ANALOG CAVE

ANALOG

BECAUSE CASSETTES RULE HARD AND NEVER REALLY AGE, THE ANALOG CAVE IS HERE TO BRING YOU SOME OF THE BEST IN UNDERGROUND TAPES AND COLLECTED VISION. A CASSETTE IS LIKE YOUR BEST FRIEND, YOUR MOST TRUSTED TRAVEL PARTNER, AND A SPECIMEN OF IMAGINATIVE FANTASY AND OTHERWORLDLY DIMENSION. POP ONE IN AND TRANSFORM. RIDE THE HIGHWAY ETERNAL.

SOAKED IN PISS/ GORMANDIZING: SPLIT TAPE: CHAOTIC NOISE PRODUCTIONS Brooklyn’s Soaked in Piss play the sound of humans ripping themselves to pieces as the world collapses in on itself. This split cassette with the equally pummeling Gormandizing (Chaotic Noise Production’s own Jason Hodges) is quick and hellish, the sort of thing that fits real nice as the go-to for confusing and angering all your peers.

“Our music is a reaction to the current extreme music scene,” says Soaked In Piss vocalist James Dunbar. “We write music inspired by bands such as Assück and Discordance Axis but taken into a post-modern context where the real has been completely erased and turned into the hyperreal.”

Jean Baurillard would be proud. The lyrics aren’t easy to decipher, but you get a sense of the anger and gravity behind them.

“They’re eye-opening critiques of the outdated institutions that have held us back in life,” Dunbar notes. “The health care system, religious institutions, education, economics, and the 1 percent, as well as digging into existentialism and post-modern philosophy.”

RAW AMBASSADOR: BARBARIC TENDENCIES: SOIL Raw Ambassador’s techno is both fluid and tactile. Industrial boldness is at the center, while situational purposing creates the space to elicit modernity. Barbaric Tendencies contains an intersection of acid, synth, and minimalism that softens the cornerstone of each successive track. There is a feeling that one is in nature throughout, even though the group’s inner-core is built with inorganic might. The album is visual to a point of transference. Every beat is an image, every counterpoint a landscape: the picture transforms the entirety of the human form. It’s dark, and has the essence of the urban nightscape, the clubs and energy of the people of eternal midnight. And yet, it is studious, refined, challenging the conception of underground and mainstream. SOIL is a record label out of Spain with some excellent releases under their belt. Along with Raw Ambassador’s latest, check out Penelope’s Fiance’s newest release, Negative Schemas, a sort of anarchic, futuristic geometry, with echoing dimensions both hellish and wide.

RENE J NUNEZ: POEMS E ON MAGNETIC TAPE: NO RENT RECORDS Rene J Nunez’s Poems E on magnetic tape is a folktale of dimensional honesty, a story interwoven around a tapestry of sound. Where noise dominates the periphery, the idea of an acoustic guitar—the notion of that vision—is the center structure. The strumming of an acoustic note, the gentle direction of a piano key (perhaps here, simply a collage), is the genesis for such extensions like “Love Is A Word I’ve Never Used in A Song” and “Autumn Bitch.” By initially creating a space of solitude, Nunez is able to blend the hue of darkness without ever losing the listener. “Women I Would Marry in Los Angeles” is a great example of this methodology, a composition that gives the impression of having the features of a phonic spine, whereas its truth lies in the cold, dark heart of machinery. That’s perhaps the album’s most immense quality: a record composed like jazz or classical music, but whose circuitry is actually layers of steel, wire, and binary code. Poems E on magnetic tape is the tape to play on a rainy day, or even a sunny day; its beauty perpetual.

MASTA CYPHER DEVINE X GOOMSON: SP1000 BEAT TAPE: SELF-RELEASED

The SP1000 Beat Tape is a return to the past, before the age of instant communication and direct technological infusion. Masta Cypher Devine and GoomSon have two hands in the analog jar as they transverse the multiverse with compositions built around jazz fluidity, dub totality, smooth cuts, and sniper-like precision. The two artists cut-andpaste with fire and aplomb as you feel the turntable spinning around like an eternal Buddha, the eye of the universe, the heart of life. Rick Rok appears on three tracks, a voice like a ghost, ebbing and floating on the periphery. “Truncate” feels like the inverse of some James Bond soundtrack, the concrete as reality and truth. “Patch Phrase” is dimensional opportunity, percolating with eons of repetition, breathing towards nirvana, closer and closer it floats. “Wave Edit” is homage to the golden age of hip-hop, the sequencing direct and nostalgic. A wandering soul is at the heart of SP1000 Beat Tape, digging for beats, for sounds to create, they coalesce as one.