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DECAYCAST  Reviews: Blaine Todd & Andrew Weathers (Houdini Mansions, 2018)

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DECAYCAST  Reviews: Blaine Todd & Andrew Weathers (Houdini Mansions, 2018)

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This split begins with Andrew Weathers on the A side offering three experimental guitar and synth offerings, beginning with the track “Llano” which offers spacious, minimalist guitar work complemented through warm buzzing, swelling synthesizers. The synths and guitars play wonderfully off each other in a barren, pulsing, slightly unsettling tone poem. 

The second track, and standout of the tape “Mugwort Moon” is a huge, throbbing synth number with insect-like rattling pulses that transport the listener into a parallel universe of floating drones. Weathers synthesizes a perfect union of tone and spaces to create lush, dream-like compositions with heavy and dissonant overtones. 

The Blaine Todd Side of the split is more a take on traditional Americana psychedelia  rendered  through reverb drenched folk thrusts. Todd skates across a lush and morose pond, blending dripping, cavernous guitar strums, backed with distant unsettled, sad  vocals creating a fever dream style of psychedelic alt-pop. Gentle plucks and minimalistic events within the body of the guitar bloom into lush waves of intonation, a perfect compliment to the slightly more abstracted works of Andrew Weathers on the A side. Todd’s music is slightly more on the morose side of things where the Weathers side feels  both dissonant and uplifting at the same time, a  truly unique and dynamic pairing.

The label itself describes the offering as:

“A striking document of wide open loneliness, this split release by Andrew Weathers & Blaine Todd contains timeless works about Wobblies, the Staked Plain, etc.

Thoughtful, pensive songwriting blends with artisan-crafted dronework, and undercurrents of electronic wizardry.”

All in all, great release  from Houdini Mansions, a hybrid label, review site and radio show/ podcast. Follow them today and keep a lookout for more from this exciting collective, as well as both artists individually. 

DECAYCAST Reviews : Expose Your Eyes “Brain Pan” Cassette (Aphelion Editions, 2018)

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DECAYCAST Reviews : Expose Your Eyes “Brain Pan” Cassette (Aphelion Editions, 2018)

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 “Brain Pan” is a compilation album of sorts spanning nearly three decades of the Expose Your Eyes moniker via Paul Harrison. This long-form cassette explores harsh, heavy manipulated noise/voice, a myriad of field recordings, slow moving and cavernous drone and ambient works, low-fi voice manipulations via  cut up and  distortion methods, glistening warm synth poems clamored against harsh noise mayhem; the  stylistic shifts throughout the release exposing the listener to a mixtape style of experimental styles. 

Standout track “Rend” blends heavily delayed percussive events with a mid-toned whirring, slowly building tension and anxiety and almost seems to crawl out of the speaker into an unsuspecting nervous system. Other tracks such as “Red River 2” offer a more sombre, melodic approach, while still retaining elements of experimentation and loose compositional structure.  The label describes the process of choosing from the vast sea of material presented to them by the artist, “For this album, Paul sent me a whole stack of recordings that I then carefully sifted through to select the pieces that would finally be presented here, and I’m really pleased with the results we’ve achieved.  

Go ahead and delve deeper into the vortex for a whirlwind of (un)easy listening.  

It will leave you washed up on a distant shore of your consciousness, perspectives altered. 

Curious, bizarre and wonderful… “

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All in all “Brain Pan” explores a wide variety of experimental sounds and really theres something for everyone on this cassette from  the uneasy, nauseating sounds and sights of one (cough cough) Smell & Quim (who Harrison was a member of) to the lush, hypnotic, Organ and synthesizer forward dronings of early  Tangerine Dream. Pick it up on limited edition full color cassettes or  CD’s from the label HERE

 

 

 

 

DECAYCAST Reviews : Happiness Forever “II” (Mondo Anthem, 2018)

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Happiness Forever “II” (Mondo Anthem)

Washington’s longstanding experimental stalwart William Rage returns with a heavy, cinematic offering for the Mondo Anthem imprint titled “II” or “Mondo Anthem II“. On this release, Rage crafts two slow, churning, heavy, dynamic works blending what sounds like synthesizers, field recordings, and noise sources to an interesting and unique sonic end. Overall, the sound of Happiness Forever is heavy, yet varied, textured yet articulate. A low ominous drone oscillates throughout the first side while seething, weighted atmospheric textures glaze over the drones in a hypnotic nuanced mixing style. The A side quickly builds with intensity as sine wave communications cast themselves far beyond the listener into the inner workings of the brain; something is wrong, I’m feeling uneasy.

