Music

Waves of Tidals With their two new mesmeric releases, the Fort Worth duo casts a spell. MUSIC

BY ANTHONY MARIANI

Probably the best way to listen to Tidals is on a dark train zipping through the city at night. New York City perhaps or maybe Paris or Berlin. Definitely not Texas, clearly not Fort Worth. The music is that far removed from the sounds that we’ve come to know, and love, as “Texan.” Jeremy Lantz and Joshua Wrinkle’s recently released twin recordings glow with a certain unnamable, transportive vibe. “Sonic art” is probably the best way to describe the album Past Life Therapy and the EP Flowering Skullcap. They’re illbient but not in thrall to hip-hop, glitchy but not engrossed with DJ Spooky or Ulf Langheinrich, and melodic but visibly allergic to lounging poolside at an adults-only beach resort. The connectivity between the records exists purely stylistically. They challenge presumptions of “experimental music” and reward active, patient listening.

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Local Venues Ready to Roll — and Rock Now that Gov. Greg Abbott has approved the reopening of Texas bars — and music venues — starting Friday, it seems that Fort Worth’s biggest original-rock spots are ready to move forward. Maybe now, maybe later, but still forward.

Brian Forella is “about ready” but will not reopen on Friday. He owns two connected spots: Lola’s Trailer Park, a rambling, mostly open-air venue, and Lola’s Saloon, a smaller, enclosed bar-bar with a stage. He believes he’ll be able to reopen the Trailer Park by Tuesday and the Saloon by mid-June. “We’re still cleaning,” he said, noting that opening the Saloon any sooner would not be “a good look for me. Gonna try to be safe.”

The Trailer Park, at 7,500 total square feet, with 6,300 of that being outdoors, is “big enough,” he said. “At least I can do bands outside. I can make it as safe as possible.”

The occupancy at the Trailer Park will be capped at 100, and service will be tableside only — state regulations prohibit bartenders from serving from bar counters. The Trailer Park’s service area will not have any chairs or tables, Forella said.

Neither Lola’s will be ready by Friday. “With all the rules and restrictions that need to be implemented, it might not be the best idea to open on a Friday,” he added.

“For us,” Wrinkle said, “our music always tells a story or expresses a feeling, an emotion or mindset. Although Tidals is primarily instrumental, certain samples or pieces may represent an idea, a conversation we had, an experience we shared, things like that. I feel like some of that is evident to people listening to the songs, but a lot of it wouldn’t be so obvious. Some songs had a certain emotion or vibe, and that’s how we ended up with the two separate albums.”

Lantz and Wrinkle began work on Past Life Therapy and Flowering Skullcap not long after they finished their last record, a 2016 split with experimentalists Beach Priest. The vibe from Tidals’ three contributions to that disc lingers on in the new records. Speaking voices sometimes above but other times below the desultory waves of instrumentation create a weird sort of “Suicide Parlour,” mind-warping echoes of women talking, their voices fanning out like concussive waves, seem to reflect a kind of internal struggle, like all of the voices of selfdoubt we confront ourselves with daily hitting

Bars will be largely responsible for policing themselves or face a fine. However, most bars and venues do not have the kind of manpower required to ensure that social distancing is in effect at all times and that occupancy limits are not exceeded.

“Exactly,” Forella said.

He and manager Blake Parish have other concerns, as well.

If social distancing is not maintained at a fine local tavern, Parish said that, from what he’s learned, the bar — and possibly the bartenders on duty — will be fined, not the customer or customers flouting the law. “Already around the country there have been shootings, fights and all kinds of insanity whenever someone tells someone else to follow the rules,” Parish recently posted. “Now add alcohol to that equation and what do you think you’re going to get?”

Forella believes not reopening the Trailer Park as soon as possible is not really an option. “Landlords ain’t gonna wait,” he said. “I gotta open. Everybody doesn’t want anybody to open. I have to, even if it’s me bartending by myself. I’m not looking to. I’m a shitty bartender, but I have no choice. I can’t tell my landlords, ‘I’m allowed to be open but don’t feel like opening.’ I’m gonna have normal bills plus three months of shit I haven’t paid.”

Ryan Higgs plans to reopen his Near Southside venue MASS “cautiously,” he said. “It is not an ideal situation. We don’t open bars and plan budgets based on 25% of our capacity showing up. I am happy to be able to provide work for our employees who need it. I am sorting through the guidelines and figuring out ways to keep everyone safe. us all at once. The song probes its boundaries for limits, rattling and threatening to tear apart down the middle. You wouldn’t call it “spooky” but maybe “Spooky.” It’s a good counterpoint to “Past Life Therapy,” a bright, twinkling track whose talking points come and go as if in a dream.

