young pig / walking for days alone c32
[2007, eager mother tapes]

getting back to people packing up and moving, secret abuse's jeffrey witscher (impregnable, et al) recently left the bright lights of los angeles for the greener pastures of.... iowa city, iowa. really? yes, really. since callow god's new address is the same as shawn reed's (raccoo-oo-oon, night people), i'm assuming that they're roomies. hmm, i'd love to hear a collaborative project between those two. weird. anyway, being a california refugee myself, i'm glad to see artists i like leaving. who wants to live in a state that's perpetually on fire? not me.
(this cover is orange. my scanner does not like eager mother covers)
damn man, are you freaking kidding me? opener one more river to cross is easily the most beautiful song that witscher's ever crafted. i can't get over it. if you've heard the other secret abuse releases: namely, young man pushing away from everything and the double cassette split with lazy magnet, this is vastly different. those releases kind of struck me as less subtle (noisier) works in the vein of (jon borges') emaciator. young pig / walking for days alone has the fragile beauty of caen's the history of your immediate surroundings, while firmly maintaining its own identity. part of what's separating witscher from his peers (and even his own prior ambient tendencies) with this release, is that the guitar is as much a focal point to the music as the warm washes of synthesizer are. alright, back to one more, sure, saying that this is the most beautiful track from a dude who makes harsh noise is kind of like saying "yeah, she's pretty, for a crack whore", let me reiterate, this would be a stunning piece of music coming from anyone. it's also the most indicative of how great an addition the guitar is. slow, gorgeous chords wrapped up in a thin blanket of swirling ambiance. if i were to soundtrack the winter season, one more river to cross would definitely be on it.

anytime takes a slightly inverted approach. the tone is more barren as the guitar is pushed down into the bowels of the track, seemingly moving further away from us as the track progresses. the ambiance is decidedly bleak; coming in noisy waves, while also possessing this wind-ripped arctic feel to it. despite the drastic change in mood, it's nice. i love the ending as the wind picks up with whistling feedback(?) barely permeating it along with jeff's buried reverberated shouts. the way that he turned this into a noisier and aggressive track while still maintaining subtlety, and not reverting to a blatant onslaught of noise, was great. conversely, if i were to soundtrack the winter season, anytime would definitely be on it, to represent how harsh and unrelenting it can get. i think my core temperature just dropped a little bit after listening to this.

side b's picture of redwood takes us back to a more serene (and safe) setting. once again, it's lead by the guitar. while not as memorable as the first track, its undulating, slightly loud drones provide a warm atmosphere, especially when they're on top of a meditative field recording. the track will fill out a little bit with more complimentary synth sounds and drones during the latter half.weakness / bloody toe (at least i think that says weakness, it could be weariness...) brings the cassette almost full circle as it attempts to rekindle the beauty that it began with. i'm glad that it's not an outright reprisal, though, even if it does tread a familiar path with multiple layers of lush guitar over more field recordings (exquisitely used throughout). i did enjoy how the absence of the synthesized warmth, replaced here by natural sounds, creates an entirely different texture and it's still beautiful.

um, yeah, i don't really have much to add other than the fact that it's a really impressive tape, and i think they're all hopelessly sold out. sucky.

One More River to Cross

untitled c20
[2007, eager mother tapes]

russian tsarlag = russian tsarcasm. with one key difference, carlos gonzalez has moved to providence. there's been quite a bit of geographical musical chairs amongst the experimental / noise set lately. i'm pretty stoked for him though, since he went on a national tour with one of my personal favorite artists, kites. how i wish i would've known about their show at the pacific rim brewery in time to request it off from work. argh. anyway, after the tour, i noticed that russian tsarlag has continually been one of the top entry searches for this site. it's about time he got some attention.
(hmmm, this should actually be fluorescent yellow)
well, the key difference when it comes to the music is that russian tsarlag tapes tend to sound better (less lo-fi) than the tsarcasm ones, giving them, at least the illusion of, a more fully realized feel. possibly because of that, gonzalez's best songs have been under the tsarlag guise (see let your dreams touch air's black stone bonnet). of course, that could also be due to the fact that he's continually getting better (read: accessible, but still weird).

