Millions - Shredded Heaven Taken from Foxy Digitalis Thanks Elliot!

MILLIONS “Shredded Heaven” (Baked Tapes)

Millions is the recording project of Brooklyn-based sound-artist David Suss. He’s self-released a ton of CDRs, put out some more via Obsolete Units and Abandon Ship (et al), and this c30 scorcher, limited to 60 copies, was released by Baked Tapes. The deep earth-digging/shaking drones that come alive on the two sides of “Shredded Heaven” will appeal to gloomy-depressives and the hopeful alike, as the sounds are absolutely suitable for either wall or sun-gazing, or whatever may lie in-between. Both tracks are fully absorptive, washing over the listener with thick, contemplative waves of seductive sonic pulse-fuzz.

Side A rips in with a static bath that completely soaks the space until a celebratory ray of light peeks in through the dense pattern. The trance that Suss produces here is undeniably joyful and flowing, as if a devastated body/soul is rising up from the thickest sludge of Being. Side B establishes a more eerie and apocalyptic mood with a whirring siren that spins around the minefield. The organ shimmers above a cavernous bass hum, materially grounding the gloom for a delayed guitar phrase to smoothly loom on. A monstrous static wall gradually builds, disrupting the open space, transforming the drone into a vertical ride toward everlasting night. No worries, though, because the lights get bright enough here to shine out even the darkest of roads. 8/10

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Driphouse - Romati & Gains Taken from Impose: The Future Thanks Jeremy!

DRIPHOUSE “Romati & Gains” (Baked Tapes)

Driphouse is Darren Ho, the guy who played in Racoo-oo-oon but not the mutated duo-form of that band, Wet Hair. Instead here’s his solo dream scores, Driphouse.

This tape was home recorded in Brooklyn in August 2009 “straight into computer soundcard,” with a Roland Alpha Juno-1 and a sweet delay pedal. The world’s basically at Mr. Ho’s finger tips with that potent one-two punch, and here he conjures barren landscapes and slow moving spirit vessels riding his woeful harpsichord melody. Like if Clockwork Orange was about sensitive kids driving around looking for meaningful new experiences instead of rape victims.

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Nasa - High Cube Taken from Tabs Out Thanks Mike!

NASA “High Cube” c32 (Baked Tapes)

I straight up don’t think man has ever landed on the moon. It may be the only fringe conspiracy bullshit that I get behind, but whatever, I’m not ashamed to say it. I just don’t believe it, and basically chalk it up to some macho-alpha-country shit we had going with Russia back when them Ruskies meant business, you know? So we faked that shit and got the space race blue ribbon. USA! USA! Flash forward about 40 years. The 2011 budget is announced and NASA are all being doofuses about getting some cuts. Now, let me be straight, I’m totally about space exploration and advancing our collective scientific understanding about the universe and dark matter and all that shit, but ya know… Maybe just chill for a few years until our money is done melting. Anyway, I’m listening to Fleetwood Mac and thinking about that, and then I think “Didn’t I get a package in the mail from Baked like two weeks ago with some tape called Nasa High Dudes or something like that”? When I found this bright colored banger glowing on my desk I had an intense self-debate on what would be a more prudent venture; listen to this tape or watch Capricorn One (a 1977 non-classic in which OJ Simpson and friends fake a landing on Mars). This cassette won out. After pressing the play button I sat back hoping I made the correct choice. So much was riding on this moment!

The name of this project is simply Nasa, “High Cube” being the title of the cassette. My hasty jog around the interweb would have me believe that Nasa is comprised of three dudes, Floridian in origin, who have released a scattering of cassettes and CDrs over the last 3 years, give or take. “High Cube” a 32 minute burner, revs it’s psychedelic engines with a consciousness-expanding canopy of guitars, some plucking away at twinkled notes, others seeping like a rainbow oil spill. Nasa does an excellent job segregating those ideas, while still highlighting them both. Very reminiscent of earlier Growing material, albeit less “produced” or whatever, but still mega-rich and tantalizing. That segment devolves into primal jam session of sorts; total basic riffing, echoed chants, and… And cowbell? Is that cowbell? I goddamn think it’s cowbell. Dudes totally Shyamalan’d me! The next track dives further into the jam band land that Nasa was, in a way, hinting at. A steady drum beat keeps shit semi-traditional, while weirdo effects and mood swings fuck with your head. It’s all a little sloppy, but in the right mindset (that being really stoned and thinking about space) its a perfect partner in crime.

