Barmy vocals with English accents

Baronic Wall - The Mind of Roses
Gift Tapes #42

Baronic Wall's The Mind of Roses is so fucking vintage I checked the calendar on my phone. Am I really still here? In the present? Or is it 1979? Baronic Wall's take on hard-edged, hypnotic synthpop would feel right snug at home on Hyped2Death's Messthetics series, which spotlights the U.K.'s D.I.Y. era of the late '70s/early '80s. An era when authenticity trumped skill, when the creative process was emphasized as much as the creative output itself, when idle spectators became willing participants.

Baronic Wall has barmy vocals with English accents (they remind me of Dan Treacy; anything that reminds me of Dan Treacy makes me warm inside). The songs have woozy, warped synthesizers and cheap-sounding percussion, and themes of tribulation and alienation. From "Those Good Men": "The place where things went wrong for them / The place where they got a sign that the world didn't want them."

The vocalist often takes a poetic/spoken-word approach; he oscillates between sounding irritated and frightened. During the song "The Former Age" it occurred to me that the synths were like an impenetrable wall and his voice was coming from the other side of this wall, and that no matter how agitated or unnerved or just downright weird he came off, he always sounded like he was comfortable in the particular space he was occupying. That he wanted to be there and nowhere else. I was simultaneously intrigued and flustered by this; I haven't felt like that in some time.

Paper plates that sag

MidLo - MidLo
Curly Cassettes #22

MidLo's self-titled opens with "Moonlight," a number consisting of pulsating bass and twinkly piano and the ethereal voice of a woman, and so that's where I thought this cassette was going: dramatic soundscapes that underscore one singer's daring vocal journey.

But I was incorrect—wonderfully incorrect. The rest of MidLo features slices of spirited American folk, tracks such as "Broomjump" and "The Next Grange Hall Dance is Saturday, Oct. 23," their fervor and fiddles so infectious listeners will be coerced into swinging their skirts and kicking up their clogs.

My favorite number is "Love," a ballad that's as spunky as it is syrupy. The piano, banjo, and fiddle all get along so nice, and the singer has this dirtied-up, slightly accented voice. Listening, I began to imagine a summer gathering, like in a backyard closed off with a chicken-wire fence to keep kids and dogs contained, and adults moving in between picnic tables with bits of corn stuck in their bottom teeth and in their hands, paper plates that sag in the middle from the weight of heavy dinners, and sitting in a plastic lawn chair a suitor singing "Love" while the object of their affection stands with their back to the suitor, flipping burgers at the grill, smiling as they contest with grease-fueled flames.

Bottoms up

Raymond Byron and the White Freighter - Raymond Byron and the White Freighter
Curly Cassettes #17

Raymond Byron (nee Raymond Raposa) has been releasing batches of psychedelic, countrified folk rock on indie labels like Asthmatic Kitty for nearly a decade now. This self-titled cassette features a pair of live numbers recorded at Mississippi Studios, a live venue in Portland, Ore.

The more captivating of the two is "Time Off For Bad Behavior," which opens with Byron stating, "This is a dance song." And I suppose it is. The electric guitar crackles, and the rhythm section swings and spins. And Byron's good ol' boy, excessively blue collar shtick is contagious. "I've been working like a regular dog," he spits. "To keep my woman and the lights and the water and the phone turned on." Then later, "I need to re-do my friendship with Jim Beam." Bottoms up ... Or something.

Red, red wine

Hands and Knees - Red Hot Minnow
pRIMORDIAL sOUNDS #5

Hands and Knees' Red Hot Minnow leaves me with the same feeling I get after watching my children spend 10 hours climbing on furniture, cartwheeling down stairs, doing somersaults on the ceiling, swan-diving off top bunks, and perfecting the skill of sprinting full throttle while screaming at top volume: I am simultaneously jealous of and fatigued by their inexhaustible energy.

Hands and Knees play fast and loose, like on "Cemetery" and "Cool," but even when they're not playing fast and loose, they still manage to exude a vitality that enters the room with you and lifts you up by the armpits and twirls you around. "Pinwheel" features this exuberant, sloppy melody; if it played for an eternity it wouldn't be long enough. "Gracie" has bleating trumpet and foot-stomping, hand-clapping rhythms. "Dreamt" is representative of Hand and Knees' rather uncomplicated approach to their craft: well-constructed songs done with a lo-fi recording approach.

