Magazine, Label & Online Radio Show Celebrating Outsider Music, Art, and Activism
AmdallakokkswalaDECAYCAST #034 “FARM TO TAPE 03 MIX” by Diego Aguilar-Canabal
a little bit of everything
1. Tyler Holmes – I Can’t Forget 2 (excerpt)
2. Fred Bigot – Stereo
3. Jeich Ould Badu & Ahmedou Ahmed Lewla – El Wehcha
4. Hailu Mergia – Lala Belu
5. Ondatropica – Cumbia Bucanero
6. Tower of Power – Knock Yourself Out
7. rRHEXIS – Daily Dabs Acid Jam
8. Jarboe & Father Murphy – Truth or Consequences
9. Je Suis Le Petit Chevalier – Call It A Castle
10. Abdel Aziz El Mubarak – Ya A’Asal
DECAYCAST Reviews: STRAIGHT CRIMES “Jams, With Microphone, 2017” (Fine Concepts, 2017)
“Jams, With Microphone, 2017” is the newest sonic offering from bay area punks Straight Crimes. This cassette is toted under the “punk” category on band camp and other agents of the internet however stretches pretty far past that on this album delving between slow, heavy sludgy cuts where could easily faintly resemble an early Big Black or Butthole Surfers, which thick fuzzed out guitars, monotone style yelped vocals, heavy drum machined percussion, and thick, dense, cavernous spaces of spearing electronics. The duo doesn’t stick to a particular style on this release bur one of their own, which is refreshing to the ear and psyche. While it does have many “punk” qualities to it, composition wise, things really get stretched and scratched to the max, such as on the ten minute anthem, “Is This Hell Or Is This Dumb” the vocals and meat and potatoes of the track don’t make an appearance for nearly six minutes as the listener is left in a murky, dark, disorientation of jabbed and beaten guitars, harsh alienating feedback, high tension style sound the alarm ringing and buzzing as the listener marches towards a future of confusion and uncertainty. 
As the song pulses on the listener is even LESS SURE of themselves than they were in the beginning and we all must hope to answer the question by the end of the bass swells that check the situation in the innards and slowly build to a crescendo of chaos. “Jams With Microphone, 2017” is absolutely as much of a heavy abstract, even “noise” record than it is a “punk” record as can be much more easily stated for previous S C releases, though the heavy, pummeling track “In a Free Pile” is perhaps the album’s most accessible and straight forward song, while still boasting thick percussion, a tonal heavy dirge out guitar, sludgy bass lines and walls of noise which add sharpness to the overall throbbing beat, perhaps the strongest cut on the album. Tracks such as “The World Does Not Care About My Art Like Every DAY” show a more abstract and experimental side to the act, with this nearly eleven-minute feedback and vocal based offering, which peaks and swells through various sonic landscapes with the continuity of well executed guitar feedback leading the listener through this dark, murky, sweaty tunnel out to the dejected other side. This is a really refreshing release overall, and look forward to hearing more of this band, and everything else via their imprint, FINE CONCEPTS, longtime Oakland stalwarts.
DECAYCAST Reviews: SPORE SPAWN “Ochistuitara” Cassette (Oxen Records, 2017)
Spore Spawn is a nearly decade old project based out of Japan, and also happens to be an end level boss in the popular fan favorite video game, Metroid.