“We’re both stoked with how the songs turned out,” Wrinkle said.

Past Life Therapy and Flowering Skullcap were recorded by John Nuckels at his Fort Worth home studio, Prism Lake. Nuckels is Tidals’ go-to guy. With the exception of the duo’s 2015 album, Seplica’s Bedroom, which was produced by Jordan Richardson (Son of Stan, Ben Harper), the rest of Lantz and Wrinkle’s work has been produced by Nuckels, the cofounder of both Sub Oslo, the legendary dub band, and Wire Nest, a chillwave project with Sub Oslo bandmate Frank Cervantez.

Nuckels, Wrinkle said, “is a friend that we enjoy working with and is a wizard at what he does.”

Recording was delayed by the everyday vicissitudes of life.

“With work, school, and travel taking up a lot of Jeremy’s time and mine as well, it was always difficult to record more than one or two songs at a time,” Wrinkle said. “We decided to just continue recording as we could, and once we felt we had a finished record, we would focus on putting something new out. Some parts of songs were recorded as recently as February of this year.”

It is a great responsibility that everyone must be mindful of.”

When MASS opens on Friday, it will be without live music, unusually but not unexpectedly — considering social distancing restrictions and Higgs’ respect for safety — for the venue that’s winning lockdown by regularly livestreaming concerts as part of the Social Distancing Concert Series. “We will gradually phase [music] in,” Higgs said, noting that the livestreamed concerts will continue for the foreseeable future.

Forella hopes to bring back live music by the end of the month. “Even if it’s just a band with no people,” he said.

He hopes to cover his expenses through a sponsor. “We’re trying to get good bands at first,” he said. “Say a band wants a grand. We don’t want to fall on our face. We don’t want to be just barely open and owe a couple motherfuckers a grand if it didn’t work. We’re trying to get sponsors to hedge some of that. We don’t want to fall on our asses.”

Livestreaming shows is in Lola’s future regardless, he said. “Streaming, gonna give it a whirl,” he said. “Gonna call sponsors. Gonna cost a little bit to set up and figure out how to pay the bands because it’s a whole new thing, so many variables nobody ever dealt with before.”

Will Killingsworth mastered the records at Dead Air Studios in Amherst, Massachusetts.

“He’s a musician/producer that I’ve respected from a young age,” Wrinkle said. “Although he usually deals more so with rock/ punk/hardcore, we were both excited to see what he would do with our tracks.”

The album also includes a remix by Best Fwends, the former Fort Worth experimentalpop duo that dominated the early aughts. Tidals connected with them through art — Best Fwend Dustin Pilkington designed the covers of both records.

“When he was working on the art, we asked if they would be interested in seeing what they could do with one of the songs,” Wrinkle said. “It turned out great.”

Wrinkle said that he and Lantz have been socially isolated during the pandemic but plan on performing a livestream “or two” soon. “Once things somewhat normalize and we are playing shows again, we will release physical versions of the two albums,” Wrinkle continued. “I’ve got a few songs I’ve been working on recently, and I know Jeremy has been writing as well. I would love to be back in the studio by winter.”

Winter, undoubtedly the best time to listen to Tidals while on that train far, far away. l

By TCU, livestreaming will dovetail with the in-person concert experience at The Moon, said owner Chris Maunder. “Trend-wise,” he said, “streaming is making less and less sense. I don’t know if they’re making as much on the back end or based on the artist not giving as much, but, yes, we do have plans on getting set up for ourselves as we are ramping back up and are able to put on live shows. [Livestreaming] is definitely an outlet we want to take advantage of.”

Everyone wants to go back to work and for life to return to as close to normal as it may be from here on out. We still need to be safe. COVID-19 is a novel coronavirus, meaning that we have no built-up immunity or resistance to it. There also is no vaccine. I highly recommend maintaining social distancing guidelines wherever you go and wearing a mask — it’s not to protect you, dotards. It’s to keep you from infecting others if you are sick and don’t know it yet because COVID-19 has an incubation period of 14 days and you can be asymptomatic in that period of time yet still infect others. People who are highly susceptible to the virus, like Grandma and Grandpa, sure would appreciate you not infecting them because they could very well likely die a horrible death as a result. I do not recommend throwing warehouse parties with hundreds of other entitled, privileged self-scopophiliacs and acting as if COVID-19 is just the flu because it’s not. Plus, I “just” had the flu a couple of years ago. You know what? It fucking suuucked. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, even Corey Mobley — the Fort Worth guy who threw the afore-referenced warehouse party over the weekend — or any of his “friends.” #adultsactingliketeens

“I get that we have options,” Parish wrote, “but our options at this point are be fucked or stay fucked. It’s not a fun time to be in this industry.” — Anthony Mariani

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