I began to imagine the album's recording process and how much of a fecking blast it must have been to undertake. Like, a bottle of red wine was passed around and band members drank straight from the bottle, crimson spots dotting their chins. Except for that one individual (probably the bassist; bassists are pointy-headed piss faucets) who wanted to pour the red wine into a cup; he was ultimately rewarded for his civility by having the wine slosh all over his shirt, a mishap that was a source of much laughter to those around him. Then the bottle went empty and during a song when a particular band member wasn't needed (again, probably the bassist), that person was ordered to walk the nine blocks to the liquor store to fetch more red wine. Which they did, quite contently.

"I can't concentrate"

Microflvrscnce - I
Patient Sounds #31

Listening to Microflvrscnce's I in the dark—an act that compels me to listen with more than the usual attentiveness, as well as bury my hands in crevices I wouldn't dare explore under the harsh eye of artificial light—I was reminded of an essay by Lauren Slater titled "Black Swans." Slater details her conflict with a severe case of obsessive-compulsive disorder and how her doctor's treatment plan includes desensitizing her to obsessive thoughts (in Slater's case, "I can't concentrate") through what is essentially tape loops. Slater's doctor instructs her to record herself saying "I can't concentrate I can't concentrate I can't concentrate" and then listen to those words on a Walkman for two hours a day. Eventually, she will become so accustomed to the interminable thoughts inking up the purity of consciousness that their potency will be diminished. Or her doctor theorizes. Slater eventually increases the tape loop dosage (increased volumes, four hours of listening), but the overall effect is not a cure for her disease, but instead, this (a physical reaction I experience after listening to I):

My sheets were damp from sweat ... Shadows whirled around. Planets sent down their lights, laying them across the blue floor. Blue. Silver. Space. I can't concentrate.

Microflvrscnce is Poland's Rob Skrzynski and America's Ross Devlin. Indulge in this; your body will react similarly.

Wonderfully tossed together

Pride of Lowell - Pride of Lowell
Dirty Pillows

Pride of Lowell is not in the song business—they're in the mindfuck business. Got that? The minimalist duo of Patrick Breiner (tenor saxophone, clarinet) and Max Goldman (drums) churn out maximum chaos. Each instrument complements and combats the other; horns woo drums, drums fuck horns, horns and drums squabble, drums and horns make up. I want to say the pair channel the spirit of James Chance or maybe Ornette Coleman, except it's not really channeling. It's more like strangling.

Pride of Lowell's punk-jazz improvisations sound wonderfully tossed together. Like a standard, linear song was written and then the individual notes were cut from the sheet music and assembled in random sequences and pasted to a piece of paper, so that the sheet music took on the appearance of a ransom note constructed from snipped-out magazine letters.

At one point, Breiner's tenor sax made a deep, flatulence-like sound that was akin to the air being slowly let out of the universe and I thought, "If this is it, if this is the end, I will expire content."

Safe for couples and coupling

Nathan Ventura - Love Songs
Self-released

Nathan Ventura was exceedingly impressed with our recent vivisections of his work (or: replace "exceedingly" with "dreadfully" and "impressed" with "embarrassed"), so much so he mailed us another cassette.

Sonically, Love Songs isn't an album one would play in front of their better half, not even on an evening where one would like to evoke the phrase "Not tonight—I have a headache," but can't because it has worn so thin it's gauzy. The music is antagonistic and threatening and sharp around the edges. The sounds in "Mexican Sunrise" are akin to one of the generic ring tones that are included on your smart phone—and the ring tone is played at the phone's maximum volume. "I'm a Little Spider" reminds me of the wet groans an empty stomach makes. And Ventura's voice, as always, sounds like it's coming from the behind a thick, locked door in an asylum.

But the lyrics! Those are indeed safe for couples and coupling. From "Cursive Line of Cocaine": "The only boy I ever loved left me for Hollywood / He used to write and blow my name in cursive lines of cocaine." From the previously mentioned "I'm a Little Spider": "I'm a little spider / I'm inside her." And from "I am the Dingleberry": "The universe is laughing at my sorrow / I am a dingleberry on the asshole of time." Because ... Well, nothing gets blood quicker to the loins than a metaphor involving fecal matter pasted onto body hair.

