’s hard to tell if Takashi is meticulously overdubbing and arranging guitar parts or if this is all done live with looping stations and other devices, but he constructs lush, flowing sound tapestries which can wash right over your ears if you’re not listening carefully, but are extremely intricate when you do pay attention. At times, it seems to resemble the cascading maxi-minimalism of pianist Lubomyr Melnyk. The pizzicato spirals of the second track are a bit closer to Dustin Wong, but not quite as buzzy, ecstatic, or high on life. Tracks 3 and 4 are a bit more eerie, and would make good soundtracks for haunted house levels in RPG games. 5 is like some sort of twisted, inverted carnival theme, while 6 seems to branch outward a bit more, and has some sort of demented rootsy bent to it, with a softly humming drone underneath. Each successive piece seems to hint further at different sorts of madness, but never pushing over the edge. It is exceedingly difficult to name any other guitarist who sounds like this, and it all sounds fascinating.
January 10, 2018 at 9:52 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Graham Repulski: Permission To Love tape
Philadelphia-based lo-fi artist Graham Repulski just released two 10-minute tapes, both of which contain unique artwork for every copy, seemingly cut out from a book or magazine. Judging by the “Good bye” and “Good night” messages on their Bandcamp pages, these might be the end of the project? He doesn’t appear to have a Facebook page anymore. Anyway,
Permission To Love is described on the artist’s Bandcamp page as “7 tracks of funky fun”. His music is a sort of fun, but not in an obvious, crowdpleasing way. This is extremely cryptic, lo-fi tape-collage rock, with big, tuneful melodies stretched out, obscured, distorted, and rearranged. He can very obviously write straightforward power pop songs if he wanted to, but other people do that, so he contorts them and screws them up. Songs that could be proper anthems are cut to shreds, cut off after a minute (the opening title track seems like an anthem in the making that was half taped over), howled under fuzz, and just otherwise fucked around with. The longest track is “Soft As Shit”, which opens side B and consists of 3 minutes of a simple piano pattern with stacks of raucous guitars dancing around. Sometimes lyrics are included on his Bandcamp page, but not for this one, so it’s mostly impossible to make out what he’s saying, but the melodies themselves are likely to stick in your head. Of the two new tapes he’s releasing, this one seems to be the more musical, and maybe the more humorous of the two (titles include “I’d Buy That For a Dollar” and “Malcolm’s Ex”), but the music itself doesn’t contain any obvious jokes or punchlines. But at the same time, it feels like some sort of absurdist performance art, and it’s hard not to find some sort of humor in it.
Graham Repulski: Negative Highlight Reel tape
is definitely the more experimental of the two tapes. There’s hints of melodies and some rocking out (especially the title track), but lots of abstraction and obscurity. “Staring At Zero” is soft singing and faint strumming masked by abrasive backwards loops. The entire second side seems like the decayed, dried out remains of rock songs, with no discernible lyrics or hooks. “Bad Mop” is entirely backwards, and “Eureka Slink” is just a faint shred of a tune sung over what sounds like the worst phone connection ever, yet there’s a few other layers of beats and background noise patched together. Then “Kimp Notch” is a hair-raising coda of guitar feedback and yowling. This almost seems like a miniature version of Jandek’s “The Electric End”, and if this really is the end, there’s no more fitting way for this project to go out. But then, “The Electric End” wasn’t the end of Jandek, so who can tell, maybe I’m just projecting here. We’ll see!
January 1, 2018 at 1:02 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Angel 1: Terra Nova tape
Angel 1’s first tape on CTatsu in 4 years, following acclaimed releases on 1080p and Beer on the Rug, plays like a series of subconscious DJ sets, with lengthy, slow-moving tracks drifting through various moods, beats, and samples. “Speed” is not fast at all, progressing through steady yet vaporous beats and a submerged Kanye sample. “Volunteering” begins in a sort of interstellar spa, with a bizarre growling/wailing sample interrupting an otherwise peaceful session, and eventually it heats up into a thumping, bubbling house track. “The German Idea of Freedom” is bursting with fuzzy lo-fi guitars and another screamy sample which is looped rhythmically, along with laughter and trippy voices, ending with a much more smoothed-out ending section. “Humanitarianism” continues with the sly playfulness of earlier tracks, with silly recurring samples and elementary piano notes setting the pace, ending up with the sounds of slurping, gushing waters (field recordings? digital approximations? a mix of both?) and resonating metal bowls. “Karaoke” is another lush, leisurely rainforest cruise, with a harmonica-like melody and sporadic voices whispering the word “passion”. This tape doesn’t have the unexpected harsh drum’n’bass moments of previous Angel 1 releases, but there’s still plenty of surprise and mirth to it. Tape/DL available from
CTatsu’s Bandcamp.
December 31, 2017 at 11:51 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Canada Effervescent: Ridin’ America
Fresh off a
Not Not Fun tape and directly preceding a digital album called
Sleep Better (very much looking forward to testing this out as a sleeping aid), Denis Tremblay’s
Constellation Tatsu release is a new age healing session disguised as a cross-country road trip. Very easy-going, rolling organs and back-porch guitar licks, with a few lapses into trippy effects and crystalline chiming. On its most engaging tracks, it achieves a sense of traveling without a steady rhythm, or at least without the usage of drums, and it sounds relaxed and at ease yet playful, but not in a cartoonish, over-excited way.
December 31, 2017 at 10:07 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Curved Light: Quartzsite tape
For fans of drone and ambient music who follow the cassette/Bandcamp scene, Curved Light was one of the breakout artists of 2017, with tapes on labels like Field Hymns, HoloDeck, and CTatsu in addition to extensive touring. Peter Tran’s warm, enveloping analog synth drones match perfectly with Deirdre Smith’s kaleidoscopic visuals in a live setting, and the music is just as transportive while listening at home. On this tape, opener “Dream Sequence” demonstrates the project’s range, progressing through rhythmic patterns which dance excitedly, ending up with an intense shower of delay-induced noise. “Routine Simulation” is more agitated, with finnicky noises and glitches and rapidly flashing sequences, verging on some sort of restless IDM kosmische. “Dive 2501” is a more straightforward burst of starry arpeggios, and “Chromakey” does something similar but more expansive and complex. The release was recorded over the course of four years in four different cities, and shows how much the project has grown since then. Very highly recommended. Tape/DL available at
CTatsu’s Bandcamp.
December 31, 2017 at 9:36 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
The ears on the trees: New beginnings tape
The seven pieces on this tape consist of very simple notes repeated endlessly, often sounding like small, expanding bubbles or buttercups in bloom. The patterns do transform, however, and on some tracks (esp. “Holidays I”), they end up sounding a bit decayed or warped, and there’s also field recordings and nature sounds (splashing water, children playing) behind some of them. Nothing complicated at all, but it somehow avoids sounding simple or normal or formulaic. Very refreshing. Tape/name your price DL available at
Constellation Tatsu’s Bandcamp.
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The Answer Is In The Beat 