The project name choice is Probably not an accident based on the title and aesthetics of the artists imprint, 16 Shots Per Second but this cassette is released by Leah and Matt’s imprint OXEN, based out of LA. “Ochistuitara”, from Tokyo’s underground legend SPORE SPAWN, boasts a twenty minutes’ sacrifice of masterfully crafted, exciting, kinetic, dynamic harsh noise, and supposedly is made from a myriad of homemade joystick synthesizers and crude noise devices. While essentially existing in the harsh noise realm, “Ochistuitara” actually covers a rather wide and refreshing array of harsher sounds, compositional strategies and dynamics, and even musicality at times, almost a virtuosic approach to harsh noise. Spawn creates dense walls of feedback that violently and aggressively cascade into spacious vignettes of ambient drone, expertly blended field recordings, slow rhythmic pops, and chirps like a glitched- out, off-kiltered, dying alarm clock that fights the plug to stay in the wall when it’s angrily yanked out. The walls of blistered, busted out, serrated chaotic mayhem crescendo into utter sonic chaos, and just as the ear bleeds for mercy rescind into a cold, alienating, isolating hum. At times, the ambient sections act as a break from the unrelenting mountains of noise, and other times, function as matrix of brain mutes with respect to the ear fatigue. Loud is only loud when quiet is quiet, and on “Ochistuitara”, the artist is no doubt conscious of this strategy in respect to the timing and composition of this EP.
Things never stay the same to become predictable or flat, Spore Spawn is constantly shifting though wavetables of disorientation, fear, chaos, tension, and even a few brief moments resolve. The tones themselves have a cold, digital body, while swells of analog chaos modulate themselves and the sharp digital pillars of extreme sonic swells and decays, and the start /stop style of aggressive noise, on more than one occasion even function as a “drop”. What was dropped we don’t know, however it carved a deep impact into the ear canal, even noted on one of CLIPPING‘s year end best of lists! In short, this is a must have for fans of ASTRO, K2, early MERZBOW and even some of the work of CLIPPING themselves. OXEN continues to remain at the forefront as one of America’s most aesthetically and conceptually consistent harsh noise labels. Grip this fantastic tape before it’s too late. Here’s a few world from OXEN that represent the complexity and brevity of this EP flawlessly,
“Ochitsuitara brings any fan of modern harsh noise (nostalgists won’t be disappointed though maybe not specifically catered to) closest to articulating what it is that sets Spore Spawn apart from decades of legendary noise pioneers, his modern myth building utilizing swirling loops of cacophony and squelching stabs, uncompromisingly outpacing any modern competition in his unique patterns of ecstatic jarring drunken fervor and (sometimes) vocal delivers closely woven into and through electronics culled from homemade disused gaming controllers. Just harsh as fuck. All measurements of harsh noise enjoyment of this genuinely gifted noise artist will be vastly rewarded and on abundant display on Ochitsuitara.”
DECAYCAST Reviews: SEA MOSS “BREAD BORED” CS/Digital (Crash Symbols, 2017)
SEA MOSS is a perfect example of why duos are sometimes the most engaging for heavy and experimental music. SEA MOSS, splice all of the specific aspects that make duo’s so special; tension, dynamics, a call and response/push pull type of dynamic, (that often gets lost or muddled once a third or forth voice is added), into a fever dream ritual of distorted noise rock, and rhythmic, percussion heavy noise. When contrasting voices push and pull, interesting and chaotic things can happen, and that’s exactly what this Seattle duo does, on their freshman album “Bread Bored”. For one, the sound is a perfect blend of Noa Ver homemade, noisy, chaotic, dynamic home-brewed synthesizers, which she popularized in her solo project Mulva Myasis and Zach D’Agostino percussion and live sequencing which meld together perfectly to create a raw, cacophonous blend of abstracted, cut up, angular noise / rock. Noa Ver create walls of glitched-out, sputtering, chirping, regurgitating bent and mangled waveforms blending together to create rhythmic walls of unique, raw synthesized noise over D’Agostino, who belts forth a seemingly endless array of broken rhythms, fusing both analog and digital sources to create a chaotic, chopped up, backbone of heavy, flipped out perscussion. Also we couldn’t really talk about this release without mentioning the intricate, dense, psychedelic collaged cover art/Layout done by Liz Pavlovic, offering the perfect visual counterpart to the dense, tripped out, broken sounds of SEA MOSS.