(Also, I'm really digging the cover art, which depicts two hugging individuals. One is so enthusiastic about the hug he has pulled the other completely off the ground. That kind of huge is great; you only get so many of those hugs during your lifetime.)

*The sound of eyes glazing over*

Socratic - Socratic
Antique Records

My two oldest play the saxophone (tenor and alto), so naturally I've saturated their lives with jazz. But what I anticipated to be an exercise in hipster dad/hipster kid bonding soon turned into a lesson in how quickly children can become comfortable with tuning out their parents.

Me: "Did you listen to that Coleman Hawkins album I put on your iPod?"

Them: *The sound of eyes glazing over*

So I spun them Socratic's "Charlie Parker (Music Will Save His Soul)," so they could better appreciate how jazz holds sway over the masses, but also because I didn't want them to think I'm daft, that I'm the only individual in the world who thinks jazz is fucking boss. (Well, they already think I'm daft; I mean daft when it comes to my taste in music.)

The New Jersey power pop trio's ode to Parker is infectious, referential, celebratory—it makes you as giddy as a Parker solo on that ole Grafton plastic saxophone of his.

Turning on a dime

Art Decade - Western Sunrise
Antique Records

There are instances where the universe turns on a dime: when a stopped heart starts beating once more; when an empty glass is filled to its brim; when averted eyes make contact; when silence gives way to song.

But what about those moments when the universe is more cynical? Like when a light bulb burns out or when a tire blows on the expressway or when molten lead inexplicably falls into your throat as you look up at a burning lighthouse?

I pondered all this while listening to Art Decade's Western Sunrise. Because the Boston group's brand of progressive rock is teeming with soaring vocals and emotionally charged choruses, and orchestration that feels like soft breezes on bare arms, and further orchestration that reminds you of the thrilling, anticipatory feeling you get when descending in an airplane, and guitar riffs that have you strumming the air, and recurring shifts in tempo and tone that leave you dazed and giddy and needing to put a steadying hand on a piece of furniture—and then the song "A Lie" concludes with "As usual / nothing's perfect / as usual / no one's there / as fearless as I try to be / I know that no one cares," and this turned-on-a-dime moment feels like being sneaked up on and jabbed in the ribs with a bony index finger.

Washing and waiting for inspiration

Nathan Ventura - Silly Secret
Self-released

It's like someone gained access to where I hoard my most intimate and fervent thoughts regarding cassette releases and compiled said thoughts on a sheet of loose leaf paper and slipped the paper under the pillow of Nathan Ventura, who then had the paper laminated and furnished with adhesive before sticking it to one of the walls in his shower, where he read the words over and over as he washed and waited for inspiration to sneak up behind him and poke his ribs.

Silly Secret has everything I lust for in a tape: pure originality, refined weirdness, an infectious mood, one artist handling all the instrumentation, lo-fi sensibilities—and, most crucial of all, a cover of Stevie Nicks' and Lindsey Buckingham's "Landslide!" In Ventura's hands, the song is unrecognizable save for the lyrics. Ventura, who sings in a guttural and menacing manner (he casually reminds me of Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade), wrings out all the poignant self-reflection, and replaces it with anguish and hopelessness. It's fucking glorious.

Tracks like "The Mayor" have me thinking Ventura's approach to songwriting works like this: A melody comes to him, but rather than transcribe it from his head to his guitar exactly as is, he does an approximation of the melody; he leaves out a note or three, slows down/speeds up the tempo a tad, plays purposely sloppy. On "Funny Feelings," it sounds like Ventura is simply plucking open strings, like when someone who has never touched a guitar picks up the instrument for the first time and makes an earnest attempt to legitimately play.

The vocals on "Outside" are a bit low in the mix, which creates the impression that Ventura is singing from inside your walls or beneath your floorboards. Upon further thought, this is possibly how Ventura was able to access my most intimate and fervent thoughts regarding cassette releases. I'm now weirded out.

