Josh Lay – Heirophant [Sentient Recognition Archive]/Josh Burke – Imagination [Housecraft]

After reviewing that Josh McAbee tape, I remembered I have a pair of releases to review from the other Joshs I mentioned.
“Hog Gloss,” the strong opener of Josh Lay’s Heirophant, begins with a mild grind, a dwelling synth and leashed feedback with a heavy bass throb quaking underneath. The track seems to be teetering on the edge of total sonic annihilation the whole time. Lay opens things up a bit at a point in the second half of the track. By taking it easy and letting up a bit on the noise he’s able to come back with more intensity when he drops in new, bloodthirsty sounds. It was a good choice on Lay’s part to keep things tightly controlled because it certainly heightens the drama of the music rather than to just go at it full force. The title track is some prickly feedback with throaty vocals over the top. Lay does a nice job with dynamics in the track but throaty vox have never struck my fancy so I can’t really get into this one. Nicholas Szczepanik, the man behind Sentient Recognition Archive, contributes to the third track, “Frozen in Blood.” The the track is pretty bitchin’ from the beginning. The track just keeps gathering intensity with a deep rumbling bass pulse and shrill, shrieking feedback “Frozen in Blood” just grows and grows. What Szczepanik contributes to the track isn’t listed but this piece sounds a bit thicker than the other tracks, a bit more ready to consume everything around it. After having built such a massive beast Lay and Szczepanik let it drift off on a wave of synthesizer. The two and a half minute “Beyond Melted” just pelts the listener with hi-pitched frequencies. My ears are angry with me for listening to this with headphones but you need them to pick out the bizarre little melodies within the feedback. Certainly my favorite title of the record, “Found Dead in the Woods of Kentucky” has heavy crunch on its mind like some sort of amplified bear fight. Weird little melodies emerge over long, looped ominous passages against occasional interjections of frantically jostled feedback. One of the cooler pieces on here. “My Cave is a Poison Cave” is way milder, not excessively distorted, and at one point I hear something that sounds like a flute though it probably isn’t. Guitar plays a much bigger, or at least more noticeable, role in the piece. The piece is sort of an intersection between noise and loner blues. The guitar quietly melts against a smoky bed of synths making it a great, unexpected piece. “These Times are Bad Times” is the most vicious on here, 9 minutes of shredded vocals and maddening sinewave feedback.
Quite a 180 degree shift from Heirophant, Imagination is Josh Burke in full-on dreamy keyboard mode. The beginning of the tape has a lovely lo-fi/rustic feel to it as Burke layers more and more keyboard lines on. A pause button edit leads to a much too short passage of a deeply aquatic melody before the tape stretches out and drones for a little while. A melody slowly burbles up eventually, leading into spacey beboopery sounding a little similar to the sound design in Forbidden Planet but more washed out and atmospheric. I really like a mildly seasick little melody near the end of the tape; it sparkles and twinkles effortlessly, tickling the senses. The melody expands organically until has morphed into something quite different but still quite pretty.
Side B continues with watery keyboard melodies. There’s a real nice, seemingly composed piece a couple minutes into the tape that has a rather beautiful, humble elegance. Burke has a very light touch when creating these micro-compositions, never overdoing it. The fragmentary pieces never seem under or overdeveloped, which happens a fair amount with improvised music. The second of the longer pieces is less airy with a pulsing raygun keyboard accompaniment. Overall, it’s a totally pleasant tape worth throwing on just about any time, in line with the quality Burke is known for producing. Maybe even a little bit better.
Heirophant is still available but Imagination is sold out.

Hairmaiden of the Totem Robe – Lured to the Ground [Housecraft]

