A bit of hospitable preamble from a live human audience provides this tape’s only impression of terrestrial origins, and that’s before the planet completely vanishes in a Byzantine abduction by steampunk Viking kitchen-hands, with the whole transmission leaked straight to tinfoil somewhere in a distant Tralfamadorian past. The only legible data on the cassette is a gnomically inscribed ‘Shepis’, which turns up a dead-end on search engines save some divine assistance from Cassette Gods, who suggest the tape has arrived from Deep Fried Tapes land, only here the product feels like it’s been plunged in a gulf of pure tweenage mutant slime.
Most of the curtailed C20 is occupied by what sounds like a mutant crackle-box maestro invoking a stoned Waisvisz in the prehistoric form of Cale, with gauzy viola-like drones suspended amidst vertiginous oscillating wobbles and electromagnetic rumbles that persist below the radar of the Dictaphone clamor. Quietly erratic metallic gasps and peripheral percussive shrapnel encircle the increasingly incomprehensible sputter, accompanying the tumult further out of orbit and beyond transmission into a barricade of marginal hish, while amplified tape whirr feeds back Lucier-style like deep space force-gales smeared rancorously across the weathered sonic hull.
The first side winds down in brusque fashion, suggesting censored misfortune. It’s pretty preemptive. The flipside could’ve stayed blank for its entire factory-like, heavy afternoon buzz and cutlery-like cargo action, which carries on at its peripheral remove as the tape fades out at the halfway mark, leaving a yawning silence for the protracted conclusion. It’s a faceless valedictory non-gesture by this UFO identity, a fittingly incognito departure, almost appeasing, especially with the titular sentiment that the jams will never end. That’s a promise that’ll encourage all those willing to sift through a hundred thousand hits for a namesake B-horror scream queen to find the correct gunk in the future. 6/10 --
E.R. Chatterton (15 April, 2009)
