Music: Letho / Paper Hats split tape

Side 1: Letho (a.k.a. Jeff the Brotherhood lead singer, Jeff Orral) gives us two repetitive rubber synth zone-ins that begin and end the side, plus two cathedral-y versions of one of JtB's slower songs. One version with 'verbed-out organ, the other instrumental lead by lead guitar.

It's very much an "amateur electronics" sounding affair, but credit due to Orral for not getting too carried away with the synth's tone. A less up-front sound would make the opening and closing tracks feel really FL-Studio-green, as in, this is a very "amateur electronics" recording here. The basic preset rubbery synth sound suits it.

Side 2 features one long piece of haunting, sometimes creepy reverb/delay-washed guitar overlayed with vintage M.O.R. record samples that whip in and out of the mix as though recorded through a guitar tremolo pedal or treated with an LFO. Actually the guitar sounds more thrown up than washed out. It's ugly, dissonant (and I'm not sure whether it's the product of cheap tape-dubbing or not,) murk stands in contrast to the distorted, but mostly Major key samples.

Paper Hats (known mostly as William Tyler) is a guitarist gifted at "pretty" playing in the American Folk tradition, so I like to hear something a little nasty from him. The prerecorded music that throbs over the whole piece has a Residents-like weirdness, but actually WT has a history with found sound, having released "Hilarity & Despair: American Answering Machine Tapes volume 1" on his Sebastian Speaks label. (Review forthcoming)

This tape is probably still around in local shops or try Infinity Cat website.

Music: Ttotals EP

Everything through some kind of gated compressor gives this thing a pretty unique, if perhaps of-its-time, sound. I think it's a sort of Signature Sound for producer, Jeremy Ferguson, who's done similar work for Turbo Fruits and I guess a lot of other bands.

Super-star producer aside, Ttotals are some pretty o.g.'s who've seen enough to just play what they dig and dig it themselves.

And what they dig is both In and a little Out-There. Trippy, 1990s mushroom-gazing-at-the-sky music, with real "haze=clarity" vibes. Simple but pure. And Brian Miles strangles some pretty hallucinatory tones from his guitar/amp. Whammy bar feedback drones and the like. Simplicity. It's free-ing because nothing gets in the way...

Until the end: "Take Care of Me" is the last track and the biggest departure from the duo's ussual Motorik+Pop-Drone. Huge monolithic drums sound like they're crashing out of the sky. The guitar chugs and chokes like Nature taking its course: Killing off the weak.

Yellow vinyl, cool art screenprinted on some gnarly silver paper. Recomended!

Music: Deluxin' "Chocolate Jam" tapes

This is an album in three parts (three 10ish minute tapes) which means flipping/changing the tape six times. Worth it.

Nathan Vasquez's song-writing is really something. He manages to synthesize from so many more influences than most of his contemporaries from the NSA school of "punk." Like, instead of channeling an established genre, Deluxin' channel three or four disparate energies into one relatable but still weird pop-song.

All but maybe three songs are plenty memorable. "Shiny Lid" has a delicate aching quality and a quick bass line allows its buoy to skip. "Houses of Space" wanders, philosophically, around God's palace-or-whatever bareback on Vasquez's urgent, utilitarian singing voice.

NV's lyrics sound highly relevant to most of you, but you only can snatch. Bits of angst at inconsistant relationships. Elation at the more consistant artifacts of life: video games, etc. It sounds very intimate.

Tape 2 absolutely kills. "I Thought You Were Cool" takes you to task with its quick, Electric Eels-like gut-rock. "Cry for a Shadow (On Easy Street)" is faux-country scatter-swagger in a loose, rough bounce.

And it's plenty rough. Beautifully recorded onto tape and lovingly hand-dubbed. Word is, a re-sequenced, re-recorded version is due on vinyl at some point. Here's hoping.

Hag Bloom Tapes. Highly Recomended!

Music: Hobbledeions / Sugar Sk*_*lls "Secret fugue Machine" split tape

Side 2, Sugar Skulls side of tape is all made on Nintendo's Gameboy hand-held video game player. There are some interesting melodic ideas, but the sounds get dull pretty quickly. Whatever compositional talents Ben Marcantel has are obfiscated beyond interest by the hardwear involved.

Side 1, Scott Martin's Hobbledions is something of a force of poped-out inexplicable nature. We've all seen the countless bands he's in and ended up zoning in on two arms, two pairs of drum-sticks. Yes we were high, of course! But...

What's great about "The Warning Chirp" in part is how disguised SM's drumming is. Filtered and mixed with percussive samples, the real-time elements erotically merge with the prerecorded hard tracks. It's pretty post-human stuff.

Later we get to some more human-sounding jazz guitar samples. Heady hop. It's just one chord but we'll take it. Followed by some kind of bear-stomp. Yes this tape gets real. Far out camping meets industrial wilderness. Denney-xotica sounds, but we remember they're samples and then there's a whole new Mirror Stage.

No Kings tape. Ugly J-card but it's hand-made vintage-pressed and feels recycled(?) so ya know... Recomended!