I apologize for the egregious lack of reviews lately. Life has been too hectic to fit in much writing. However, I’ve been making the necessary preparations to catch up on all the stacks of great stuff I have to review during my stint in London. I’m not sure if I’ll have a steady internet connection but I will least update the site sporadically with (hopefully) large lumps of reviews. Anyhow, this is not the point of this review.
Hairmaiden of the Totem Robe is one the Housecraft house bands of Jeffry Astin and this c20 finds them in particularly awesome fashion. Heavy on guitar, possibly only guitars, which you know I love to hear. I can’t tell if this was done live or overdubbed but the first side sounds thick and tangled. Stringy, sinewy guitar chimes and clanks tie themselves in knots with a subtle low end buzz whipping up an unassuming undertow. The track covertly builds in intensity—usually when one guitar gets aggressive the other backs off. There is a fantastic push/pull dynamic between the two guitars which is augmented by the choice to pan each either hard left or hard right. After a short slip into silence halfway through, sounds slowly come into focus again. The artwork fits this well cause there is a vague aquatic vibe cast upon the sounds, though it doesn’t ever indulge in spacious, liquid drone style. When the duo does approach “drone” towards the end of the side, the results are claustrophobic and unsettling rather than peaceful. The side runs a strange trajectory from clustered guitar dissonance to oppressive, festering drones and they pull it off with amazingly subtle skill.
The B side kicks off with a more skronky mindset. There are all sorts of atonal jingle jangle, possibly looped, and I’m so sure I’m hearing a flute in there somewhere but maybe it’s a keyboard disguised as a flute. The track stays surprisingly rhythmic augmented by some electronic contact crackle and scraping. All the sounds find a unity in a strange tumbling cycle that ultimately ends up as a relatively full drone that subsides after the passage of time leaving a loop of percussive electronic noises and a soft, eerie cooing mixed with splatters of guitar notes.
A fantastic, fascinating tape on the whole, well worth checking out. My only criticism of Housecraft is their editions are always too small and I think this masterpiece of c20-dom only had an edition of 50 copies give or take. Thus, it’s long sold out. Though Hairmaiden is pretty prolific it seems so there should be plenty more releases in the pipeline.

Uton – Attack of the Aether Sun [Housecraft]

Since all Housecraft items appear to be in a perpetual state of flying off the shelves I wanted to weigh in on least of one of the tapes I have that isn't sold out yet.
I know I covered this in my last review of Housecraft materials, but I'll do it once more, Housecraft is a label based in Gainesville that specializes in all sorts of euphoric drones and has really come into its own this year and as you can see people are noticing and buying up tapes about as fast as Jeffry Astin puts 'em out.
Astin reached across the Atlantic for Finnish project Uton which has been putting out releases for years on top labels. This tape is about a half hour, split between two side long tracks. The first side’s piece “The Aether Cosmic Sun (CS only version)” begins with astral buzz saws. This sound pretty much dominates with a few tones, possibly keyboards, trying to poke their faces through. This is given up on fairly quickly and everything goes the way of the fizzy, spiky drone. For as much relentless feedback and whatnot going on here it doesn’t feel that forceful. The noisiness is relatively diffuse which is probably why the title “The Aether Cosmic Sun” was bestowed upon it. Makes sense to me, though personally I think the track could benefit from a little gravity. The drone begins to breakdown a little toward the end letting a few previously buried sounds run free.
The flipside is the one that’s really interesting in my opinion. “Inner Mind Mutations (Mix)”, unlike the singular sound of the first side, moves through a couple different ideas throughout its course. Once again, a fitting title. The droniness of this side also contrasts greatly because it’s very busy, vibrant and active. There are weird vocal globules, sputtering electronic sounds and shiny, digital sounding pseudo-shaker noises. A much enjoyed flute-like keyboard arpeggio pops up briefly. Much of the sound fades, leaving an eerie space with effected acoustic guitar plucks and a mellow cyclone of various echoing frequencies. I don’t see the instruments listed here so I’m not sure what I’m hearing but there’s a seamless transition to (what sounds like) an autoharp/flute face off backed by minimal percussion. A cool tangent. A very electronically colored piano replaces it with a sparse half-melody. Before a pretty bit of reversed tones and springing toy keyboard sounds lead to legit acoustic piano playing with a new Monk-ish keyboard ditty but less sparse than the High Priest often played. And that’s all folks; a nice, varied but cohesive little side.
The art matches the sound of the tape well, with a kinda exploded Sloow Tape vibe. The j-card is double-sided and it comes with an insert with blue-purple ink on see-thru paper, all in a paint flecked case. A class act. There are 120 copies (2 or 3 times the typical run of HC releases) of this making it the Housecraft tape most likely to enter your collection, statistically speaking. It’s been out for a few months though, so there can’t be that many left. So don’t sleep if you’re interested. It’s cheap as always too.