Having seen SEA MOSS live in 2017 (and BTW this project is barely a year old, and has already toured, released this album on CRASH SYMBOLS and self-released several live recordings) I had a rough idea of what to expect from this tape, and it really represents their live sound well. The aptly titled “Bread Bored” oscillates between more noise, even free jazz styled works, using more chopped, off timed rhythm tracks, and the synths are sputtering more like a trumped or saxophone than a synthesizer, such on the second track “Infernal Stutter”, whereas the very next song, “Wanna See A Trick?”, perhaps my personal favorite on the album falls much more into an early Load Records style of noise rock where the synths and walls of noise act as a heavy low end for the pummeling 4/4 breakdowns which dominate the song, or similarly styled and varied is the finale “Sea Sickness”, which blends thudding drums, more buzzing, screaming oscillators and time/tempo changes that will leave your head spinning, There’s also a whole lot varied vocal styles which range from long swelled, yelling to short, antagonistic bursts of sound, yelling, fighting , screaming, screaming, threatening, impactful, and sharp in unique ways even though the lyrics are rather indistinguishable from each other. Despite this, the vocals provide an additional layer of tension and chaos, especially when complimenting the heavy, smashed out percussion riffs in a sort of call in response type of way. At times, it’s as if all the instruments are being played as their opposites; or something they’re totally unreleased to; synths are played as horns, drums are played as basses, vocals are an additional layer of percussion, but also so much more.
SEA MOSS stands above and beyond a lot of other offerings in noise rock camp so far for 2017 that have pummeled my ears. SEA MOSS has a seemingly uncanny ability to pack three or four different styles and feelings, even within a single track (and mind you most of the tracks are under four minutes, some even in the one to two-minute range). This music could be from 1999 or it could be from 2199, we haven’t totally figured that out yet, and that’s part of why it’s intriguing. The cassette is sold out; however, you can grip the digital album for five dollars from the Crash Symbols band camp page. Be sure to check out a myriad of other releases from the West Virginia based imprint, while you’re on the band camp and make sure to follow SEA MOSS here!
DECAYCAST Reviews: V/A: NO WORKERS PARADISE 8 Cassette Boxset (Chthonic Streams, 2017)
With the rise of accessibility for artists and producers to create sound, music, art and the ability for those artists to contextualize, and re contextualize their work in a seemingly often dizzying whirlwind of labels, sub-labels, sub-labels of sub-labels, through, you guessed it, the INTERNET; questioning the role or necessity of a small independent record label in these weird, confusing post-post modern days of malleability of meaning, format and intention, seems like probably a good idea. How many of them are genuine, how many of them truly put the artist first, and in priority, how many of them believe and stand behind their “product”, behind both the “artist” and the “artwork”. Derek Rush‘s New York – based imprint, Chthonic Streams does just that, and they do it with style, focus, and intention, as exemplified by the labels’ most ambitious and potentially most conceptual release to date, at least in its packaging and form, is the “No Workers Paradise” boxset. You should keep reading, but what I also recommend is that you stop what you’re doing and instantly ORDER THE BOXSET HERE!
We are fans of boxsets, we are fans of conceptual art, and we are fans of toolboxes and ridiculously ambitious projects here at Decaycast, and Chthonic Streams exhaustive 8 hour cassette boxset titled, “V/A: NO WORKERS PARADISE” covers all of these bases and more, in one, mechanical, maniacal offering. Boxsets are awesome, and they’re even more compelling when they actually contain new material, by, gasp, even living artists. No shade on the myriad of Miles Davis and John Coltrane CD reissue boxsets that we have all seen and probably purchased, but eight hours of new material, from eight heavy hitters in the noise/industrial/power electronics scene enclosed in a matte black tool box, accompanied by a zine and customized time card to boot, is not really something we could (or should ignore). We received a rather large media mail box from New York and upon opening, the “No Workers Paradise” boxset emerged, a sleek matte black toolbox with a shiny chrome latch and basic font that reads “No Workers Paradise” is affixed to the top. Its interior reveals eight 60-minute cassettes and a zine/accompanying booklet for the release, and customized time card emerge as the tools for the job, so to speak. It was time to clock in.
