lost in a sea of sound

Would it be cool to be able to throw a couple vintage records into a special machine, add the number of years music has progressed and press listen? The apparatus would combine the sound and give it advances in technological and music styling. BRUTALISM has done this and the product sounds pretty cool.

The best thing is, I do not know what to call No Rave? The sounds have ties to music from the eighties, but they are fresh. An EP of five tracks and all produced with tendrils reaching back into the past. The tape is mirrored on both sides and has the look of how cassettes use to be.

The tape flows with beat driven and party sounding tunes mixed with two tracks "Human Being" and the final "Life is Pain", a little more reflective in nature. The opening track "New Empire" and also "Fancy Friends" reminds me of an awesome eighties band The Beatnigs. For both bands there is a touch on the industrial side to the rhythm, and the lyrics sing like a procl…

My mind is washed with an assault of really crushing rhythm. The Dictaphone has no boundaries. This music exists in a fluid environment. If you think you can pin it down into one genre, than Tp Hss has overwhelmed you and struggling to comprehend is all that is left.

This cassette times in well over half an hour and spans ten blistering tracks. The sound is wildly electric and raw. There is a vintage quality to Tp Hss reminding me of music from the early eighties. Punk meets new wave, then time warps into the future. Dropping decades of baggage and slipping by the category taggers, The Dictaphone delivers sound gleaming with understanding. This knowledge is simply how to make music, both diverse and cohesive, and really enjoyable to listen to.

Blending strings, percussion and an almost Hasil Adkins approach to vocals, Tp Hss sounds brawny. The music is cool, like a live band wrecking the instruments with deft skills, while you stand mouth agape in awe. That is what i wrote to Santa as…

Sometimes music comes along and hearing it for the first time is a little overwhelming. Everything happens so quickly and all at once. Choral Reefr is filled and abundantly delivers goodness from so many directions. Excellent song writing paired with hazy vocals. Music thick and layered, hitting the sonic spectrum like an armada of sailing ships, the amalgamation clicks.

DID IT ALL 4 THE PLUSHIES rests on the periphery of genres. Definitely has some pop feel as well as a soulful undertone. The songs are very diverse, but Jessica Oleson's voice keeps the entire tape beautifully flowing. Guests on the cassette like Elliot Snyder, Slyy, Junkie Soda and Joey Joey Michaels add to the skillful craftsmanship in how deep the listen is.

Choral Reefr sinks in your head for late night driving on city interstates. There is a hazy club feel to this music, but with the well written lyrics, the tape comes across much more personal. More to the point of listening to DID IT ALL 4 THE PLUSHIES alon…

Tropical in nature and mysteriously delivered through some saturated phasing portal. Hybrid Palms has created sounds made from remote islands, locations unknown, blending the continuum of time and speaking through planetary channeling.

Rainbow Breeze is a beautiful pastoral composition. Sounds drip from the forest canopy. Tribal flutes mixed with synthesizer mirroring dancing insect life on the forest floor. Listeners experience a well crafted harmony of field noises, delicate notes and vintage crackle. Although there are six tracks on this cassette, the entire listen sounds more like one blur. There is diversity, but Rainbow Breeze is something to be heard in it's entirety. This tape gently touches the drone world, but stays aloft. Subdued and potently crafted, Hybrid Palms is one that will keep in the deck.

Hybrid Palms was released in a run of fifty. I thought this was purchased fast enough to be able to write about Hybrid Palms before it sold out. Sure incorrect about that....…

Beats and alluring electronic soundscapes. This cassette by Mr. Bronson combines everything good about ambient rhythm delivering a solid core composition. Never too much, always forward, sometimes far into the future. Trans Pacific absorbs genres and morphs into a cassette that will not come out of the player.

Eight track on two sides, spiraling electronics and beats to match. Trans Pacific is music for late night Autobahn driving. High speed straightaways and wondrous slow burning lulls. The entire tape is a blur of night time scenery, dark and vaguely recognizable. City oasis with bright lights and geometric shapes, then returning to smooth flowing synthesizer played at any velocity.

Trans Pacific is too good to be thrown into a category. Do not even bother. Just listen and enjoy the uplifting qualities. This one is sure to rotate from side to side in the tape deck for extended listens. 100% Silk has been spinning quality releases at a steady pace. If you give Mr. Bronson's Tran…

Looking at our solar system in motion, but sped up where an earth year of orbital rotation was only a second. That is Sheep Bella Tine, all parts and pieces moving at varying speeds and all centered around a single core. The sound is raw and connects me with music originating from unspecified times. The music flows like a current, meanders into eddies and moves around a stable mass.

What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Exotic has guitar riffs hearkening to music emanating from tents in an Arabian desert. This encampment is surrounding some lush and tropical green parcel and everything surrounded by the arid vast expanse. Royalty emerges with drum introduction and the procession moves forth.

Together, Wica on guitar and the percussionist Zacharious, heat and cool, heat and cool, like desert days and nights. Like the planets revolving around the sun, fast and slow, fast and slow. This is Sheep Bella Tine, two musicians revolving like electrons around the nucleus of an atom. The music tet…

Absolutely refreshing to here music so intricately written and simply delivered. So many moments of small passages finding reverberation in your head. Catchy songs describing social destruction and revelations in a simultaneous manner. The first time i listened to tall death, i felt connected and wanted to be part of the "social experiment".

