Reviews:: Electronic Voice Phenomena :: Triptides

Triptides :: Tropical Dreams EP :: Beachtapes :: Released April 12

I want you to know that I hate wintertime. Wesley Willis would say, "Fuck uh snow flake in dee ass." And I know just how he feels, because he's not just talking about snowflakes, he's really talking about man's inhumanity towards man made somehow worse by nature's inhuman unnaturality towards man.

Yuh dig?

But then every now and again some kind of good can come from entire cities boarding up for the zombie-er months of the year: first off, there's less meatheads running around, chasing skirt in Adams Morgan and Georgetown, then there's the occasional plainclothes Dirty Harry drawing down on snowball tossers (those hippies), reminding us all why it's good to make sure cops get their Xmas bonuses, and, finally, a few talented and very fucking bored individuals sit down and record some totally sweet sounds. And when spring unfolds its splendor, unfouls its lines, and dumps it shitty rain on us, we can stay inside and give those songs a listen. We can think about the sun-baked beaches where we'd rather be.

Triptides take me there.

Out in the winter wasteland of Bloomington, IN (go fig), these dudes put down one, two, three, no wait, four tracks of the smoothest possible surf pop instead of going outside and facing certain death. The arrangements here are so goddamn natural, you'd swear you wrote them yourself. I'm listening to them now with the last of my bourbon balanced on my chest, and I'm pretty damn sure I'm not awake because I keep falling for the charms of a winking crab, gesturing for me to lie down, take a load off on his stretched out towel. There's no where to go, and no where to be, anyway. So just embrace the sandy tranquility offered by the Maryland Blue with the caviar eyeballs and the simpleton grin. What say you, Triptides: Now that we're looking summer straight in the mean-eyed face, how about you get out and take a trip down the coast?

Must be some kind of record since this is the second Indiana band to be mentioned here this week. Should I be getting paid for this? Nah, I don't have to be here. I could be in Florida, basking in the sun. This is just a hobby for me, yuh hear? A HOBBY!




Ripped from their Bandcamp page:
Glenn Brigman - vox/guitar/drums/keys
Josh Menashe - vox/bass/guitar

Review :: Electronic Voice Phenomena :: Widowspeak

Widowspeak
S/T
Wack Slacks

Widowspeak :: Harsh Realm

Got some more jangly guitar rock for you. I picked up this tape while I was in Brooklyn this past weekend over at Academy Records Annex. I think my shopping companion was on her third story about puking right before a boy was supposed to ask her out, more than one pamphleteer asked me if I accepted Jesus Christ into my heart, and there was a record store cat in the window watching the passersby pass by, all of which coalesced into a wonderful sense of well-being for me. It had me hoping for the world again, and my hope for the world took the form of a $5 cassette purchase before it was spent.

When my bus crash-landed in a harsh rainstorm, the type that's full of shit and shiver, I was home in DC again. I caught the Dum Dum Girls over at Black Cat (which is all really neither here nor there, tevs), and then I put this little gem in my trusty RCA deck when I got through the door. Wack Slacks either intentionally or unintentionally, because they didn't have the connection to have it mastered, gave this EP a worn-in sound that I can dig. It's probably the latter, but who the fuck can afford to be polished nowadays? Suck it, Libya.

This one's for fans of Mazzy Star or just sitting outside alone on a summer night, thinking about but not quite succeeding in sobriety.

Thanks for the find, ECS.

Review :: Electronic Voice Phenomena :: Luciernaga

Luciernaga
Life Passes Away Like Idle Chatter
Fabrica Records

I got passed this tape last week and couldn't resist buying it. I've developed a fascination for tape releases over the past year, and with more tape labels pushing out the in-between work of great bands, they've become unavoidable. Luciernaga (español para firefly) is a solo project by one of the members from DC's Birds and Wires, and I believe he relocated to Brooklyn sometime in the past year, because I haven't really seen the band on a billing since last summer's Fort Reno series.

The Luciernaga project sounds like cuts from one of David Lynch's student films. "Long Wave" is one of the more listenable tracks on the album--and let me throw in that I listen to a lot of noise, and "listenable" can either be a compliment or a deprecation, frothing from my lower lip, in league with other grave markers like accessible or pleasant. But in this case I believe "Long Wave" succeeds. It bears strikingly little form or texture and yet it provides a surface with a beginning and an end. As the droning proceeds, the flat plane illuminates around the edges and presents the idea of a world or world-ness, and the notion of exploration follows shortly behind. Now if only David Lynch had his hands on this tape, he'd probably feature a pair of twin dwarfs dancing on a glass table, one vomiting resignedly down through the wing collar of his tuxedo shirt and the other reciting inchoate nursery rhymes about blind rabbits. Other tracks from this tape vary in terms of listenability, let's say, on a scale from Bill Pullman to Robert Blake in terms of who you'd want to be behind the wheel of the car you were being driven home in.

From the insert:
This audio cassette collects material recorded over a three year period (2008 - 2010) which include field recordings, samples, performances on acoustic and electric guitar, keyboards and various effects most of which are of an analog nature.

Luciernaga :: Long Wave

Other killer tape labels to plug into:
Skrot Up
Scotch Tapes
NNA Tapes