As with all of the labels’ releases, the artwork is done by label head honcho Derek Rush who also books shows, is an active DJ, and works in graphic design and photography, so it comes as no surprise that all of the artwork included looks stunning and professional, accented by the printed booklet and cassette artwork itself. We haven’t even gotten into the sounds and this is already worth the $75 price tag without question, a truly beautifully put together collection. Now into the meat and bones of these disgruntled, bloody and beaten-down workers, we will delve into the sounds in reaction to the tormented work day!
The boxset starts with the label owner’s project, COMPACTOR, offering a strong, mechanically styled “old school” feeling industrial track with clanging rhythms, backed with the tick tock tick tock of the overlord’s clock. The panopticon is omnipresent and the worker must continue. Wake up. Work! Time To Work! Until you DIE, and DIE, until you can clock out at the end of the day and do it all again. Compactor’s sounds generally fall within a more mechanized style of industrial, there is soul, but it’s the soul of a robot programed to destroy itself, through repeated, violent, senseless rhythms, yet Rush’s sound and sample choices are powerful and intentional. The, slow, churning blown out percussion blends perfectly with the high squelching feedback of industry/insanity and multi-layered, multi-timbral synth workings. Compactor’s offering is the perfect opening to the project, cold, alienating, mechanized, and dense; the perfect ramp up to the more fuzzed out, abstracted works of some of the other contributors to the boxset, The Vomit Arsonist, Redrot, Gnawed, and Filth, amongst others.
Another standout sound work in this massive offering comes from Denton, TX’s FILTH, who offers up his own interpretation of an hour slice of the standard american work day. Rob Buttrum’s FILTH project is known for his menacing cacophony of industrialized noise, power electronics and analog psychedelic compositions. FILTH brings his A game to work for with a dark, brooding, menacing stitching of fuzzed out, psychedelic noise and drenched in feedback power electronics, in what can only be described as the FILTH sound, which we have covered in the past HERE in an interview with Buttrum and his label OUT OF BODY RECORDS. Buttrum does offer a rhythmic backing at times, but in a different, slightly more diffused, muffled style than COMPACTOR, but don’t skimp on the manual, because there is a harsh reality in store if you don’t, and you’re likely to get gobbled up into the machine and spat out as puny remains, but FILTH’s sound is not exclusively harsh, tripped out noise, there are abstracted broken rhythms, there is intention, it is planned, and panned, it IS the sound of the second hour of the day forcing itself into the negative space of your brain, that may in fact, prove to be your last of the day, of your life. FILTH is the sound of a rusted, dilapidated, unstable, harsh machine taking its unknowing operator with it to an early grave. Planned obsolescence, like user, like machine.
Michigan’s REDROT (Chondritic Sound, Bloodlust, Slaughter Productions) aka Ryan Oppermann offers another standout track on “No Worker’s Paradise” with one of their tracks titled, “Work Release Program Terminations”. REDROT is blackened, harsh noise/PE, with slices of blown out beats, and angular rhythmic structures over a sea of dense power electronics and industrial. The machine has already regurgitated the one time worker into a mess of fleshy, red, sacks of rotting remains, and REDROT is the absolute perfect soundtrack to the coworkers slowly and confusingly sweeping the bloody bits into a bag for disposal. Redrot carries a white noise sword which swiftly and steadily shaves away at the listeners inner ear canal, until a drop of blood leaks out, and starts a mechanical frenzy leaving the workers, along, confused, and scared as the drop turns into a red pool where music dies.
Another standout offering on this project is Minneapolis, MN’s GNAWED, aka Grant Richardson. We’ve covered one of GNAWED’s previous releases HERE on Decaycast.