The B side, titled “I Left My Electronic Heart In San Francisco (Recreation Of A Live Recording Of A Performance That Never Happened)” begins where the A side left off so to speak, with dense, field recordings and ominous crawling synths, which seem to sputter in and out like a rumbling, thirsty dying motor. Slow arpeggiations sing next to a thick, resonated clicking with background swells which create the perfect texture; the perfect song of alienated confusion. Mutated and garbled voices peak through the murky swamp, enveloping atop themselves and then decaying into the darkness, a different, warped experience every time. Truly beautiful sound composition.

“II” never becomes too much of one feeling, it’s always mutating while maintaining an overall fluency to its sounds and composition that make “II” a dense and refreshing listening experience for fans of many styles of electronic music. From musique concrete, to drone, to more cinematic styles of electronic composition, Happiness Forever is a which heavy fog we all must get lost in for the duration of this tape.

Follow MONDO ANTHEM HERE

https://soundcloud.com/happiness-forever/200-cycles

DECAYCAST Reviews: BIG DRUM IN THE SKY RELIGION “Hope In Hell” (Self Released, 2018)

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DECAYCAST Reviews: BIG DRUM IN THE SKY RELIGION “Hope In Hell” (Self released, 2018)

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Dozens and dozens and dozens of short audio collage snippets sampling cult preachers, hip hop intros, classical music, dust to digital style folk, guitar strummed outros, zealots, bigots, activists, tv personalities, “sickness in my community”  “suffering is the given” “{why do we suffer” bleeds into the funk arpeggiated bass line. Destroy god, destroy humanity, destroy politics and see what pops out the other end with a sonic audio accident slamming everything together with muscle, yet nuanced ease so to speak.

 

Pulling from John Oswald’s “Plunderphonics” and Negativland’s “Christianity Is Stupid”, “Hope In  Hell” blasts short, dense, collage critique splatter offerings of  religious and capitalistic confusion, alienation, and so much more and less., In  terms of sound art/collage, these  short works are dense, impactful, complex sonic vignettes into a  twisted world of  confusion and alienation, and well,  philosophical blindness. Some of  the  stronger works on this shuffle friendly journey through cut and paste absurdity are “God’s People” > “Transformation Energy” > “Make Me Present”.  This work oscillates between comedy, critique, and absurdist / dada tendencies to create a dense, dark, cut and glued critique of world’s interpretations of the unknown. Dense, fun, well done and sonically interesting collage work.  “The Big Drum In The Sky Religion is a shape-shifting confederacy of dream wanderers, spirit warriors, entheogen casualties and miscreants assembled for the purpose of altering the collective unconsciousness and bringing about the total Ecstatic Awakening of All Sentient Beings and Union of the All and the One through the use of polyrhythms, fuzzboxes and senseless banjo abuse. Dilute! Dilute! OM“

 

DECAYCAST Reviews: SHADOWS “KnightsEnd” Cassette (Polar Envy / SKSK, 2018)

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DECAYCAST Reviews: SHADOWS “KnightsEnd” Cassette (Polar Envy / SKSK, 2018)

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SHADOWS “Knight’s End” (photo: Polar Envy / ASR)

Cleveland, OH mainstays SHADOWS is David Russell and Wyatt Howland (and at least for this release are assisted via the sonics of Roman J. Leyva) crafting their  dark, horrific, take on the legacy/story of Batman  through mastered techniques of harsh noise, drone, percussion and dynamic  mixing and editing techniques. The sound of SHADOWS seems go evolve with every release and “Knight’s End” is no different. Beginning with a murky, distorted rhythm we are  quickly whisked away into a harsh symphony of ringing, clanging, scraping; attack on  the ear and the “fearless”? The sound of shadows is physically manifested through the  black clad, pointed eared upside down man of the night. “KnightsEnd” fuses longer drone sections, which contain a rather cinematic arch to their presentation, slowly beginning as a low, slow sine wave and over the course of a few minutes, escalate into a cavernous,  yet detailed sonic explosion of harsh noise, voice, and percussion, a masterfully blended evil sonic stew leaving the listener with a tense, uneasy feeling, which for my ear canal is just perfect.