Tricorn and Queue – Tapestry Head Ban [Housecraft]/Xiphiidae – Bronze Hut [Housecraft]

It’s taken me way too long to say a few words about Housecraft. They flew under my radar for a while but once they came to my attention I was very impressed. The visual aesthetic is consistently top-notch and head Housecrafter Jeffry Astin has a keen ear for great drone acts, most of them lesser-known (at least to me). I also have much love for any label that peddles cheap tapes, these two are my picks from the sampling Jeffry sent me a while back. So let’s get this review poppin’.
I’m pretty sure that Tricorn and Queue is just the name of the crew and not a collaboration, but don’t quote me. The first of the four stops on the tape is “Gilded Feathers/First Flight Over Ashen Trees” and I’m tempted to call it my favorite but we’ll see where I end up by the end of the review. The first portion of the track is full of skittering muck. Pieces of vocals, sustained tones and clipped, cut, echoing percussive sounds. Despite the complete lack of congruence the group seems oddly focused. Like they know where their impulses will take them before they even have them. There’s a point where, it seems, the players make a conscious effort to get pretty and it sucks me in every time. I'm guessing this is the “Ashen Trees” portion. Lovely tones slip slowly underneath the mild cacophony, surrounding and filling every crack with flowing, floating beauty. It has an amazing effect on my mind, calming but forgoing any sort of blandness. It’s a really wondrous flight that I could fly with forever. Nothing is out of place, every new tone, every peak, every valley; it’s all effortless and all about the oneness with sound. Sorry to get new age-y on yr ass but this is fucking great. There’s a little synth part that eeks out at the very end that’s exceptional too as the piece slowly gives in to silence. “Live @ the 612, Gainesville 7/20/07” fills out the rest of the side, and it continues the somber lilting idea but it's kept in check by an occasional, delayed metallic tapping. Things then turn a bit weirder with a reversed violin-type sound and various washes of noise. This gives way to another set of glacial sounds. A glacier seems like an apt comparison because it’s cool, smooth and pervasive but it’s also subtly destructive at the same time. Tricorn and Queue always have a counterpoint, something that chisels away at the smoothness a bit. Though it may not have the power to flood the world with ecstasy like the first piece, it’s a fine effort.
On the flip, “Stone Fleets Home” leads off. This sounds more aquatic to my ear. I may be psyching myself out a bit but I think there may even be a recording of water in there somewhere as well. This one seems a bit more synth-led but it could easily be blissed-out guitar that I’m hearing. Actually that’s probably it the more I think about it. That piece is over relatively quickly before moving into the finale “Triangled Goldflower/Apache Radiation”. Dude, I don’t know what “Apache radiation” is but I wanna find out. This piece returns to the style of the beginning of the tape. A strange collection of all sorts of sounds, not really smashed together but “lumped” I guess would a better word. There’s a pseudo-choir sound that I’m loving, as well as a lo-fi blues guitar that pops out for a few notes and lots of other cool sounds I’ll leave to your imagination. All the elements cycling in and out make for a dizzying swirl of sound. Always mellow, never boring. Which works pretty well as a descriptor for the tape in general.
I’ve been seeing this Xiphiidae name around town a lot after I got this tape but I had never heard of the project before hearing this little baby. I wouldn’t be surprised if Xiphiidae got a bunch of record deals based on this tape alone. This tape is less airy and about a third of the length of the Tricorn & Q, instead creating a tad bit fuller sound. Lots of glistening sound waves from all kinds of sources. This project seems to be heavier on the synths, though there are some other sounds pushed down a lot I can’t quite pick out. Throughout the side a new set of tones will swoop down to displace another only to be displaced minutes later. I know this is all a bit vague but it’s tricky to pin down all the sounds/phases the track holds in its 7 minutes. The other side is cut from the same piece of cloth though the instrumentation varies a little and the track as whole seems slightly less cloudy. There’s a real nice period on the side where an elegant lo-pitched tone glides along while a crackly hi-pitched din floats on top giving way to chimes and other murkiness.
Two phenomenal releases for fans of tapes, drone and natural highs. Housecraft does an amazing job with packaging and these two are cases in point. Tapestry Head Ban has two-layer j-card with printed vellum and a piece of material soaked with color. Really nice looking. It also comes with an insert and tape labels. Bronze Hut comes with a hand-made collaged j-card and tape labels as well. Both tapes are out of print but I’ve seen copies around at a few distros, if you're interested. I’d also recommend just buying some of the new Housecraft stuff cause it looks rad and is sure to be nice on your wallet and your ears.