GNAWED‘s track for “No Worker’s Paradise” is similar to his other industrial, harsh noise, power electronics hybrid funeral stylings; chaotic, yet restrained, busy yet articulate, harsh but at times even beautiful. Much like FILTH, GNAWED uses homemade analog electronics to create a brooding, dark, cavernous sound all of his own. His “Terminal Epoch” album from Phage Tapes, would be the closest style wise that I’ve heard for the track for this boxset. GNAWED is a master of tension through intentional and articulate dynamics, balancing sharp, harsh sounds with lower, more brooding under swellings of terror; the track slowly and painfully oscillates between violent shudders, chaotic, dense, noise blasts and distorted, broken voice swells.
THE VOMIT ARSONIST, EXISTENCE IN DECLINE, BLSPHM and WORK/DEATH also punch in with powerful sound works blending industrial, harsh/blackened noise, power/electronics and dark, experimental moods of the harsher, angular style.
The boxset as a whole is a lengthy listen clocking in at the 8 hour mark, but when one thinks of the slow, grudging, unrelenting time clock of the american work day, this tour de force of harsh industrial / PE serves as a warm, relaxing day on the beach as a vacation, even for a day, from the alienating, hellscape robotic world that is American capitalism. Rush does right by all of the artists involved with stunningly beautiful and appropriate artwork and packaging as with all of the labels releases. A must for any noise collector, and/or hater of capitalism.
LIMITED TO 50 NUMBERED COPIES
(additional 16 go to artists only)
DECAYCAST#036: NIHAR BHATT : V/A: ROGUE PULSE / GRAVITY COLLAPSE DJ Mix on RATSKIN RECORDS, 2017
IMA “Meshes”
TERROR APART “Perfectly Nowhere”
BIG DEBBIE “E.P. Hypnosis”
AH MER AH SU “Write This Off”
SNEAX (LaTron + Obsidian Blade) “Till The End 100%”
Piano Rain “Last Year” Remastered
PRIST “Still Movin'”
FORBIDDEN COLORS “Green Smiley Face Sticker”
BONUS BEAST “Direct Dive”
ZEEK SHECK “7777-01-07 Son”
JOSHUA KIT CLAYTON “Morning Rasp”
HIROSHI HASEGAWA “Homeobox”
MALOCCULSION “Walk Of The Dead, Part One”
S.B.S.M. “Godzilla”
POD BLOTZ “The Current”
MOOR MOTHER “CTM Five”
BRIAN TESTER “Chrono People”
GOLDEN DONNA “Wired For The Worst”
THE CREATRIX “D B No Moral Universe”
CIARRA BLACK “Don’t Say It, Volume 1”
RUSSELL E.L. BUTLER “Technofeminism House”
ZANNA NERA “In My Veins”
JASMINE INFINITI “Scratchy A”
ELROND “Hart Start”
DIMENTIA “Specimen Identity”
PARALYCYST “Untitled”
SHARON TATE FETUS EXPLOSION “Personal Brand”
V.E.X. “Ride The Time”
arc “Breathe Couplings Undulation Map”
On The Origin Of Rogue Pulse / Gravity Collapse: About two weeks to the day before Ghostship, we returned home after days of protests; as always feeling defeated, BEING defeated another day of violence enacted upon the communities’ consciousness; Witnessing the beautiful families of oakland wading through never ending rivers of trauma enacted on all marginalized communities through state sanctioned violence and racism in Oakland, and the Bay Area at large. A compilation will not solve this, a thousand compilations will not solve this, but we have done nothing to combat this and we have to start somewhere. ROGUE PULSE / GRAVITY COLLAPSE is an uncertain yet thorough attempt to demonstrate to propose a restructuring of how artists, labels, promoters, venues and other “institutions” and INSTITUTIONS use their privilege, time, talents, and resources. But before we could do that, and begin to unpack the complexities around all of these issues, in one single night, the community lost thirty six souls, including founding members of our collective, artists on our label, family members, and so much more in Ghostship and then months after RP/GC was released, almost a dozen more in the San Pablo Fire months later which displaced hundreds of longstanding Black members of the community, and lastly the North Bay fires. There is only so many ways to process or not process this stuff, but we came up with a compilation. We weren’t sure how long it would be, who would be included, how we would present it to the public without exacerbating the commodification of grief, and without taking visibility away from traumas enacted against the Oakland community at large, outside of the “artistic” community. We weren’t really at all sure how we would divide up the money, how we would promote it, but sometimes you don’t have any other fucking choice, even if it raised $100 you never know how far that could go.. Ghostship was, and still is a horrendous blow to our local creative community, many of whom had already been resisting against the structural wrath and chaos of a white supremacist, sexist, capitalist culture, and therefore already just struggling to create and survive, day by day hour by hour minute by minute. In short, many communities were fragmented and tormented long before Ghostship, and Ghostship, for many of us, brought a blade of mass trauma slicing through reality, grief, chaos, distrust and confusion that uprooted the community in so many different ways. The Immediate Fire relief fund literally saved people’s lives by the way and all the love should be given to them and those working on the periphery as well.