The B side didn’t rope me in right away, at least not like the flip side material. The start off was a tad to… I don’t know… Structured? As far as coupled with the prior zone out that is, I just wasn’t feeling it to a large degree. A clouded aura of hippie/blues/flannel/mustache “basement to boombox” got deep into my brain and I just couldn’t let it go. It’s not that the shit was bad, it just wasn’t the conclusion I was looking for. Kind of like the season opener to Lost. Did anyone watch that? It was kind of disappointing, but I’m still gonna check out more. As I probably will with these dudes.

The cover for this nugget is an eye opener. A briiiight picture of the sun rising over Disney’s Epcot Center (the big golf ball thing) is illuminated in an orange glow with magenta text, printed on fairly heavy paper. I once heard a rumor that if you die in Disney World they wont declare you dead until you are off the property, therefore, no one can die in Disney World. Man, that anti-semite thought of everything before they froze him, huh? Baked did up 60 copies of “High Cube” and at $5 beans a pop it’s a lot cheaper than going to the moon (for the first time, for real).

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Driphouse - Romati & Gains Taken from Foxy Digitalis’s Long Decline Thanks Brad!

DRIPHOUSE “Romati & Gains” (Baked Tapes)

“I went all weepy on Driphouse once before, but “Romati & Gains” demands attention cuz it’s one of my favorite tapes of the year, for sure. Minimal electro hypnoses, flying through pristine skies with liquid gold dripping off at lightspeed. I’m such a sucker for this stuff… subtle beats galore drive everything from the backseat. Daren Ho is on fire. I dunno what parts get me more… the inspired ’70s electronic compositional aspects or the total new age vibes that float on top. It’s all mixed-up, it’s all beautiful. I love how this tape just flows from one stop to the next, never losing focus and never getting off-track. Ho’s got some serious pop hooks lurking under veil here, too - a little something for all the kids. B-side is full of heavy meditation - points of light for sure, but a thick mass of synth mud keeps it grounded in a big ball of tension. Driphouse - love it more and more every day. Driphouse vinyl plz! I need it, damnit!”

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Millions - Shredded Heaven Taken from Tabs Out Thanks Dave!

MILLIONS “Shredded Heaven” c30 (Baked Tapes)

Brooklyn resident David Suss, the man working behind the Millions curtain since roughly 2007 offers up his recent recipe Shredded Heaven, which comes to us fresh out of the Baked Tapes neighborhood oven. It’s a damn tasty treat and is well worth keeping in the Rolodex for your next dinner party. I may be wrong but I’d venture to guess that he called this one Shredded Heaven because he got as pissed as I did when he found out those fucking nebula pictures they take in space are actually doctored on a computer to look so cool. Jerks.

Side one is a cosmic drone of the highest order. While being firmly anchored to a foundation of deep, rounded synth thrumming and soft static buzzes, it is also in a constant state of slow, focused fluctuation. Suss is super zoned in here and with a sure, steady, sometimes undetectable hand, he valiantly forges an animate universe of radiant warmth and monolithic force. Ethereal wisps race through the heavenly body at warp speed and slowly evaporate amidst countless brilliant constellations singing beautifully in gracious, reverent chorus. It’s a spectacle to behold and this shit wasn’t colored by Nasa. Fucking assholes.

The flip side unearths some of the deeper buried elements of the first side and incorporates them into more subdued atmospherics. Gentle guitars echo in delicate patters, rippling through warm swelling strings and humming synthesizers. Slow airy mutations shape the backdrop, tense illuminations slowly begin to permeate the surface and a sharp, rusty stringed guitar phrase sends us off. Suss is really on a roll lately and this release is no exception. It’s still available via Baked Tapes, which I might add is also on quite a roll. Go get it and pick up a couple of their other goodies while you’re at it.

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Chaos Majik - Cry of the 12th Aethyr Taken from Foxy Digitalis Thanks Robert!

CHAOS MAJIK “Cry of the 12th Aethyr” c30 (Baked Tapes)

CM, or Chaos Majik, is Todd Brooks. He founded a group called Pendu. They promote occultism, adhocism, and eroticism in art. This is my kind of dude. “Cry of the 12th Aethyr” is the latest tape from CM, out now on the awesome Baked Tapes label.