.The B side “KnightQuest”  follows a similar compositional format, beginning with stark, alienating percussion, resembling the swaying of an old, cursed sinking ship with hundreds of  piezos placed within it’s weakest structural support system and signing a hum of the  druid through mangled cassette tape, as it creaks and rips apart all whilst bombs fall from an unknown sky above.  We hear a parade of  dissonant sounds slowly dragging themselves closer and farther away to the ear canal, like a slow, pulsing infectious disease spreading through an unknown human cavity, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. The blending of all of the different sonic elements that compose the sound of SHADOWS is perhaps one of their strongest elements as the  tension seems to build throughout in a subtle, yet  important way, dragging us down and down into the sea of sonic mayhem until the  last air bubble pops at the  surface, the ship has sank, their are no survivors, only the harsh, alienating tortured sounds of Shadows “Knight’s End” As of the time of this review, according to the label’s bandcamp page there’s just, ONE copy left and you should GO HERE AND BUY IT.

POLAR ENVY 

SHADOWS 

DECAYCAST Reviews: DAHB “VISIONS FROM AN ASTRAL CORE” (2018)

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DECAYCAST Reviews: DAHB “VISIONS FROM AN ASTRAL CORE”

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Dahb hails from Philadelphia and plays mid-tempo, angular, rhythmically complex,  thrashing metal/metal core. At times operating more in the black metal style before quickly and swiftly switching the riffs and focus for a more angular, choppy melodic  style. The vocals are typical of the genre, somewhere between yelling and anguished screams, they sit atop the drums and shredding guitar perfectly. A standout aspect of “Visions from an Astral Core” is the complex rhythmic relationships between the drums and guitars, both firing in oppositional machine gun like rhythms, with dissonant, archaic strums atop the chopping riffs and blasting, rapid fire drums.  The track slowly turns into an abstract, atmospheric improvisation but Dahb never loses its poise or complex style. The improvised tail provides a nice crescendo to the track showcasing both their technical prowess as well as their ear to listen. Dahb’s strength lies within this compositionally and rhythmically complicated dynamic, giving them a heavy, unique sound all their own for fans of both technically proficient and chaotically charged heavy metal .

– Maniere Zappone

DECAYCAST Reviews: BUCK YOUNG “Proud Trash Sound” LP (No Rent Records / Rent Hike, 2018)

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BUCK YOUNG “Proud Trash Sound” LP (No Rent Records / Rent Hike , 2018)

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BUCK YOUNG “Proud Trash Sound” is one of the most unique, albeit one of the only fusions of contemporary harsh experimental music and western fever dream Americana that I have come across, and what a discovery this has been. From the twisted. hand drawn, scrawly, but beautifully executed artwork to it’s strange, and twisted blending of seemingly unrelated styles and techniques,  “Proud Trash Sound”  subverts much of what we have come to expect from “harsh noise” or experimental music in general, and turns it’s on it’s ten gallon hat as our brains leak out in a red mess on the floor trying to articulate what this “Proud Trash Sound” is just all about, ya hear?!

Fuzzed out,  westernized twangy acoustic guitars and nasily, heartbroken, yodeling  vocals skate and twirl along, rising atop the bent capo as Whisky drips down the neck of the guitar, often and angrily interrupted by dense, belches of harsh cut up noise that Crumer has articulated as his own over the years, but “Proud Trash Sound” doesn’t stop there; it escapes the one trick pony of ironic “comedy” record and belts forth an honest and complicated, yet aurally and conceptually pleasing synthesis of styles that are traditionally considered “unrelated”.  In the cacophonous slab of post modern beauty that is “Proud Trash Sound”,  there is truly something for everyone on this record, from morose, sad, heartfelt paino works such as “Murdoch” which blends heavy, heartfelt piano arpeggiations with a lonely buzzing from the farm’s distance to minimalistic, muffled blendings of bending guitars, field recordings of explosions, horses, farm animals, and just about everything else left after the show down, BUCK YOUNG slickly avoids categorization throughout this LP. Are these some sort of twisted cover songs, or is Buck Young simply pulling on nostalgia strings through this deep and unnerving sonic tale of a time where the cobblestone streets ran red which archaic blood of those on the wrong side of the gun and the bottom of the barrel. Other tracks like the more upbeat “Harper Valley PTSD” offer a higher pitched twang, blended with cut up tape loop destruction and a thick warm analog haze of sonic confusion; this is a good thing btw.

The  album’s standout track for me “Hey Linda!” is a chaotic, multi layered, fumbling, bumbling, beer soaked love ballad sped up, bled dry sounding like Can 1968 loops accelerated through a mangled, ash-covered  tape machine feeding back through CB radio. Blending 60’s psychedelia with futuristic sounding harsh noise, a cowboy belt buckle stash spot of mind bending, leather hide rank sounds into a hooch barrel of = truly unique and all encompassing American experimental music, BUCK YOUNG offers us nothing short of a dark take on a murky past. Buck Young is a truly indescribable sound, you must only hear it for yourself to believe.  Pick this up from No Rent Records before it’s sold out, or it might already be?!

