The Answer Is In The Beat

Sir Tad: Two Walkers tape (Tynan Tapes Temporal, 2024)

October 13, 2024 at 4:27 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

This tape mixes samples from self-help tapes and home recordings with drowsy keyboards set to quasi-dub rhythms. With songs like “Path to the Dutchie”, we get something that sounds close to a homespun Mad Professor. “Homestake Pass” starts with some goofy kid noises but ends up being a serene, floating-down-the-river melodica drone dub. “Mondo” is a pleasant psych guitar loop thing, the melody reminded me of Galaxie 500’s “Fourth of July”. “What a Jerk” is some playful tomfoolery with kids’ voices. “Year of the Dragon” is just a bright, gleeful keyboard melody, then “Off the Boo Hoff Trail” is just so slow and gloriously out of wack that it feels healing. “Tynan’s Theme Song” is a simple, engrossing melodica melody which ends the album as a proper sendoff, even with snippets of a kid saying “bye bye now”.

His Name Is Alive: Underground River Of Black Electricity 7″ EP (self-released, 2024)

October 8, 2024 at 9:14 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

His Name Is Alive rarely play live these days, as Warren Defever is busy working as a mastering engineer at Third Man Records in Detroit, and he’s also been playing as part of the group Infinite River, making new age and meditative music, and making art. But 4AD released a tremendous box set of the first 3 HNIA albums with bonus material, so the band played some live gigs. I caught the Detroit show at El Club, and it was mindblowing to see the current version of the band play early songs like “How Ghosts Affect Relationships” and “There’s Something Between Us And He’s Changing My Words”. And then they played songs from the more recent albums (the ones the current band members played on) and of course ended with “This World Is Not My Home”, into “Can’t Go Wrong Without You” and then back into a for-real singalong of “This World Is Not My Home”. This record was for sale at the merch table, along with Cloud Clocks, which were basically repurposed clocks bought at Target which they painted, signed, and charged $100 for. But this record is a mix of Warren’s new age stuff, thanks to the harmonium and tanpura droning, as well as some of HNIA’s newer psych stuff, with the Mellotron, though it’s not proggy or heavy. There’s gentle guitar waves and a current of dreaminess. The second side has drumming by Steve Nistor, who regularly plays with Infinite River, and it’s closer to the more drifting side of Krautrock, eventually gaining some percolating synths and a choppier, increasingly more complex rhythm. Not quite Warren solo, not quite Infinite River, not any previous version of HNIA, but it’s still HNIA all the same, and like any HNIA record, it takes me somewhere I can’t identify and never expected to go.

Meadow Argus: Arboreal Frippery CDr (Chocolate Monk, 2024)

October 5, 2024 at 11:48 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Switching to the CDr format for a moment rather than cassette, Meadow Argus continues plundering past memories with Arboreal Frippery. The album’s pieces are based on microcassette recordings from a 2009 hitchhiking trip around the West Coast, and they fold a multitude of strange voices and sounds into endlessly rolling drones, approximating train rides across the country, with memories of some of the more unique characters and situations replaying in one’s head while traveling through pastures. Two tracks collectively take up more than half of the album’s run time, and they both seem to best encapsulate the album’s aura. “Every person contains a universe” loops what sounds like an irritated cow mooing, while “Trainwreck Tunnel” distorts voices to an almost wacky level of graininess. Elsewhere, there’s calmer, harmonium-like wheezing (“Different during the day”, “409”), a jocular backwoods conversation between lovers (“Balloon”), and almost dubby levels of noise and reverb (“Monkey Wrench”).

Bumbo’s Tinto Brass Band: V2 7″ EP (Bumbo Records, 2024)

October 1, 2024 at 8:19 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

I confused Bumbo with Jimbo Easter. They are not the same person, but Jimbo was on this band’s previous release, and it’s a similar sort of local avant-garage rock. This isn’t quite as unhinged as Jimbo, but it does have a Theremin and an offbeat sort of rawness to it. “The Post Modern Dance” and “Sinkholes and Peepholes” do end up being pretty weird, and “Honey Don’t” changes things up by featuring a spoken word appearance by Asha Vida (though I’m not sure if that’s the same Asha Vida as the Michigan space rock band from the ’90s).

Cassie Ramone: Sweetheart (CD-R Records, 2024)

September 24, 2024 at 8:21 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Vivian Girls’ Cassie Ramone returns with an album of hazy late-night garage pop that’s just as good as the more hyped albums she was making a decade ago. There’s lo-fi synth pop like Beach House but better (“Joy to the World”), noisy bummed-out rock (“He’s Still On My Mind”, “They Hide Their Eyes”), hopeful songs with a heavy ’50s pop influence (“Together”, “Sweetheart”), and slight silliness (“Dilly Dally”) following heartbreak (“The Only Way I Know How”, which features Mac DeMarco). A super low-key release, but it’s not lacking in quality.

Dren McDonald: Oceanic (Appearing Records, 2024)

September 23, 2024 at 8:43 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

San Francisco-based video game composer Dren McDonald (polyheDren) wrote this suite about underwater life, utilizing several different techniques, from processed field recordings to triggered modular synths. “The Kids”, which drifts out to 12 minutes, is easily the most aquatic-sounding track, resembling an underwater equivalent of Daniel Lanois’ spacious Americana. “Physeter Coda” has light kosmische arpeggios, while “Oceanlight Meditation Vis” is the darker, submerged flipside of “Beachlight Meditation Vis”, with both utilizing gong-like ringing tones. “Delphinus Bursa” has expansive melodies and burbling sequences. “Dusklight Meditation Vis” is an eerie comedown which either features manipulated bird calls, or synths imitating them.