“Think of it as the score to JOE D’AMATO directing an ALIEN rip-off flick starring AL CLIVER and GEORGE EASTMAN. 4 tracks (at 23 minutes) of JOHN CARPENTER, FABIO FRIZZI, TANGERINE DREAM inspired synthesizer driven tunes.”
Damn, what more can I say? This is some full-blown, pumping 80’s action/sci-fi cinema music worship right there. And Mr. Akers fucking NAILS IT. Get it. RIGHT NOW.
If David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” were completely devoid of the comedic moments (which means Andy and Lucy gone and agent Cooper not making cracks about pie and coffee, oh no!) and instead focused even more on the grief and horror aspect of the story (I always thought major Briggs and Windom Earle should be far more developed as characters, they had so much goddamn potential, but I digress), the sounds of French ambientalist Maxime Vavasseur (a.k.a. Witxes) might be a good soundtrack for the series. Witxes takes the shady jazzy edge of Angelo Badalamenti and infuses it with harsh, monolithic ambience not much unlike the music of Tim Hecker, taking the best of both worlds and ending up with a monumentally emotional album, sad and haunting at the same time.
Take the very first track, “Unlocation”, as an example - the shoegazy wall of ambience suddenly breaking into a distant, lonely saxophone solo and free jazzy drumming, finally giving a way for emotional acoustic guitar strumming. There are many, many layers of sound on “Sorcery/Geography” and with each subsequent listening another layer is unveiled. What appears to be hazy, noisy drone jam at first, gradually turns out to be a thoroughly melodic and skillfully composed piece, complete with a heart-rending piano section or beautiful saxophone playing. The dark and moody “Somewhere” sounds like the love child of Bohren & der Club of Gore and Barn Owl, while the extreme bass experience of “Misscience” might recall the sonic horror of Lustmord.
The inspirations behind Witxes’ music are all over the map - stemming from ambient music idea of creating “background” music, Vavasseur moves it far away from being merely wallpaper music and forces a focused, intense attention from the listener. Don’t get distracted by the seemingly obliterating wall of sound - give it a few more tries and hear the beauty unveil under the glacier of drones.
GFIFriday’s Gem Jones project drowns the listener in the sea of pure, tongue-in-cheek warped 80’s beach party anthems much in the vein of pre-“Far Side Virtual” era James Ferraro, although here much of the lo-fi murk is dropped and the whole monstrous (and hilarious at the same time) visage of crazy chillwave/hypnagogia and their most unhinged and energetic, is unveiled. There are so many references to weed and hedonism in this little cassette it’s scary (even for a blog named Weed Temple, dammit!).
But what is the strongest part of “Symphony in P” is how incredibly catchy it is, despite all the attempts to make it sound as “mutant” as possible - out-of-place distorted guitar solos crashing into pop melodies, harsh drones appearing out of nowhere in the middle of a song, delayed and reverbed vocals with changed pitch. What stands out here is the guitar work: the licks are truly funky and perfectly complement the vintage synthesizer background which provides head-bobbing, fresh beats. “Symphony in P” is a competent and fully aware hyper-parody of the teen lifestyles of not only the 80’s and 90’s, but the modern “teen life”, too. Because let’s face it: pizza, weed and skateboards won’t disappear anytime soon.
Without a doubt the packaging for the two cassettes I’ve received from the Helsinki based label Jozik Records is some of the most ingenious and original I’ve ever seen: instead of plain plastic cases the cassettes arrived in handmade cloth sheaths with colorful graphics: in case of Ross Baker’s “The Blackbirds’ Revenge” it was a floral pattern which fit the calm folky nature of that cassette, here it’s more abstract and modern, which fits the psychedelic guitar/synth emanation recorded on both sides.
Side A contains Mt. Tjhris’ “Fogous”, a series of watery, delicately bubbling synth journeys steeped in lo-fi New New New Age tape hiss in a manner similar to the style of the early “born again cassette god” musicians like Josh Burke or the Danish crystal explorer Dreamers Cloth. Simple, relaxing melodies weave in an out of the barely audible drones and noisy warbles to blend into an ephemeric ocean spray that permeates the entire side of the tape.
Side B belongs to Frank Ouelette (the Canadian mastermind behind the Hobo Cubes and the Hobo Cult label), who takes over the turns the mood around 180 degrees with haunting, estranged guitar-based soundscapes which immerse in distant, reverbed noodling recalling the darkest moments of Super Minerals. Don’t expect any sort of melody to appear here, Fallen Axe’s “Storm Session” is abstract and seemingly chaotic, snaking its way with dissonant strums through the fog of sinister synthesizer drones. If the first side of the cassette was the optimistic, hippie vision of music, then the second side is the punk, mercilessly deconstructing the happy myth with fear and negativity.
Buy the tape from Jozik Records
It seems that while everyone else try to bury their ambient music in tape hiss and lo-fi mystery, Infinite Third strikes with head-spinning clarity and sharpness of sound, reaching back to Aphex Twin’s game-changing Selected Ambient Works series while still retaining some of the nostalgic guitar hypnagogia in the vein of newer Mark McGuire. The electric guitar is the main tool of trade for Billy Mays III (I’m still in the process of defining whether it’s a real name or not). He modifies and stretches the possibilities of the instrument by processing it through a heap of guitar effects and computer programming to create enveloping, adventurous structures with a sense of melancholy.
While the idea of completely detaching the electric guitar from the rock context and translating it into the ambient language might have “been there, done that” written all over it, Infinite Third’s tape has a feel of freshness and, well, uh, life into it. “Isolationism” stands out among the long rows of anonymous lo-fi minimalistic synth dronescapes with its intricate, melodic structures filled with ghosts and memories who chatter, laugh and casually conversate between the monumental pillars of guitar-computer sound. Mays’ penchant for reversing sounds might remind of the early tape experiments back in the space age, yet the tape sounds thoroughly modern and polished.