sometimes i can't help but marvel over how a guy with an acoustic guitar, some drums and a nasally voice can be so fucking good. it's amazing. his lyrics aren't very involved and rely a lot on mantra-like repetition: the repeated utterings of "i was in charge of myself", on opener special leg, is a perfect example. as important as the vocals are, it's really the entire package. his sparse instrumentation is so incredibly in tune with his singing that it enhances it. it doesn't matter what he's talking about when there's such a harmonious balance between music and vocals.

special leg is a bouncy number, whose upbeat rhythm is offset by sporadic tweaks to the recording, making it choppy in spots. keeper's black glove is definitely a favorite. it's a return to the darker, abstract folk that carlos has made a small empire out of. the first half of it is inquisitive, and after he poses "what was the use?" he'll punctuate it with three nice guitar strums and drum hits. what really does it for me is the pause between the instrumentation and the vocals; i love the tension that it creates in conjunction with the constant questioning. the dynamic shift towards the latter part of the track was a nice touch, too. interspersed between the structured songs are some experimental (meaning away from his norm) pieces of music; my friend is the first one. there's a repeated tape loop of carlos saying "my friend" combined with a nice loop of rustling noise. uncovering many diseases accounts for the tape's catchiest song. that's a pretty nice feat when your main line of lyrics is "in this black world of threat, they will pick up many diseases". after the overdubbed sloganeering of i'd leave it all is the second a-side oddity, tonight looks bad. this walks down a similar path: a brief clip of carlos (less understandable this time) with a loop of odd noise.
the b-side is a live set at los angeles' the smell. it's pretty weird, too. over a recording that sounds like it's from a classroom, he'll spend the first two minutes basically just saying "i know", over and over again. then it's onto "we're gonna have a... bleach party". when he starts counting "1, 2, 3, 4... 5 bleach parties, i want some more", it's pretty damn funny, so is "we'll drink some blood and find it fun, beach banquet" (especially with his monotone delivery). yet, in this setting, it's easy to see how integral the instrumentation is, because you can't hear it over the pre-recorded background. i mean, there's some faint drum beats, but that's it. while the lyrics are pretty amusing, it's clear that something's missing.

this was a very nice tape by carlos that features some of my favorite songs by him. it would've been nice to have an entire cassette of individual songs, like the a-side, but the live set wasn't without its redeeming moments.

i'm going to go out on a limb and say that eager mother tapes is carlos' label, until someone tells me i'm wrong. sigh, which i probably am. right now the only way to get these suckers is through various distros as a label site does not exist.

Uncovering Many Diseases

russian tsarlag @ the abandoned train station; oakland, ca 09/07

split c60
[2007, night people]

this cooper jones is not the spokane cyclist cooper jones, who suffered the same fate as stereolab's mary hansen, but rather, kelly jayne jones and sophie cooper, from manchester. that duo is joined by pascal nichols and patrick farmer and ric ocasek, in cars, also from the uk. additionally, nichols is in stuckometer, the whole voyald, neon tempal and he collaborates with kelly and sophie as cooperjonesnichols. makes sense. as for farmer, he's in the good anna and does a lot of collaborating with other artists, most notably (to me) was with columbus, ohio's ryan jewell.