“Until now… 

It has been 74 long years, so steal a few tall cans of beer, pull up an old crate or a worn out tire and start a bonfire with your roommates’ crap. Add a reasonably functional cassette player and this is the new American concert hall. “

 

DECAYCAST Reviews: Jeff Carey “Zero Player Game” (Ehse Records, 2018)

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DECAYCAST Reviews: Jeff Carey “Zero Player Game” (Ehse Records, 2018)

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Jeff Carey‘s  2018 “Zero Player Game” which is actually out today synthesizes noise, cyberpunk concepts, and  abstract composition and  chance into a dark, heavy stew of experimental music. Carey’s sound on “Zero Player Game” is raw, fast moving, and uncompromising, at  times, sounding like a glitch-heavy classically inspired contemporary experimental music composition and other times bypassing the  dynamic and sharp ebbs and troughs for the all out sonic approach of mayhem. Carey’s sound oscillates between distinct and sonically intentional strategies. The sheer amount of  sonic spaces occupied throughout “Zero Player Game” is astonishing to say the least; sounds vary from thickly wet, pulsing pillars of square wave madness, short, quick, bubbly flesh being torn from bone accentuated by a cavernous thud, longstanding ambient background drones which create the architecture for Carey’s joystick of chaos to oscillate between endless synth and sample parameters in mere seconds. Whatever the compositional idea throughout, Carey has clearly mastered it. Carey’s sounds are deep, alive, and present, and despite their customized instrument/presentation being grounded in the  digital realm, sounds so life-like and present one can feel a slithery long arm reaching out of the speaker and  gently stroking your spine with a poisoned feather tip is the overall vibe of the sound. VISCERAL and R E A L, containing all what so many lack, ‘Zero Player Game” pulls no punches that operate outside of it’s own chaotic, but idiosyncratic structure and form and is in solid control of its own sonic destiny.

“Zero Player Game” is comprised mostly of intense, sharp and dangerous, cut-up music with an organic, live and honest feel, something not easily achieved. The press release states,  “Jeff Carey’s fourth CD release is is electro-instrumental music performed with custom software controlled by a joystick and gamer keypad. Zero Player Game is an intensely artificial sound world where beats and bass lines are replaced with an elastic structure of synthetic texture, feedback and bit crushed noise blasts” which offers a deeper explanation into how exactly this  style was developed and we wonder for this release specifically? However “Zero Player Game” was created compositionally, it at no point leaves the listener in a static, boring place, for every sonic action is a new adventurous wormhole for the ear to slither down into as the brain begins to break attempting to decipher these cosmically deep and  adventurous soundscapes.  Highly recommended for fans of noise, harsh noise, and electro-acoustic cut-up. Angrily blistering yet peacefully blissful music for the curious ear. Jeff is also on tour  supporting this release so check the dates and his website below!

NOVEMBER 6, Bushwick, NY @ H010 Gallery

7, Providence, RI @ Machines with Magnets

8, Ithaca, NY @ The Chanticleer

9, Columbus, OH @ Fuse Factory

10, Louisville, KY @ Kaiju

11, St Louis, MO @ The Juice

12, Dayton, OH @ Skeleton Dust Records

13, Chicago, IL @ TriTriangle

15, Pittsburgh, PA @ 3577 Studios

16, Nyack, NY @ Nyack Village Theatre Boutique

17, Philadelphia, PA @ Vox Populi

DECEMBER 2, DC @ Rhizome

3, Johnson City, TN @ The Hideaway

4, Gainesville, FL @ The Limin Room

5, Miami, FL @ Churchills

6, Orlando, FL @ Wills Pub

7, St Petersburg, FL @ Paper Crane

8, New Orleans, LA @ Mudlark

9, Birmingham, AL @ Firehouse

10, Asheville, NC @ Static Age

http://jeffcarey.foundation-one.org

 

DECAYCAST Reviews: AMANDA R HOWLAND “Spider, Milk, Batshit, Silence” (No Rent, 2018)

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DECAYCAST Reviews: AMANDA R HOWLAND “Spider, Milk, Batshit, Silence” (No Rent, 2018)