What was crucial for us was linking in those deeply affected and lost in Ghostship fire while also keeping the financial and conceptual focus on the organizations we chose to support before the fire, Black Lives Matter and St James Infirmary in San Francisco. Before we knew it, it was out. It was like the best and worst possible distraction, and in MANY ways, postponed a lot of the mental and physical healing that members of the collective needed to do for ourselves but at the same time it was, and still very much is an entry point for beginning the process. For me personally, this has easily been the single most important release I have ever been a part of for numerous reasons, but the single biggest reason is because it saved my life, literally, so many times I cannot even count and it did that by showing me the undeniable ferociousness of our community. Every track on ROGUE PULSE / GRAVITY COLLAPSE, came as a blessing, a hug, a shoulder to cry on, but also they came as weapons, one hundred and eighty seven weapons, and we couldn’t be happier with the finished offering, as it strives to demonstrate the unrelenting power through all of the trauma and grief that our community and the people of Oakland, through various intersections possess and present with every moment that they exist. Nihar’s essential, heartfelt, and nearly perfect distillation of the thirteen hours of Rogue Pulse / Gravity Collapse, carefully and masterfully sharpens heavy stones of grief into razor blades of warmth, love, creativity, and determination of our community like daggers to the throat of a broken, corrupt system. Every tear shed will eventually freeze to form an icicle to thrust into the socket of a system which has cast away so many amazing, beautiful, creative, people.
This mix is one for everyone who has lost a loved one at the hands of systemic violence. Your tears will not go unnoticed, and this is just the beginning.
This mix is one for everyone who has lost a loved one at the hands of systemic violence. Your tears will not go unnoticed, and this is just the beginning.
Follow Nihar’s projects NINE, \ LEFT HAND PATH & SURFACE TENSION
The physical edition of ROGUE PULSE / GRAVITY is SOLD OUT as of Today, but the digital download is available HERE ON BANDCAMP via RATSKIN.
-MD. Dec 1, 2017
DECAY CAST Reviews: John Rasmussen “DModes” Digital EP (Not On Label, 2017)
“Rasmussen is the solo project of John Rasmussen. He is based out of Denver Colorado, USA. His styles range from harsh noise to IDM / experimental / minimal. John began performing in 1999 after many years of recording. Originally John started Page 27 with John Gross in 1994 and for years around that time he played cello for 6 years. John Rasmussen and John Gross work on putting on the Denver Noise Fest, http://denvernoisefest.com/ (started in 2010) and performs with Michael Nowak/John Gross as Page 27 regularly”
For this release, “DModes” Rasmussen blends harsh noise, ambient loop sections, field recordings, found sounds, augmented voice, lo fi transmissions blasted, blown out rhythm sections, data bending sonic sculptures; kind of but not so similar to the sounds of machines and programs dying, failing, flailing, and fucking exploding in the face of the user; with no where to run and nowhere to hide. Belching, fizzing digital gargling spews out of the speakers in long harsh seeing breaths of aural decimation. The first two tracks “Xenu” and “DModes” start similar with a minimal, crunchy digital sounding tone burst, but both slowly eclipse into walls of harsh feedback, malfunctioning, or properly function triggers, and sequencers. The Midi Cable has come alive to strangle its user, and the user repents. The B Side boasts live versions of both of the tracks on side A. Although the fidelity is a bit lacking on the live recordings, the damage, confusion and discomfort is all still there. Despite the abstracted composition both of the love tracks don’t stray too far from the originals presented on Side A, which is both impressive and exciting considering the noisy and chaotic nature of the project.