after opening up numb racing the tortoise and hare with metallic percussion (replete with resonating feedback), cooper jones will break into a galloping folk jam with dueling acoustic guitars. at first i was kind of like, that's an odd song title, until i became cognisant of the song's pacing. the first half could be representative of the hare, but the second half will come to a near halt; slow, thoughtful strums and plucks. very lovely. attempting posture has a sound that's quite bigger than its two guitars would lead you to believe with random string plucks sticking out amongst multiple structured riffs. i love how badly (meaning good...ly) they'll deconstruct this song. while one of the guitars continues, unabashed, the other is well, bashed into noisy chord abuse, conflicting with the other's beauty. soon, that guitar will pick up speed as the noisy one continues to get abused, creating a swell of distortion. despite the name, hideous outburst is a beautifully downtempo affair. minimal in comparison to the rest of their work on the cassette, but it's really relaxing, and aided by the panning of each guitar to a single channel. finale of grandeur comes across as being the freest (that word doesn't look right, does it?) song of their set. it won't rival the dissonance of attempting posture, but there's a lot of fast and (seemingly) random chord playing, with only a bit of their more song-like folksiness.

while there are three pieces of music on cars' side, technically only the first one, live at gramaphone 05/06/07, is by the duo. the other two tracks are solo efforts by each member.

i can't tell if this was a technical issue, or something thought out, but parts of the first recording have a problem in the left channel, it'll cut out (actually sounding more like it's being clipped), creating a bit of a crackle, and then the sound will come back in again. i rather like the effect. as for the music that they're actually making: it's dominated by pascal's percussion (as minimal as it is) along with a host of various noisy elements. the biggest of which is a loud screeching sound. i don't know if you ever had to move desks when you were in school, but they'd make this awful (awesome) howl from the rubber stoppers creating friction with the hard floor. it's kind of like that. at times, the noise will also sound like something without strings (a drum maybe) being bowed. this definitely reminds me of moe! staiano, and that's not a bad thing.nichol's solo piece, folkal figure (sweet pun) pairs some nice rhythmic drumming (and metallic percussion) with tribalesque recordings. i really like the raw, native feel to it. not sure if he's actually moaning along with everything or if that's another recording. regardless, i'm digging this.

there's not much left to the imagination with patrick farmer's recorded with contact mic using modified snare and ebow, but my personal margin of error when talking about this is nil. huzzah. assuming he's talking about a snare drum and not a trap to catch animals. this is a minimally sublime piece of music that's just a hair under three minutes long. for just using the ebow, he manages to kick up a few distinct sounds. there's two unique drones, and while they trade back and forth in tones, they'll also occasionally overlap. heavenly.
i'm stoked that i randomly bought this. cooper jones really impressed me with their ability to bring together lovely folk music with a noisier edge (as opposed to the psychedelic one that's commonplace). i'll be sure to follow their progress because there's a lot of potential, it's just a matter of the public catching onto them. pascal and patrick were rad, too. i tend to prefer their solo songs, but that's probably because live at gramaphone was nearly twenty-minutes long. some days i'm more patient than others, ha. it was all good, though, and now i have a few extra projects to look into.

Cooper Jones - Numb Racing the Tortoise and Hare
Pascal Nichols - Folkal Figure

the good anna @ the old angel, nottingham 02/06



stuckometer @ klondyke club, 11/06

magnetic personality
[2007, hymns]

the idea behind this disc is an interesting one: when fellow floridian artist hal mcgee announced that he was putting out a release entitled magnetic personality (to be in the vein of his the man with the tape recorder), andrew humorously decided that he would do the same. incidentally, he used hal's magnetic personality tape as well as his secret life dvd-r as additional source material.

i haven't heard mcgee's original version (edit: wait, now i have), but thematically, this reminds me of hardline elephant's start / stop wisdom. only in theme, though. magnetic personality takes a more avant-garde approach to tape collaging and it's the least musical thing that i've heard from chadwick, which possibly explains why this wasn't released under his ironing moniker. another, and more likely reason, is since he's essentially replicating hal mcgee (right down to the cover's layout and insert), it would make sense to also use his actual name.
if tape collage recordings have one nemesis, it would have to be impatient people. these works tend to be all over the place; gleefully skipping from one subject or sound to the next with nary a thought being given towards listener continuity, and that's the point. there is no fluidity, and that's certainly the case here. these two tracks (a half an hour a piece) consist of recorded conversations between andrew and friends, or andrew himself with some nonsensical phrasings, tape manipulations, clips from tv (or news radio, possibly) in addition to recordings of hal's. the emphasis on music, is a slight one, when compared to the one placed on phonetics. ultimately, whether or not a tape collage works is based on how compelling (you personally think) the source material is. i love it. it's completely random, and when it's not amusing, the candid moments give it a nice personal touch that's not so intimate that i feel like i'm eavesdropping, but one which feels like it's all happening around me, in an organic manner.