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Cleveland, OH recording artist Amanda R.  Howland comes with refreshing array of sonic possibilities and strategies with, “Spider, Milk, Batshit, Silence” her first tape for the NO RENT imprint, with two sides of mixed-bag, dense, electronics spanning from harsh noise, to musique concrete,  to sections accentuating voice, to more abstracted rhythm sections which blend in and out of a gentle, yet very present, bowed, hum.  Static, voice, melody, clattering broken rhythms, radio chatter of  ancient transmissions and a harsh sense of absence are all present in this short but important release.  Tension is another constant theme to the ear as  one section may contain a harsh, alienating scraping; a  sound nasty pissed and angrily broken, inching across the floor toward its prey as the  amplitude and aggression increase and climax into an alarm style buzzing; alerting the listener that, yes, now is your time. Another sound, if even for a moment, m0014255476_10ay offer a brief, ambient respite to the harsh reality that has encapsulated us all, “Spider, Milk, Batshit, Silence” is, indeed the sound of that. A chaotic, dangerous and aurally thick and swift climax appears and then vanishes leaving only a distant hum of  abstracted silence, a slow, subtle, thumping as if the decaying heart has pushed red for its final beat.  The silence at the end of side one almost doesn’t seem real as the listener is left with wanting more of this uncertain future the ears and brain have yet to test, yet to experience.  If any sonic territories are left unexplored under the “experimental”  or “out-sound” tags on side one, we soon learn they will be shredded and eviscerated on side two with as much skill, tension, and carefully articulated abstraction as they were on side one.

The second side, “Batshit, Silence” picks up  right where the  A side dropped us off, with a high-pitched, distorted and warped melody.  Intense shrieks, angry swells, and ancient hymns of bouncing, pulsing sine-wave frequencies gel together like a microbiological  fungus slowly transforming into something much greater and dangerous, the thick scraping, shooting radio0 transmissions into the brain grow together, seamlessly providing a ridged and ugly backbone for abstracted  layers of thunderous pounding, the a tonal scraping of a ferociously thick winds ripping across the gruesome and confusing scene, pulling tiny, flesh-ridden shards of the listeners inner ear with it,  to cascade upon, as Howlands’ dark, grinning, noisy, churning  machine glides through the wires and slowly leaks out of the pores offering a new dark reality, endlessly searching for a cave to whip around in, an enormous sound. This scene is eventually evacuated to barren, alien radio transmissions have crept their way in and angst-like shake and sputter long lost messages over the dense, thick walls of  bleeding electronics, this like life eventually fades away and we are  left with an alienating, deafening silence.  Highly dynamic and enjoyable tape for a wide variety of experimental delvers. Pick u the digital HERE and the cassette HERE

DECAYCAST Reviews: Andorkappen “Temples Of The Unvirtuous” (Oxen, 2018)

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Andorkappen, LA  based noise/ drone maestro and also honcho at Underground Tape Review is back with “Temples Of The Unvirtuous”, on one of our  favorite labels, OXEN, also an LA based imprint. “Temples Of The Unvirtuous” begins with a slow, low, hollow  drone which barely is able to escape the speakers, however this distant  drone steadily becomes a thick, warm, comforting,  whirring sawtooth buzz accented by a steadily rising sine  wave pitch poem, steadily climbing the ladder or  alienation and confusion. This is the style of  synthesizer drone music i have been waiting for,  stripped, raw, warm, an a-tonal  form to atone to.  The bass  forward drone, and the high pitched ring, engrosses the hearing until the  sound is like a shaking, microscopic robotic insect drone which has  entered the brain via the ear canal.  You now have become rather UNcertain of what the future may hold.

The  drone remains omnipresent, now navigating the innards of your  nervous  system with its sweating,  pulsing, reverberations of mechanical hell, yet somehow this hell is soothing and relaxing, like the  warm hum of distant machines that will eventually come to end our life, but for now have  taken respite across the desert, gently vibrating and breathing, not  quite ready to attack yet. The high pitched buzz has gently, yet in a fixed, determined manner become the musical  crescendo and de-crescendo  of the A side, and of course the bass for the B side, but rest assured, no matter how your body takes it’s  new  implanted oscillations, things will be different. Even though this evil sound appears distant it  will slowly, steadily and eventually forcefully remap the sonics of your nervous system until you  are violently, shaking uncontrollably in a pile of confusion and as you collapse onto the floor, the buzzes  cease to exist, and all that’s left is a tiny mechanical bee buzzing  against a dark, barren, abandoned landscape, ominously and microscopicly floating in limbo, waiting for it’s next unknown victim.

You can order the cassette from OXEN Label HERE!