What is more, and what is extremely important, is the fact that every track (or should I rather say, song?) on the cassette has its own identity and a different mood which correspond to the title. A rare feat in an evironment where the song titles tend to be two esotheric-sounding words (e.g. “Amethyst Spoon”, “Postmodern Lysergism” etc.) which blend into each other without the listener even noticing the change. A fine, mature and truly moving ambient cassette from the visionary underground.
Blink, and it’s over: this release by Brooklyn’s synth amphetamine reptile Seth Graham, a.k.a. by his operative nickname, Henry Dawson. Intense, brief explosions of acidic psychedeliciousness, operating in the same pointilistic, fluorescent noise area as Caboladies or Astral Social Club. Densely patched, fragmented drones intermingle with uncontrolled fluctuations in the analog stream. Probably the true meaning behind the term “synth punk”.
Brooklyn duo of Caroline Teagle (the half-mastermind and the visual talent behind the wonderful tape label Tranquility Tapes) and guitarist Jake Pepper (supported by Jef Brown on saxophone on the opening track “In the Waves) craft lazy, chillwave sounds on their debut “proper” album (originally released on Tranquility Tapes itself in cassette form), occupying the summery haze somewhere between lush pop of Toro Y Moi and the astral dub of Edibles. Teagle’s silky voices blends perfectly with Pepper’s delayed and reverbed guitar. A good, quick fix of summery chill sounds in four songs.
Psychedelic nuggets collected from all over the fertile experimental scene of Belgium, released on cassette by the Hare Akedod imprint. Featuring trakcs by, among others, Hellvete, Jan Matthé, Urpf Lanze, Kosmische Keuterboeren, Razen adn Vom Grill. Cosmic synthesizer noodles meet shamanic Eastern hashish guitar explorations. Kosmische musik and Asian drones in one place. Collected. Condensed. Adventurous. Great compilation, recommended!
One thing you gotta love about the underground psychedelic tape scene is its abundance of micro-labels offering little jewels of trippy goodness. There’s always a lot of movement among those labels, some of them settle, find a steady market and continue to grow and build their own “brand” over the years, some of them stay so underground that they never even set up a blog page. But the truth is, when one label goes down here, there’s always two or three fresh labels ready to take on the world. In this edition of New Labels, I’d like to introduce you Constellation Tatsu, a fresh new label based in San Luis Obispo, California, US of A. C Tatsu is led by the psychedelic entrepreneur Steven Ramsey and it’s motto is, as described on their website, “adventurous with spiritual artistic sensibilities”.
The first batch in this label’s history is marked by the penchant for deep ambient and heavy drone structures, occasionally bordering on sustained guitar noise. The split tape between Blood Bright Star and Obsidian Towers is the harsher excursion, going through cavernous atmospheres and Barn Owl-ish post-apocalyptic soundscapes. Heavy fog and dead man’s drone.
On “A Silent Stroll On Sombre St.” Brazilian ambientalist Gimu (already known to some readers of Weed Temple, as he was once featured on the blog, back in the Blogger days) crafts dusted, melancholic atmospheres that linger in the shadows, bordering on unsettling dark ambient. Ominous melodies loop and fall into and out of focus, plodding ahead in the sea of vintage crackles and modified found sounds. Music from the bottom of the woods.
Next up is an IMMENSE drone album from the ever-massive Ohio synthesizer unit Long Distance Poison. On “Ideological State Apparatus” the proggressive electronic structures are stretched into seemingly endless slabs of glacial drone, reminding the listener of those “800% slower” YouTube videos, but instead of Justin Bieber, it’s Klaus Schulze that is getting 800% slower. Hardcore catharsis drone that appears to go on forever. Don’t fight the ocean - let yourself drown in it.
In case you get tired and overwhelmed by the obliterating drone of Long Distance Poison, you can find escape in “Lightness and Irresponsibility”, the newest cassette by Celer, the one-person ambient project of William Long, who continues to create under the Celer moniker after the untimely death of Danielle Baquet-Long in 2009. The cassette provides a wash of warm, welcoming, almost therapeutic and highly emotional ambience, which goes way beyond the notion of ambient being merely “wallpaper music”. Good, immersive listening. Bonus points for the great, somewhat tongue-in-cheek (adding a trademark sign to the project name gave me a healthy chuckle) artwork!
Brandon Locher’s “Conversations, 2012” are not as much a musical record but rather an experimental spoken word piece following the same line of reasoning as Alvin Lucier. These two recordings are kept in vein of Lucier’s “I Am Sitting in a Room” soundart piece. In Locher’s words:
After the first conversation “Person 001: Hello. Hello?” was recorded and documented I then proceeded to call another random person with a playback recording of the previous persons’ response. The person that is being called and recorded is fooled into thinking they are talking to an actual person when only they are responding to a recording of the previous conversation. As I move through the same process for each conversation, more information develops, and the concrete themes and ideas start to form more complex exchanges between the people and the recording.
The result is pretty strange and sometimes pretty awkward. Can be damn entertaining though. Don’t expect any relaxing ambience - this is kept strictly to the spoken word level. Hello? Hello? Heeelllooo?
Kiki Pau are a Finnish psychedelic quartet (from Helsinki, the capital!). While the connection of the words “psychedelic” and “Finnish” might give an impression that this is probably some sort of bucolic, neo-ancient, elvish psych folk, you are dead wrong. You should rather think the Circle school of thought, with krauty, lenghty jams and extended guitar workouts interspersed with quieter, synth-driven meditations. Hot new shit for the hot new times.
