Tapes gone wild (and mild)! Loops and drones and long vibrating passages make up this improvised mix of songs. To me the concept of a song is song that has a beginning and end and some predictability along the way – and usually with lyrics. This challenges my view by presenting songs as experiments, testings, trials, haikus. On “Chairs, Hammocks, Couches” one might wonder about the potential for this song with a chunk of silence dropped in the center before crispy tinkering plays on and on. When I had seen these gentlemen play live a few years back I knew there was a future in their relaxed, almost sedentary approach to playing. The sound is alive and off the hook while the players tweak, twiddle and thumb through a bulk batch of electronic toys and other vintage boxes, dials and frayed wires. “Blank” takes tape culture back, in a look back at techniques heard in performance art, film soundtracks and at Negativland concerts of yore. Where this differs, however, is in its sensitive analytical approach to each and every individual sound – the cranking and push-pull loops, the flawless fast-forward and clunky trip stops. The listener will enjoy the streamer-like deflating balloon sounds on “Stitches” that have an embedded sense of humor and may involve no air pressure at all – but have the intimate elation of a lone clown prepping backstage. The winds are set adrift on “Getting the Band Back Together,” this tongue-in-cheek collision of fire and air make its gasses almost infernal. In all, Songs is a post-Fluxus collection of itchy cassette-based, unstructured little ditties that will appeal to the most ardent of experimental noise freaks. Beware: This is not a greatest hits collection.
