Deception Island, Chris Madak of Bee Mask’s label, has a new batch out and, I gotta say, it’s pretty spectacular.
J Guy Laughlin, Apnoea c30
I have no clue how J Guy made these sounds. Literally, no clue. But man, does it sound cool.
I have seen J Guy play with Heat Death and a few forms of Forbes, Ryley and Young a couple of times, but this is not what I expected. As a percussionist, I can only imagine that he is scraping things across drums and scratching them and looking for every sound that his kit could make, but I feel like I could never comprehend what he was doing to make the dark, entrancing sounds that he did.
From war planes to jazzy rhythms, this tape spaced me out. You have never heard percussion sound so melodic and melancholy.
Mark McGuire, Misunderstandings (c30).
The beginning of the A side, which is the title track, sounds like nothing I have ever heard from McGuire before. It twists, turns, bubbles and boils like some kind of ominous sea creature. The hopeful tone that normally carries his releases was trapped at the surface while I was struggling for air at rock bottom (and I mean that in the best way possible). Syrupy synth enveloped me in an air pocket which guided me to the golden surface of the last half of the A side. It felt like a triumphant emergence into that hopeful gaze I alluded to before. It felt like home.
The B side of this tape, entitled “Nothing Personal” is the shadowy walk home from the beach. You are drenched, lost and alone. It’s nightfall and you can’t remember where you are headed anymore. The bluesy, distorted guitar leads you as you simply walk among the trees which seem to morph quite Alice in Wonderland-style before you. But as the track comes to a close, single distorted notes seem to present beams of light from the other end of the forest that, once again, beckon you home.
Bee Mask, From a Will-Less Gigolo of a Divinity to the Gore-Spattered Lion on His Own Hearth, Odysseus Becomes “Odysseus” (c22).
From the first few seconds…scratch that, from the moment I read the title, I could tell that this tape wasn’t merely a story, it was an epic. I’m talking Paradise Lost kind of epic.
The first segment served as a sort of prelude to the album; it was dark and drew me into the journey that I wasn’t prepared for. It ushered in what sounded like church bells in a rustic backstreet somewhere in Europe. I felt like I was hearing a call to prayer.
Now keep in mind, I play tapes through a bass amp. I don’t have stereo, but swirling synths surrounded me so that I felt like Chris was in the room playing a ritual song that he has known since birth. A waterfall of distorted noise began to swell until I felt like I was floating. At the end of the A side, I was astounded by Chris’s production capabilities as each segment flowed with one another so fluidly that you forgot about time. I felt like that tape could go on forever, and then it ended just like the turn of a page.
A fast-paced synth saga slowly melted into a frenzy of tape manipulation and sticky sweet beats. With notes so sharp that I thought I could hear binary, the walls turned to slime and the ceiling began to rain. (The End. The needle lifts.)
Radio People, Leapt (c22)
Unfortunately, I have yet to get my hands on this tape but I hope to in the very near future. If you haven’t checked out Radio People yet, PLEASE DO SO!!!!
If you wanna hear it from the horse’s mouth, check out Chris’s description of each tape, too. (DO IT!)