Often times with harsh noise it can be extremely difficult to tell the source of the sound, albeit conceptual maybe it’s not important what the source is but with Rasmussen ‘s work it screams a healthy dose of both digital and analog electronics and processing. Just as the listener is being washed away in a sea of white noise trauma, the chaos fades and the listener is left with bleep, dot, error information? A single dial tone to the brain that has already escaped. What happens the moment before meltdown? Check the band camp and find out HERE.
BEAST NEST “Pluto” Video Premiere :
(video directed by : malocculsion)
The efforts of Bay Area artist, musician, healer, promoter and educator Sharmi Basu are seemingly endless and so far reaching that before one has the opportunity to grasp and contextualize one action in the greater realm of experimental music, they are onto the next.
Between constantly touring, and releasing last years “Taste Of India” cassette (Ratskin), a new Tour EP for her recently completed European tour, running The Mara Performance Collective, which self describes as “a performance and improvisation group that is centered on shared politics and identity. The MPC is focused on radical people of color, that is non-white folks, and is emphasizing those who identify as queer, trans, and/or womyn of color.”, and it’s offshoot, Brown Noise , have become staples for many new and experienced artists to gain and refine their “chops” so to speak outside of the white male patriarchy which has historically taken up so much space in noise and underground communities. Most recently, Basu was a part of The Universe Is Lit: the bay area’s first ever Black and Brown Punk Festival with fellow curators Shawna Shawnte, Jade Ariana and Titania Kumeh, and recently opening for electronic music’s den mother Suzanne Ciani at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Through all of this, Basu has both ears, a dog and a mic to the ground in the forefront of experimental music, politics, and community building. She even contributed a track to the recently released “Rogue Pulse / Gravity Collapse” compilation (Ratskin) which spawns twelve hours of music in direct support of Black Lives Matter, St James Infirmary, and The Oakland Immediate Relief Fund, which consisted of Basu and several other femme organizers who took and distributed donations after last year’s Ghostship tragedy which claimed the lives of thirty six souls of the Oakland and bay area
creative community, many of whom were close to Basu. Despite all of this loss, chaos, and uncertainty with these violent, chaotic, shaking and bleeding times, Basu marches forward and continues to help pave the way for the decolonization of experimental, underground, music and art. A necessary, radical action, like many aspects of confronting white supremacy, which is long overdue.
Today, Basu releases a video for “Pluto” which is from the B side of the “Taste of India” cassette, released in an edition of 100 cassettes on Ratskin in fall of last year, which can be viewed above. The video blends analog and video synthesis, feedback, found footage and digital video processing. Make sure to click the HD option in the youtube window for maximum definition, as the video is visually dense. Please make sure to Follow her Bandcamp, or Soundcloud orrrrrrr main website for more information and current shows. She also has a Patreon which has some amazing incentives!