Ten-lane super highways

Retreat From Moscow - In Search of Home
Long Lost Records

Retreat From Moscow (the project of Dubliner Stephen Tunney) sounds absolutely fully formed on debut In Search of Home. It's like opening a modeling kit and peering inside and seeing the airplane has already been assembled. There's acoustic and electric guitar parts that supplement one another, a finely tuned rhythm section, crisp lyrical narratives. I believe Tunney handles all the songwriting and all the instruments. He sounds like he's been playing and arranging for a lifetime, not a tiny, bite-sized portion of one.

In Search of Home calls to mind Oh, Inverted World or Saturday Looks Good to Me. Or even Sarah Records, the guitar pop authority on how to make hearts soar/sag/stop. On "Street Life," Tunney's thin, reedy voice transforms the chorus, "I can't live on the street where you live," into an act of total surrender. It's a decisive moment captured perfectly: He will not stand his ground against the one who spurned his advances but instead, fully retreat.

Tunney actually fizzes over on "With Uncertainty Comes Reassurance," peppering his lyrics with naughty words: "I don't give a fuck about your second or last regret." But even then, Tunney's anger sounds like it comes with its own thin, melancholic-coated shell. Like he's exasperated with this individual, but at the same time, torn up over letting their dissolution occur and even more torn up over realizing there's no chance of hitting the relationship rewind button.

(A completely unrelated side note to all this: On one of my various trips to Ireland—on this occasion, we were gamboling about Killarney—we took a cab to a golf course I have since forgotten the name of. During the ride, the cabbie told us about his recent vacation in Moscow and when asked what he thought of Mother Russia, he only wished to discuss the super highways entering the capital. "They have massive, 10-lane highways going into Moscow. Ten lanes on both sides. Ten going in and ten coming out. Massive. You wouldn't believe it." Part of me believes Stephen Tunney is this man.)

The promise of a pretty boy

The Aqua Dolls - We Are Free
Burger Records

There is ambitious and there is ambitious and there is Mark E. Smith-level ambitious. Finally, there is Burger Records-style ambitious, which at the moment trumps any other variety of ambitious. The Fullerton, Calif., label is releasing a new cassette every day during the month of January. I'm probably telling you something you already know, but that's a fuckton of home dubbing and cutting of inserts.

The Aqua Dolls' We Are Free was the Jan. 6 release. The two-girls-and-one-boy threesome does candied, messy, up-tempo pop that reminds me of Shop Assistants, the Flatmates, and Talulah Gosh.

I jotted down my favorite moments on the inside of an empty popsicle box:
• The opening guitar melody in "Pizza Party" sounds like it has a tiny hitch to it, like a slight pause in between notes. Almost as if the guitarist forgot what to play or his fingers slipped or he was distracted by someone opening a bag of potato chips nearby.
• I particularly dig the manner in which "Keep away!" is sung in the tune of the same name. There's some enmity, sure, but the sendoff is also delivered with a hint of sweetness. Like a handwritten note with the words "We are finished!" and the I's are dotted with tiny hearts.
• "Maybe" is your classic girl-pines-for-boy number. The vocals oscillate between pouty and sultry. The chorus leaves you a bit heartsore ("Maybe you can maybe love me too") until you realize this song is all about promise: the promise of a pretty boy, the promise of a new day, the promise of a whole career writing lovely ballads such as this one.

A mass quantity of bubble wrap

Adultrock - Loves
Long Lost Records

Adultrock never met a synth line it didn't like. This debut cassette from the Newbridge, Ireland act (and on the Irish label Long Lost Records) features purring synths and wilting synths, and synths that are like fizzy champagne bubbles tickling your nose and other synths that leave you feeling tingly in the legs like when you're about to jump from a significant height into water, a snow drift, or a mass quantity of bubble wrap.

Synthesizers provide the foundation to just about every track on Loves. Droning, uncomplicated melodies serve as the backbone, while incessant, staccato synths course through songs like adrenaline through veins. On "Sleeper," the mood and pace is dictated by two different synth lines that flirt, walk hand-in-hand, push one another off bridges, and have make-up sex.

However, my favorite track, "Poplife," is not dominated by synthesizers at all, but the vocals of a singer named Jen Connell. Her words are indecipherable, but that's just fine, because the allure lies in how she sounds, not what she says. And Connell sounds like she's trapped underneath the sonic surface of the song, like the synths have entombed her in glistening, frosted glass, and rather than express panic, she's pleased with this tiny slice of solitude, pleased enough to make the listener feel a pinch of jealousy.

