Music: Sparkling Wide Pressue "No Need for a Meaning" tape

We can probably mostly agree that Neil Young's soundtrack for the film "Dead Man" is pretty effective, even if it sounds like Neil layed it down in an afternoon, just noodling around and abusing his whammy bar. And that's kind of the feeling I get from most of this tape. It's kind of lazy-style guitar-picking, but with heavy atmospheric elements, distant drones and birds chirping and the like. Rendered casually but pretty impactful in context, and with layers far to rich to have been really layed down in a day.

Gradually electric bass presents itself and the casual acoustic strums give way to some consonant electric scratching. But the music takes its time and never tries to do too much. Gutteral feedback and cassette recorder breaking down a bit and everythings played like with out too much purpose. Sunny-afternoon-stoned vibe. It's "jammy", no doubt about that, but whatever catharsis frat boys get from listening to Phish, the underground set can get from listening to this.

Atmosphere is happening big time. When the drones and verb settle down toward the end of side 1 and we're presented with a somber finger-picked guitar, it's the light crackling of dust on the tape head and snippets of reversed e-guitar that give it some weight. But even at its hissiest and droniest, this thing is pretty approachable. Familiar fragments of various guitar-based stoner genres (If anyone tells me that Frank Baugh doesn't smoke pot every day I'll be shocked,) keep this thing well under most of your thumbs.

Pretty groovy January 2012 release on Fadeaway Tapes. Nice little Ab.Ex.-style J-card, non-recycled.