 Star Songs is nine tracks over twenty seven minutes of one side of a tape. Not sure how bad the winds are in Cincinnati or how small pieces of plant got stuck in the body of the tape, but i had to open it up and remove them. They got caught in the tape spool and caused some drag. I guess art and practicality are at war in Ohio. Once this was done, quickly returned to enjoying these well written tracks. Lincoln's combination of vocals and guitar fit extremely well together. Both seem effortless while delivering his stories and observations of life. If the lyrics were written out, i am sure there would be pages. This is a tape that ge…

Imagine planets orbiting their stars with galactic fingers moving them in elliptical paths. The sound created is like the drone of a hand moving around a wine glass. This combines with rumblings of noises from cosmic static. Both are being collected and fall into the empty crevasses, slowly filling this pool of sounds. Deep it is, calm then turbulent, heavy molecules lining up for your ears.

Cofradia De Los Herederos Del Vino sounds like folk music for the expansion of the universe. Natural connections from piano, percussion and drone. Collisions of sound, then separation into timeless untouched voids. The first half of the cassette balances the expansive space between galaxies, with recognizable sounds from our own planet. The middle track "Are You the Son of the House"constricts and becomes tightly wound. The sounds have reached their pinnacle, trapped in a smaller half as long time, fluctuating pace in some chaotic dance. These are the most recognizable sounds in accord t…

Interesting how sometimes really good music is created and produced then slips through times spotlight. Andrew Jansen's new cassette on MJ MJ Records was released in the beginning of September, and now over three months time span, this tape has fortunately claimed occupancy in the player. There are sites with special abilities like Tiny Mix Tapes, with the knowledge of how good this tape is. Also the news media City Pages from Andrew's town of residence Minneapolis was attuned to his skills. Even though this site is trailing months behind, these words of description will hopefully help potential listeners with their chances to hear (((Loud))).

Ten songs incinerating all speed and slowly smoldering over two sides of a cassette. I suppose this could be pop music, but rests only the fringe of genres. Sinking into your ears like freshly harvested greens from the garden, the specific aroma only acquired from leaves being just cut. It took me a little while to retrieve this comparis…

The Infinite Waves label has multiple new releases for sale. I have captured two descriptions here for both of theses incredibly well recorded cassettes.

Kraus "S/T" Infants "Island Shapes I-IV"  Infinite Waves site - facebook
The Formant - Excellent write up on Infinite Waves new releases

Evolutionary drone portraying in sound the planets formation of atmosphere. The space in between space. What is now a life producing surface. Infants penetrates into primordial connections of DNA. Calling on reflections of one cell ancestors and the time ladder leading up from the liquid medium.

The tape is so subdued and beautiful. Four tracks on two sides, all of them keeping inside the float tank. Listening to this causes de-materialization of the body. Molecules begin to merge back through time, where the originated from. This is a link in sound to cosmic origins. Tones resonating and releasing emotions buried under civilizations monotonous routines. The forth track is slightly different. More field sounds of a creatures movement from land back to water. Maybe the listeners?

Island Stages I-IV is drone for purists. Very simple and gorgeously well done! Denmark based Infinite Waves again releasing art and sonic beauty. If you are in the states, Tomentosa is the best place to purcha…

Kraus listens like a majestic fire. Crackling beginnings set in the holds of a futuristic planetary colonizing ship. The sound moves farther back allowing the vast scope of what is happening to be heard. The ship is empty, the planet desolate. As the craft finally falls from it's orbit, the sounds of Kraus describe it's destruction.

This cassette is all encompassing. Listening to Kraus on headphones is an experience all to it's own. Wind blown synthesizer rips across the empty tundra as clamorous entities shred what is left of the ancient civilization. They are devouring the land like savaging catfish, prehistoric in methodology and without concern for anything around them.

The sounds emanating from Kraus are a bit of a mystery. Out on Infinite Waves, the presentation is superb, both in sound and art. There is not much to go on as a description  though. To me, this is best described as galactic drone, grandiose in scale, sounds heard by gods when shaping the cosmos. The bu…

Little Big Bangs have taken the reigns in hand and released an emotional confirmation that real bands exist. Not muddled down in new sonic trickery, Star Power hearkens to times of house parties and undiscovered talent. The music is being created directly in the foreground and it is everything you could hope for. The soundscape covered on Star Power rests in the mid 1980's for me. Punk music slowly being refined into a full spectrum of sound.

Twelve tracks fill the grooves of this lp. The music plays tight with variations in vocals and tempo. With fast drums and shockingly quick guitar, Little Big Bangs are poised to create a headbanging punk record in the veins of Black Flag and Minor Threat. Instead, Star Power is more tempered, showing skills behind instruments and vocals. The opening track "Bang" is exemplary in defining the sound of the band. Mixed vocals, grooved out beats glued with canvasing base and biting snake head guitar riffs. Songs like "Officer"…