Brooks conjures the sound of CM through the use of handmade oscillators and feedback loops. The two pieces on “Cry of the 12th Aethyr” combine high-pitched sounds with a droning low-end. The scrapes and squalls rise and fall, while the persistent rumbles provide something closer to a static element for the proceedings. Everything is drenched and delayed; effects gently draped on top of the other.

This isn’t a revelation of experimental music– but that’s okay. I’m sure this stuff is even better live, especially considering CM kicks out these jams with his equipment housed inside a green suitcase. Brooks’ DIY approach has yielded a couple of tracks of strung-out, astral plane drone on “Cry of the 12th Aethyr.” You can’t complain about that. This is a damn good tape. 7/10 — Robert Oberlander

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scanned from the December 2009 issue of Decibel Magazine

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These guys have been sitting in a box in my room for a while, time to officially become unlazy and get these out. Scorchers, every last one of them.


CRY OF THE 12th AETHYR by Chaos Majik (c30)
Todd Brooks, the multi-hatted New Yorker responsible for the creation of fine goods and organizer of epic events through his Pendu organization as well as purveyor of a new breed of cerebral jazz as member of the city’s seminal damaged jazz titans Ghost Moth, here offers a rare peak into his far overlooked (and underpraised) solo project, Chaos Majik. True to the adhocist roots that embrace all of Todd’s work, spontaneous acts of creation thru use of readily available materials, we see (or hear) his homebuilt circuits come alive through interactions with itself, Brooks and their shared environment as the setting sun slowly coerces the shape of these photosensitive oscillations. Despite it’s very electronic origins, Cry of the 12th Aethyr never strays from its organic roots, conjuring images of pitch dark nights in unfamiliar woods, completely blinded by the shadows, but fully cognizant of the thousands of formless shapes slowly enveloping you. Go ahead, turn off the lights and take a stroll through your mind. EPIC. Ltd. 60.


SMOKIN’ IN THE BOYS ROOM by Abusement Park (30 sec. loop + urinal cake)
Two dudes, a sax and a makeshift drumset from bongos, trashcans, sheet metal and other assorted crap constitute the behemoth that is Abusement Park, a band lavishly known for their ability to crash a party in style, celebrating the poignancy of unwelcome guests via locking themselves in bathrooms (sometimes together, sometimes separate) and churning stomaches with their guerilla tactics in a congealed acoustic mess of horn damage, clangs and ceaseless pounding. They recently stopped by The Bakery to cut this tape, for which I had to flank mics from pipes in a tiny NYC apartment railroad car style bathroom. The entire performance, some 10 minutes of putrid agony ringing thru the building’s heating & water pipes, was later cut up, and merged down to this looping 30 second tape. Ltd. 7

“This loop is solely for demonstration purposes and should only be played at top volume through a boombox situated in a bathroom.”

EXTEMELY LIMITED QUANTITY AVAIL. Due to the size/weight of this, USppd for this tape and cake alone is $7.


SHREDDED HEAVEN by Millions (c30)
Horrifyingly beautiful in the truest sense, an exquisitely woven and meticulously shaped narrative assembled from the horrifying nomenclature of hums, buzzes and shrieks by one mister David Suss under his Millions nom de plume. With ever-increasingly epic releases on the likes of Peasant Magik, Abandon Ship and Obsolete Units, Shredded Heaven finds Suss at his finest. “Scrape yr skull against that great celestial cheese grater and let the fruits of that communion drift down and slowly blanket the earth. float back home and watch as all you know is submerged beneath the sweet glacial avalanche.” Synonymically literal artwork by Suss. Ltd. 60.


NICARAGUA ‘72 by Sunglasses (c60)
Having recently relocated to Chicago from Queens, I was glad to hear from Matt Kimmel (man behind the camera at Acid Marshmallow and the keyboard in Fluorescent Vibes) that he quickly settled in and had hooked up with former Miami Beach bandmate, Ryan Chupick, and together had been bringing a new brand of focused meditative hymns to the windy city. Nicaragua ‘72, their debut, is a hour long excursion in four parts, each painstakingly restrained, slowly budding from repetitious ebbs and flows, subtilely expanding mantras lowering the pulse and drawing one into a somnolent state, growing steadily until side B erupts and shit starts to get real. Ltd. 40.


