Smiling disease along with the previously featured art of the memory palace also appear on a superb cassette only mix cloud pod entitled ‘spools out’ put together by the quietus in conjunction with resonance fm. Much like that tapes out best out we mentioned at the fall of last year, the pod scours the little known hot bellies of the underground scene in search of the most forward thinking artists operating on the margins at the very edge of the great pop firmament. Most unusual of the thirteen cuts featured surely has to be ‘sleep, dream, wake up’ by Jeff Bridges, yes that Jeff Bridges, actor brother of Beau. the selection however opens to the haunting mysterio that is Saffron’s ’morning levine’ a ghostly smoking jacket trimmed in road blues apparitions and coolly chilled down motifs all possessed of an ethereal Meek-esque grooving. Out via tombed visions – run by Dave McLean of Gnod fame (which reminds me – we have tesla tape downloads to investigate) – this is bad body’s ‘redway’ – alas only an excerpt – the original mix extends to some 17 minutes – I guess you could call it a minimalist mausoleum mosaic that had us here much recalling of the Artery albeit as though rewired by Rooney, a scab forming shadow lined vision of bleak suburbia, dark and edgy yet superbly grand in its tone and atmospherics though all the same harrowed in the shrill of desperation and discontent, it’s one of two tracks that form ‘do you know I live?’ alas sold out at source but that won’t stop the more savvy among you nailing a copy. Eartheater – again another act / ensemble – previously unknown to us do that woozy head in the clouds ethereal folk tweaked noir jazz dimpled dreamscaping that once upon a time attracted us to the sounds of Heather Duby though here found dizzily charmed by south sea shimmers and a seafaring sereneness that really wouldn’t to out of place on a Serafina Steer release, anyway the track in question is called ‘homonyms’ from her hausa mountain release of the same name. next up something strangely beguiling from Teresa Winter pulled from her reckon released cassette ‘oh tina, no tina’ – ‘cannot look’ comes kissed with the kind of shy eyed frailty that you suspect if you were to creep up on it and whisper boo it would surely have a heart seizure, ridiculously adorable ghost pop braided with pulsar murmurs that twinkle toe cool sophistication and the kind of demurring lights out chill toning that’s perfect for hot summer’s days night caps. Extended network or as they would have it in text tongue xtnddntwrk usher in a more brooding aspect to proceedings, pensive and panoramic and creeping in portent and ceremonial sombreness which as you all know we here kind of have a thing for, that said it does have you imagining the stumbling upon of the sleeping lair of some legendary leviathan – the track incidentally is titled ‘lay by’. And so to smiling disease who started all this and got us here – somewhat accidentally – in the first place. ‘heavy door’ again pulled from that must have ‘beach bodies’ retrospective sits somewhere between doleful lions, june panic and a youthful ariel pink in terms of sonic spectrum reference markers for what first emerges into the light grizzled in desert dry blues haloes soon begins to fracture into discordant shards of hazily glazed feedback growls. ‘larsen’ by Mark Dicker comes dragged from his ‘universal processes’ set, frustratingly another artist whose so far managed to side step our radar, this noise niking alchemist crafts abstract sonic sore thumbs the type of which ought to appeal to long time admirers of Bruce Russell primarily along the way snaring the odd passing V/Vm disciple. Fancy some lilting dream dazed shoe gazey loveliness, then let me suggest moon diagrams’ ‘sweet surrender’ which comes adored with a pristine pop savviness and a heavenly haloed slipstreaming all hushed in graceful ice sculptured shelling. I wish we got sent stuff like Akhir Sheikh’s ‘dekh tamasha dekh’, heading out of a region sitting between Afghanistan and Pakistan where cassettes are apparently the medium of choice and where musicians are frequently tortured by various rebel factions – it makes for a grim backdrop – so it’s any wonder this is here at all, superb and deserving of support for this radiant reverie comes sun burst in the kind of mind expansive joyful psych tropicalia that the likes of Goat appear to be parading these days all cut to the kind of sultry effervescence that quite frankly you’d have to glue your feet to the floor to stop them tapping to. Strange technoid jiggy wiggy happenings going on amid Takahiro Mukai’s ‘#62214’ the blighter appears to have a life of its own germinating at a furious rate consuming your listening space in all manner of playfully impish binary blips and earthbeat hoochiness which we here where much inclined to root out and re-familiarise ourselves with the more quieter and sane moments from the tigerbeat6 back catalogue. Trupa trupa will be getting further mentions in these pages when that is we manage to rescue an email from our bulging in box we received from blue tapes many weeks back. This release was admittedly on repeat play and due for critical love but somehow got lost in the recent move shenanigans. Anyhow enough of that this is ‘sacrifice’ a killer slice of distractively alluring sleepy headed sun pop that creaks, groans and weaves decidedly off kilter and for that matter off road to sound like a somewhat distressed disciple of the Elephant 6 Collective whose packed its bags for a road adventure to join it heroes only to arrive and find the circus has moved out of town, everything about this works in a vague beaten around the edges kind of way, as to references – well you wouldn’t go far wrong thinking Apples in Stereo. And so at long last that Jeff Bridges visitation. A sleep tape no less, more specifically to assist and enhance your sleeping experience, an absolute bona fide curio of spoken word meditations which quite frankly has to be heard to be believed and may well in years to come be spoken about in the same hushed tones as those bizarre readings by Shatner and Nimoy. Rounding up the pod the very wonderful Art of the Memory Palace with ‘the ghost of benno ohnesborg, part 2’ from their essential ‘this life is but a passing dream’ debut for the esteemed Static Caravan – where the elegiac and ethereal worlds of classical, krautrock and 70’s electronica collide – not wishing to put a finer a point on matters but this could easily be the soundtrack to the entering and the passing through of the mythical white room and beyond, a celestial visitation shimmered in heavenly chorals star spun in subtle noir flavourings, utterly disarming. https://www.mixcloud.com/spools-out-radio/spools-out-radio-1-broadcast-on-resonance-1044fm-on-9th-april-2015/
More about that Jeff Bridges cassette –
Hear the album here http://www.dreamingwithjeff.com/#music-section
http://tombedvisionsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/do-you-know-i-live
https://reckno.bandcamp.com/album/teresa-winter-oh-tina-no-tina
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Eartheater/106267762383
http://www.staticcaravan.org/item.asp?Ref=282
http://www.discogs.com/label/756648-Pirate-Modernity
the sunday experience 