"Take what you want"

Sun Mantra - Sun Mantra
Mirror Universe #10

Daniel Day-Lewis blessed us with this quote: "I am more greatly moved by people who struggle to express themselves. Maybe it's a middle-class British hang-up, but I prefer the abstract concept of incoherence in the face of great feeling to beautiful, full sentences that convey little emotion."

I considered Day-Lewis's words while listening to Sun Mantra, the project of Matt Ojala. Because through a twin guitar attack, through robust riffery and serpentine melodies, through bass drum thundery and the eardrum-rattling crash cymbals came the voice of Ojala—a voice struggling to be heard over the obnoxiously delightful din, a voice that during one refreshing moment of clarity declared, "Take what you want."

So I did.

What I want is what I want

Tapeworms Eat Bookworms - Space Burial
Mirror Universe #14

You know what I want out of ambient music? I want it spaced-out and tripped-up. I don't want it to merely sound "celestial" or "astral"; I want it to mimic the sound the earth makes when its velvety, puffy exterior rubs against the ebon, prickly surface of the cosmos. I want the music to sound like it does on Tapeworms Eat Bookworms' "Valkommen," which reminds me of a public television special where stock footage of the universe is accompanied by dialogue that goes something like, "The Sun reaches the tip of the red giant branch, achieving its maximum radius of 256 times the present day value. In the process, Mercury, Venus, and possibly Earth are destroyed. During these times, it is possible that Saturn's moon Titan could achieve surface temperatures necessary to support life."

I also want ambient music to sound terrestrial, like "Rebuilding," where the strummed acoustic guitar and gleaming synthesizers evoke images of indolent teenagers lying on a hillside, teenagers who laugh at how phallic the clouds look before they roll down a hill and get fresh grass in their hair, and then rest by lying on their stomachs and propping themselves up on their elbows.

Brown-nosing agendas

Kevin Greenspon - Bracing
Bridgetown #80

Releases from Kevin Greenspon's Bridgetown Records are always done with such loving care. This flattering praise is not the work of a brown-nosing agenda-pusher simply because there's no legitimate reward to be garnered when the entity conducting the brown-nosing is a cassette blog and the entity being brown-nosed is a cassette label. All that being said, Bracing comes with a quality card stock insert complete with enduring, vibrant images, like a photo of a topless woman gorgeously silhouetted against a window. Should I ever allow my heart to be blackened and start up a cassette label, this is the kind of expressive and meticulously detailed packaging I would aspire to emulate.

And oh yeah, there's music, too. "Petty Dream" and "Bracing" are my choice tracks. Spellbinding guitar melodies unfurl over layers of prickly noise; it's ambient music for the background or the foreground. A blend of the satisfying with the unpleasant. You know, like everyday life. Like the time you bombed that job interview with that big company in the city and on the trudge back to your automobile, you went by the waterfront and when you saw how the blue of the ocean accented the blue of the sky, and the way the perched gulls on the pier arranged themselves in such a way that it spelled out the word "donut" it tickled your soul right down to its very core.

Joyful, vibrant feelings of detachment

Mr. Jenkins - In Transit/Sleep
Mirror Universe #28

I'm reading Robert Finch's The Iambics of Newfoundland and during one passage the author describes his visits to the isolated outports on the island's southwest coast, and the effect the extreme remoteness has on both visitors and natives. Finch writes about mooring near White Bear Bay and how his current location was "farther than I have ever been from any inhabited place on this continent."

Listening to Mr. Jenkins' In Transit/Sleep—the former is an EP cut in 2011, while the latter is a new release—I considered these "inhabited places" and the seclusion Finch encountered, and how the strain of 8-bit electronica created by South Carolina's Mr. Jenkins' (first name: Nick) carts the listener to uninhabited places. There are no vocals, no "live" instruments, no warmth and soul. This is music that is largely absent of any qualities that suggest it was produced by humans. I began to speculate if Mr. Jenkins' inspiration for this work were vibrant feelings of detachment—joyful, vibrant feelings of detachment because many of the tracks are rather up-tempo and because it's occasionally liberating to not be so hopelessly entangled with others and because learning about yourself is fabulously more efficient when you don't have social responsibilities.