“Else” was recorded by HEY EXIT, in Brooklyn NY in 2015, but you’d never really be able to tell as it comes off as this sort of timeless drone recording. “Else” starts with a low, slow, cloudy drone and slowly builds and destroys subtlety across the entire album. The first sounds that emerge are delicate. spacious, tone poems of humming synths? guitars? who knows? but the source 
isn’t really that important and the sounds create a sonic space that exists somewhat outside of codified instrumentation, structure, rhythm. The sonic palette of HEY EXIT is largely of a similar toolset, at least on Else, and the cassette is broken up into five tracks, however they all function as one breadth, decaying and gently bleeding into each other. “What Role, If Any” is probably the track that feels most complete on its own in terms of a moving composition within itself and offers arguably the most sonic density and variety on this EP.
The sounds themselves are a plush mesh of drones, blissed out and stretched out orchestral swells, slow attack guitar swells, strategically placed crunches of rumbling distortion, and wind. The tempo of Else is made up of slow, delicately offered pulses, as if someone was breathing out the notes, blowing ou
t the tempo on a single flickering candle, but not through a wind instrument, the attack is gone, the breath has transformed into a slow, churning, crawling, beautiful sound. The slow, crawling , glossy pillars of sounds , at times almost seemed to sync up with my breath as i was sitting in the dark listen
ing to the cassette on repeat. This is excellent “meditation” music, or at least music that begs of slow action, slow thought, slow body movements, and slow listening. There are moments that get “noisy” in the traditional sense, but they never obliterate or destroy the more quiet, subtle tones that dance and breathe as he main life source of the piece. “Else” is a delicately crafted ambient drone offering for fans of slow, delicate, breathing music to listen to on a foggy, crawling confusing day. Highly enjoyable.
You can check this release and more from HEY EXIT, here
TONIGHT 4/20 IN THE CITY OF SAN FRANPSYCHO
SECOND ACT. 1727 HAIGHT STREET, SF, CA 7:45-10PM SHARP
“Four twenny in the Haight Ashbury? Yup. If smoke makes the best sunsets, the banks of Golden Gate Park will be blowin’ up as Neha Spellfish, Malocculsion, play the final show with Demonsleeper and Thoabath before they hang ten off a dank ring blowing out toward San Juan, Puerto Rico where they’ll opena new venue for experimental live sound. Come see them off with…
NEHA SPELLFISH (Oakland/Madrid)
With low frequency waves washing up on a beach of dark noise ambience, Spellfish delves into the shared space of interspecies communication and paramnesia, invoking the spectral measure of waking consciousness and noospheric cognition. Neha invokes themes of macro psychology, xeno feminism, dynamically modeled weather enclosures, and instinctual variance, employing audio programming platforms and algorithmic granular synthesis.
https://soundcloud.com/spellfish
Demonsleeper
Deathrattle lullabys and inescapable lucid dreamscapes wrought by somnambulist maestra, Alexandra Bushman. In 1999, she formed the electro-acoustic group, Synethesia, tegether with Angélica Negrón. After scaring the daylights out of everyone at the Conservatory of Music in Puerto Rico, she matriculated to Mills College before committing to advanced studies with ancient dark forces whose names must never be spoken.
https://soundcloud.com/demonsleeper
Thoabath
There’s a perceptible gravity to Andy Way that somehow vanishes once you draw near, the material world floats adrift. His solo project, Thoabath, might just be that massless Euclidean point where noise, dub, power electronics, horror, and ambient all emanate, an entelechy without clear precedent, of no laws. Prepare your ear, first study his collaborations with luminaries like Bruce Anderson (MX-80) & Petit Mal in the project, French Radio, sink yourself in the occult cacophony of Sutekh Hexen, and then, approach Thoabath, inescapable dark quasar.
https://soundcloud.com/acway/
Malocculsion
Watch concrete turn to quicksand and glass return to sand as this sonic juggernaut storms the Haight Ashbury. His inaugural solo album released last year, “Psychosis Industrial Complex”, melds blown out distorted beats, arpeggiated synths, tape manipulation, voice, field recordings and homemade oscillators to belt forth a dark, unique offering of post industrial, prison music.
https://ratskinrecords.bandcamp.com/album/malocculsion-psychosis-industrial-complex
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D E C A Y C A S T Magazine 