by Bryan Berge

Meaning
Untitled
Epicene

The case containing Meaning’s debut is glued and glopped, painted and melted—but one manifestation of the curious spirit of the unblemished cassette it houses. Of course, one knows from the get-go that Meaning won’t churn out jazz standards, but this Ohio trio even deviates from the orthodoxies of the underground. They are not analogue purists, ascetically dedicated to their vintage synths (never mind for the moment the great irony therein), or nostalgists grinding out the latest tepid variation on 60s fire music. Meaning takes a highly inclusive approach to their output, akin to that of musique concrete pioneers. Tape manipulation establishes the industrial (read as: recorded in an old factory) ambience of the cassette, and its persistent percussion comes courtesy of whatever junk is lying around. In short, Meaning attempts to create new sounds from unexpected sources, rather than perfect a hermetic world.

This philosophy will naturally lead to many a sloppy moment, especially since Meaning—unlike the Pierre Henrys of yesteryear—welds this exploratory aesthetic to the freedom of improvisation. Were Meaning’s audience weaned on Debussy or Beyonce (to name a couple poles of organized sound), their trash jazz would fall on deaf ears. To the average Epicene enthusiast, however, Meaning will sound quite dignified, as the tape has refreshingly little concern for violence or the destruction of speaker cones. Instead, Meaning includes silence as part of their actions, which, to me at least, seems like a natural extension of their egalitarian sonics.

So brace yourself for staticky radio transmissions, pot-and-pan rhythms, and the tortured emanations of disfigured and jerry-rigged machines—and stay attentive. The men of Meaning conduct themselves seriously and resist novelty appeal. In a culture of specialization and waste, their recycled and reinvented din poses a bellicose challenge.

(VxPxC)
Dead Right There
Sky-Fi

The cassette underground generates an awful lot of music, which in turn generates an awful lot of debate about the merit of generating an awful lot of music. My position on this point is pretty well established (short version: go nuts!), but the issue bears repeating for an extreme case like (VxPxC). This LA band might be the grand Magi of this age of media saturation, with nine (by my count) releases currently available on several labels, not including the six permanently available via their self-released series and the slew of out of print titles. (VxPxC) has reached such a musical density, however, that I no longer view their output as a constellation of discrete releases. Rather the band maintains a continuous musical conversation—sometimes meandering, sometimes acute and critical—that one is free to enter and exit at will. The rapid spread of their music does not indicate cupidity on their part (a note to the greedy: stock brokerage is probably a better time investment than experimental music), but the goodwill and openness with which they communicate with the wider DIY community.

“Dead Right There” captures the open-ended nature of their music, both in length and content. Clocking in at a solid ninety minutes, this tape would be a trial for any listener’s rapt attention. But I believe that—for this release at least—(VxPxC) should be regarded in a different frame. Though their psych-rock line-up suggests the standard performer/audience dichotomy, with “Dead Right There,” (VxPxC) is operating as an ambient band. Let me clarify—the guitars on the tape are soaring and searching, the harmonica flourishes brittle and warm, and there is little in the way of traditional ambient signifiers, but ambient in this case refers to the orientation of the listener, rather than the delineation of a genre. Throughout the recording, one can hear snippets of conversation, the play of children, the quiet rustle of household life. The performers even talk amongst themselves occasionally. The music functions not as a separate objet d’ art, to be regarded and analyzed, but as a coloring of the atmosphere. (VxPxC) is reclaiming ambient music from the laptop crowd and reorienting it in the context of the rock group.

“Dead Right There” suits its purpose nicely. It’s a slow-paced and eminently good-natured release, bathed in perfectly-pitched distortion. The mood varies smoothly from moonlit porch melancholy to tension and grit, with analogue keyboards, xylophones, and drum machines kicking in or amping up to signal the shifts. While it will likely not end up as someone’s Favorite Album Ever, “Dead Right There” is far too self-effacing and humble to require such a grandiose criteria for success. The bar is intentionally set lower.

V/A
Rippers and Creepers
Pendu Sound

This one is a reviewer’s nightmare! Rippers and Creepers not only features over 30 artists spanning a host of styles and locales—which right off the bat eliminates a couple of handy classification systems—but every track is mixed directly into the next, as if the nuances of each noisemonger’s style weren’t difficult enough to detect already. And to crown his caper, Pendu curator Todd Brooks has deliberately chosen an almost-unknown set of artists—a decision I wholly admire, but one which complicates this task even further.

With that, where to begin? I don’t know if Brooks is cluing us in with the title, but for a first approximation of order, let’s call the A-side “Rippers” and the B-side “Creepers.” Rippers wisely begins with the eccentric quasi-jazz of HeteroSkeleton, a choice born as much of necessity as preference, since there’s no way Brooks could maintain a consistent flow with this head-scratcher gumming up the works. The following two tracks are compatible, beyond-gutter, half-aborted punk tracks by Blastocyst and the Pukers, which move at absolutely full throttle with an admirable hostility towards purpose and form. The Rippers title makes even more sense as we enter the alley of straight noise, with four pieces of angry rumbles blurring into one another. I recognized the odd, abused saxophone of Ghost Moth gasping for air and was pleasantly surprised by the brooding quality of newcomer Kristin Calvarese’s piece, but otherwise, no matter how hard I try to distinguish the different contributors, my mind melts into the onrush.
The quirky no-budget dance of Buffle briefly dethrones the noise, only to be usurped by Usurper, whose brooding, understated piece of cut-up darkness further establishes him as one of the most distinctive voices in harsh noise world. After his piece, unfortunately, I lose track of the next several artists, surfacing again to note the psychedelic bombast of Howlin’ Magic, probably the most recognizable name on the comp. Rippers eases into Creepers with the pleasant, if not distinctive, ambience of Pet Coffins.

After the white-knuckle ride of Rippers, Creepers is a bit more soothing. Family Battlesnake drapes the tape in a troubled Twilight Zone swirl, which is ably followed by a masterful proggy suite of post-Tangerine synthetic pulse from Pax Titania. Skozey Fetisch then crash lands like a malfunctioning satellite, coming off like the sound of robotic consciousness going slowly offline. Arachnid Arcade inaugurates another stretch of noise, though with a sci-fi bent in keeping with the spirit of preceding tracks. Josh Lay follows with an utterly depressing piece of fetid drift, one of my favorites on the whole comp. Next, ex-pat Mike Shiflet goes digital (I think), drumming up his inner Kevin Drumm with a deep field of flickering figures, before Sons of Bronson upsets the pacing with a disruptive piece of mutilated wankery. Women in Tragedy show up soon enough with a hallucinatory killer, followed by a winning slab of mysterious black ritual from new kids Sorc’henn. A multi-artist string-fueled fugue follows, capped by the glorious non-logic of Nonhorse. Finally, Panicsville concludes with an appropriately bizarre, flatulent piece.

So, uh…there you have it. I think all the preceding can be summarized as follows: Rippers and Creepers is not an easy listen, but there’s a lot of meat on its bones.

please submit any tapes to be reviewed to the regular Foxy Digitalis address (found HERE). Thanks