"Got it, boy!"

Although I maintain most of it is gibberish, the lyric does tell a story. The music industry is currently beset by fiscal disaster and a variety of scandals. One scapegoat for these events has been your and my practice of taping music on blank cassettes. To me, it's a classic case of technology rebounding (if only for a short time) on those who'd seek to control us with it.

Dave agrees: "Got it, boy! It's also good for everybody. Poor people and kids—pay five pounds for an LP—when you can hear it on the radio and press the button. What can you do with vinyl? When I was writing the song I was thinking, why don't I tell the truth? You do it, I do it. Look, there's a shop there. Cassettes! The message? It’s just really cool to have a cassette player. Can't carry a music centre round on you shoulder, two speakers bouncing on your head, can you? So you get a cassette, tape it off the radio, and you can take it out with you."

A giant-sized baby thing minces past with a tiny cassette, headphones on guard. He's oblivious.

Dave continues: "That geezer is red hot. He knows what's what—tape it, man! Don't you think it’s brilliant? You'd never see him if he was at home listening to records."

Stifling nightmare visions of one nation under a Sony, I can see at least his stylistic point. The Sony Stowaway—a tiny cassette player with excellent reproduction—has become this year's toy: 10,000 sold in the UK since April. "We thought Britain had a recession," one bemused executive is quoted as saying.

Salacious and unnerving things

Comfort Link - The Gentle Sounds of Comfort Link
sPLeeNCoFFin

Songs trigger nostalgia, evoke adolescence, and whisk us away from adulthood in all sorts of wondrous ways. Sometimes it's a melody or a couplet or a captured image or a sustained mood. Sometimes it's all of these things.

The piece on the first side of Comfort Link's The Gentle Sounds of Comfort Link took me back to summers spent futzing around with my cousin's banged-up tape recorder. Described on sPLeeNCoFFin's web site as a "reclusive Baltimore archivist," Comfort Link slaps together pre-recorded tape loops to produce a new sound from old sounds. Knitted into these sounds is a bit of high-pitched babble, something akin to what recorded voices were like when we slightly held down the play button on my cousin's recorder. Like what Orbity would sound like if he huffed helium and ingested speed. We would hide the thing behind a couch, hoping to catch family members saying salacious and unnerving things, but when we played it back and learned they didn't, we enacted our revenge by slightly holding down the play button and altering their taped words in rapid, squeaky ways.

The compositions on each side of the tape features circular melodies played on what sounds like synthesizers. They are comprised of three sustained notes, and after hearing them play over and over, beneath that aforementioned high-pitched babble—as well as bear-like rumbles, disaster-flick eruptions, manufacturing-plant hammering, and other assorted noises—I began to wonder where we had put all the tapes we made on that beat-up recorder.

"I'm a teenage Art School Student"

Nutrition Fun / Ed Rooney - Seriously Don't Make Me Kill You
Unread #56

The first fanzine I wrote was called "Been Teen" after a Dolly Mixture song, and was put together in my bedroom using ballpoint pens and Prittstick by my friend Scott and I. It was all hand written, and the photos were cut from Smash Hits and Record Mirror. We could not afford to photocopy it and so just passed around the pasted together original at Jon's parties. People laughed at my writing (in a good way, I think), which was in the smart-arse, "I'm a teenage Art School Student" voice.

Alistair Fitchett

DIY culture is one of the more beautiful ideas to spawn from the artistic world. It's an attempt at Direct Democracy, compensating for lack of resources, empowerment for honest and organic ideas and creations. It's about artists/people getting a fair shake and pursuing personally meaningful ends. The "indie rock" scene has certainly seen itself in the context of that folk-garage-punk-DIY tradition. But the title, "Do-It-Yourself," is insufficient. It reflects the personal empowerment aspect while masking something just as critical: mutual support and empowerment of a community.

Chris Ruen

At one point, Ed Rooney introduces us to "the neatest noise in the world," which ends up sounding like a baby giraffe sneezing into a megaphone stuffed with cinnamon and brown sugar oatmeal. And after bearing witness to "the neatest noise in the world," a warm tingling spread through me and the hair on my arms stood on end and I began to see pure, vivid colors along the edge of my vision—and then came the realization that DIY is so intoxicating!