the bulk of the highlights occur during the superb second track, which is a bit more musical (read: experimental noisy) / concrète than its counterpart. my hands down favorite part is the slight tape manipulations near the twenty minute mark. the combination of the manipulating along with the source; at first a great old timey jazz joint, but the others that he'll use later on are great, too. also, i really liked the recordings of mcgee's. if you're interested, you can download his magnetic personality release right here (it's more or less noisy experimentation being played on top of pre-recorded snippets, giving it more of a continual flow in spite of the cut-up conversations). there's also a ton of other mp3s and albums of his available to freely consume.

i really dig this disc. the main issue though, is recommending it. its scope is narrow and it's not something that you're going to listen to for any ephemeral musical fix. magnetic personality requires that the listener pay full attention and immerse themselves in the sound. while there are humorous, silly and "hey, that sounds pretty rad" moments, they're lumped in with subtler ones, which account for more of the disc's running time than the memorable clips. i actually think that works well since it comes as a reward for taking the time to really appreciate the full scale of andrew (and hal's... and jen sandwich's) work.

Magnetic Personality 2 excerpt (from 9:24 to 13:24)

ironing and hal mcgee @ 1982 (not from 1982)

spells (one-sided) c32
[2007, jk tapes]

loopool's jean-paul garnier and his sycophanticide label have recently relocated to seattle.

if you liked loopool's courtesy run rampant twelve inch from last year, you'll like these offerings as well. that's not to imply that these two releases sound the same; there's none of the piano flourishes, nor the noisier ones, but spells also stands as a quality release in garnier's oeuvre.what you will get on this cassette is loopool's trademark darkness; a kind of meshing of dark ambiance with a faint industrial influence. his erudite lyrics, which tend to waver between science, spirituality and the conscious, are often delivered in a manner which distorts them (overdubbing, reverberation and various other affects). jean-pierre's spoken word style, along with those manipulations, will play perfectly into the gloomy mood.
the opener, at least one thing in common, is one of two pieces of music on spells where the lyrics are pretty understandable (a lyric sheet is included, though), he'll compliment that with a nice choppy drone in the background and a mechanically repetitious synth track. that was alright, but things will start to look up with be shamed. as with nearly all of the tracks on this tape, it features minimal electronic work and a background element that establishes a cold and hopeless tone. it just happens that the synth layer is more memorable in this instance. i like the reverb to the vocals as well, which gives them a haunting quality. for you is an interesting piece, the main layer of vocals is a slightly distorted whisper, but at the same time there's a slowed down creepy sounding one. the only electronics are a subtle, vacillating hum, but what i like the most is the moaning female choral vocals that give off a gothic atmosphere (not in the let's dress like edward scissorhands sense). become god is another nice track, while the lyrics (throughout) are my least favorite part of the loopool experience, even when they're as clearly delivered as they are here, i can't deny the memorable (and minimal) synthesized foundation of become god. the final (listed) track, i want my mother back, has the vocals so affected that i can't make out a single word. everything comes together in a noisy, yet, still ethereal blur. spells ends with a fifty-one second slowed down reprisal of become god which abruptly ends when the tape does.

while i'm not particularly into stuff like this, if you're already a fan of (or are familiar with) loopool's music, i think that this is one of his better releases (i've heard five or so). if you're curious, well, that's what the mp3's for.

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