BAJON by Pork Lion (c7 + bizcard)
A freakshow of recent experiments gone horribly awry. These diary vignettes range from psych guitar noodlings to knob-twiddling vocodations, with excerpts of an unintended chorus of a oddly sized and tuned folk guitars, a Mothers “cover” and a tone poem for ring modulator and LFO to round out these 3 sides. Quick glimpses into a burnt mind. Ltd. 24.



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Telecult Powers / Bob Bellerue - Baked in the Kitchen Taken from Foxy Digitalis Thanks Robert!

TELECULT POWERS / BOB BELLERUE “Baked in the Kitchen” c40 (Baked Tapes)

“Baked in the Kitchen” is a collaborative effort from New York experimentalists Telecult Powers and Bob Bellerue. Recorded on a November night in 2008, this tape pulls from that setting and emits a duo of dreary, side-long drone sprawls.

Predominantly featuring use of electronics and feedback, “Baked in the Kitchen” is cold yet radiant. The extraterrestrial glimmers of side A are met with gurgling, low-end clatter, while scrapes of synth spike upwards through the mix. Crunching and rattling, the analog sounds are like memories of long-abandoned industrial blocks– ghosts emerging from long obsolete machinery. The deep drones of side B take on a far more ominous feel than its side A counterpart. It hums like endlessly spinning cogs of a celestial machine adrift in the pitch black space. Jagged chunks of delay and distortion fit together likes pieces of a jigsaw, moving en masse with no particular destination. Telecult Powers and Bellerue work together seamlessly in crafting these excursions, making interesting, subtle movements and never overwhelming.

This is the second straight Baked Tapes release I have reviewed and I am again impressed. The efforts of Telecult Powers and Bob Bellerue have resulted in another slice of Baked Tapes drone that deserves to spend time in the tape deck. Turn out the lights and pop it in at 3 AM. Getting baked in the kitchen beforehand is optional. 8/10 — Robert Oberlander

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Grasshopper - Kindertotenlieder
Grasshopper - Kindertotenlieder c40
Highlighting some of the more abrasive tones of the NYC trumpet duo, Kindertotenlieder acts as a conduit between earlier brass psychedelic zoners and their more recent live orchestral assaults. Super metal lettering by Cherlyn Russo. Printed on vellum. Ltd. 50

http://www.myspace.com/karlmalonelarrybird

REVIEWS: Cassette Gods / Tabs Out

Fluorescent Vibes - The Weight of the Clouds
Fluorescent Vibes - The Weight of the Clouds c30
Materializing as naturally as condensation on the side of a glass, this Ridgewood trio (now duo) compromised of members of Arcanode and Miami Beach approach near-weightlessness with this aptly titled magnetic offering. Never has a title so much so represented the vision and execution of a tape more unequivocally. Artwork by Tiana Femano, Ashley Purciello, and Diana Hutyk from the book “weep music + tainted love”. Ltd. 60

http://www.myspace.com/fluorescentvibes

Fossils - Magnetic Minds
Fossils - Magnetic Minds c30 (vol. 1)
The highly speculated missing piece of the puzzle that alongside volumes 2 (Myiasis) and 3 (MJC) constitute an unfiltered trilogy of Payne and co. (here alongside Daniel Farr of The Living Stump) at their finest, laid direct to tape, during the dominant months of winter, as only Fossils can. Ltd. 40

http://www.myspace.com/fossilstrio

Pork Lion - Contact High
Pork Lion - Contact High c26
A piece for 4 guitars, more reminiscent of a quartet of chainsaws cutting through the cement foundation of an abandoned factory with overtones floating down empty hallways and stagnant stairwells while the grinding of the remodeling below rumbles through the night. On the flip, another work for multiple guitars, the quartet seemingly hit a watermain, flooding the basement gradually, while both machinery and bodies float lifeless, suspended in the murky mixture as exposed electrical wires sputter out until consumed as well. Ltd. 24

Still Avail (details @ http://www.myspace.com/bakedtapes)
Nonhorse “Pink Light” c60
Slasher Risk “Corporate Jobs” c7 (~5 left)
TwistyCat “Bore Hole” c50 (~5 left)
Grasshopper “Dads Against Vietnam” c50 (~2 left)
Telecult Powers/Bob Bellerue collab “Baked In The Kitchen” c40 (~2 left)

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Recession special: All 4 new guys + random of my choice: $20ppd
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